Oh that is definitely part of it. I'm almost at the point where I have to decide to either ride or get on happy pills.

Decisions are hard....

Do both!

i've never been head-hunted, but one thing i told my wife when we we're last looking for a new home for our family was "no more than 10 miles from my job in evanston".

fortunately, she agreed. she has a work from home gig; her only geographic constraint being reasonable proximity to a major airport because she travels a bit for her organization.

we ended up ~6 miles from downtown evanston (8.0 mile bike route), and ~6.5 miles from downtown chicago (the largest jobs center in the interior of the nation), should i ever want to explore a job change.


by design, we live 0.6 miles from the head of an MUP and my office is 1.4 miles from the MUP at the other end. no multi-modal required.

but i understand that not everyone has the ability/flexibility to be so intentional about home and work location decisions in regards to bike commuting.

When I first started commuting about 10 years ago it was an adventure. Even with preriding a familiar area to find a good bike route, it was still an adventure when I set off for work by bicycle. I needed the exercise, wasn't saving much money by commuting with buying more stuff for the trip, but the adventure part made it easier to continue. It's still a bit of an adventure some days inspite of the routine, and that's one of the factors that keeps me coming back for more.

This!

I can't even motivate myself to calculate the cost-benefit of biking to work, and I love data. I track my mileage. I track how much I spend on my bikes. I track the cost per mile for each bike. All of this is just to satisfy my inner nerd (who is even nerdier than my outer nerd). I don't make any attempt to find out whether or not I'm saving money because that's not why I'm riding.

Convenience is a factor for me. I'm lazy by nature. But convenience is mostly an emotional measure, so that gets rolled up into total happiness. I don't have a way to quantify this, but it's easy to regulate. Some days I don't feel like riding so I drive the whole way. If I drive too often I get unhappy about it so I figure out a way to ride the bike. If I have a reason to leave the house in a car, stopping somewhere and biking from there usually makes me happier than driving the whole way would. That is, the pleasure of riding the bike outweighs the convenience of just driving the whole way.

Let's be clear, riding a bike through the suburbs in a bike lane next to heavy traffic isn't something I would do for fun on my day off, but it's better than driving in that same traffic and I feel better physically when I ride.

I thought about analyzing or rationalizing my bike commuting but figured it's beneficial for my health and overall it's enjoyable. I'd rather grumble about the stuff that annoys me while riding than go to a gym and workout or suffer the ill effects of not exercising, that's a priceless tradeoff to me.

cpl days ago boss-man suggested I take Friday off cuz it's slow. But today (Friday) was the day I was planning to bike to work, so I took yesterday (Thursday) off instead. Wifey had a procedure I wanted to accompany her to. But, in a sense ... "I opted to ride a bike through the suburbs in a bike lane next to heavy traffic for fun on my day off"

I drive 30+ miles, bike 7 - 8 (depending on route).

It takes about 15 minutes more to bike the last few miles than drive, including the time to swap. My total commute and my schedule gets me home too late to consider riding after work, plus the reduced wear and tear on my car (and me!) is worth it.

There's a website dedicated to the concept in the greater boston area, parkandpedal.org. Not updated very often, alas.

Ahem!

It's funny how you and I live in the same city, and yet seem to have very different experiences (and I mean that in a positive and friendly way, not confrontational at all). That said, you live in the City, and I live in Queens, so it's actually like apples and oranges. I have a car, park it on the street, and only drive it on weekends. But I totally agree that driving here is hellish.

My wife owns a car and parks it on the street. I have occasionally taken responsibility for keeping the car in a legal spot, and it's quite tricky.

Some people park their cars as far away as practical just to do some walking. In this case, it's a way of getting cycling into part of their day or else there would be no other opportunity to do so.

I do like throwing the bike on the car & then after work, driving to a favorite trail, part way home, to ride. then, when done, drive the rest of the way home. so many ways to ride a bike

In this episode of the War On Cars podcast, they talk to a woman who owns a 1987 Cadillac DeVille in Greenwich Village, just because. She basically never drives it anywhere, but actually enjoys that the ritual of moving the car weekly because of parking/street cleaning/etc, she is forced to take an hour to just sit in the comfortable car, and read a book, or draw, or just fart around on her phone.

With real estate prices as exorbitant as they are in Manhattan, it's like her mobile living room. Free curbside parking is the cheapest (most subsidized) real estate you can get in New York.

They don't clean the streets in my neighborhood, so there are some spots with no restrictions at all. You could, conceivably, leave you car there indefinitely, so long as it is legal. I have a neighbor that is retired and has had his car parked in the same spot since 2014 (when I moved into the building, so it was probably there well before that).

I have no problem with some idle, old-school New Yorkers just doing their thing. The problem is the idle, super-wealthy transplants that come to the city from every corner of the country and the world to just be rich and contribute absolutely nothing. They are literally a waste of space.