I was (and still am) a non-serious roady before I started commuting.

It was kind of a natural progression:
I like to ride my bike on roads,
I commute to work on roads,
I have to work even when I really want to ride,
hence Ride My Bike To Work!

So did you come to commuting from one of the other bike lifes?

And I'm talking primary here, even if you do a mix of riding and one of them takes 50.0001 percent of your time, pick that one.

I grew up in South Florida and was an avid mountain biker pre-kids. I did Quiet Waters Park almost every weekend and others in the area as well. I also road biked, but not as often.

Haven't done a whole lot of riding since we moved to CO (ironically, this is a MUCH better place to bike...), but what I have done has been on some of the awesome mountain bike trails here.

So I chose option "C."

I bought my first new bike in 15 years when I was in grad. school (specialized MTB). At that point, I thought it was silly to drive 3 miles one way to work, and 3 miles the other way to school. I rode for fun as well. That lead from the MTB to getting a road bike. Once I got married, I got a hybrid so we can go for a ride together (one of my wife and I's first dates was going to a bike shop to get her a new bike). Now, I commute or ride to run errands every chance I get. So answer "A" for me.

D

I was a utility biker, then started commuting and now sport ride as well.

I can't answer the question...I've been cycle commuting on and off since I was in the third grade, plus doing other types of cycling the whole time. Back then there was no commuting vesus other types of cycling. It was all just riding a bike.

I wanted to commute via bike. So I bought a bike and started community. Haven't been on a bike in years.

I voted #2 because there was a period of about eight years during which I had stopped the utility / touring / commuting riding that, otherwise, I'd done all my life. During that time, road cycling was my only cycling. That ended about seven years ago, and I'm not going back.

I started commuting in the second grade. Before that, I rode around the neighborhood.

Roading that evolved into commuting primarily due to the lack of extra time. Over the last few years I've been getting less and less time for leisure rides so I am now making up for that by commuting about 4.5 hours a week.

I can't really remember. A year or so after I got out of college I bought a road bike. This was about 20 years ago. I had borrowed a bike for a triathlon during my senior year in college but I had no specific plans for doing another one though it was probably in the back of my mind.

Once I had the bike, I commuted with it sporadically but I don't remember if that was part of the motivation in getting a bike or not. It wasn't until about 3 years ago that I started commuting regularly.

It could be that I just thought I should have a bike.

Anyway, by the time I was a regular commuter, I rarely used the road bike anymore having bought a MTB a few years prior. Last year I switched back to the road bike and now prefer them.

For most of this time I wasn't really into bikes or cycling that much. It was just a way to get from point A to point B or a fun way to spend an afternoon once in awhile. It's turned into more of a hobby as of late.

I rode a huffy when I was little. I got back into bicycles and started commuting when my car needed a transmission.

I was just a recreational street rider before I started commuting - occasional transportation/utility but mostly just recreation stuff.

I moved to a house 3.0 miles from work. Bought a bike.

I was commuting to soccer practice in 5th grade.

That was before MTBs existed, and road bikes were all too big for me anyway.

I was training for a triathlon when I figured out that if I had my bike with me at the end of the workday, it would be a lot harder to blow off a training ride.

After virtually no riding between the age of 18 and my 48th birthday last September. Arond that time, I started riding an old $40 MTB I bought on Craig's List. 1,000 miles later, I picked up an old road bike that had been thrown in a dumpster and started riding that. A few hundred miles after that, I was riding every day and decided to purchase a new road bike. Thought it stupid to rush home from work to go riding so I converted the old roadie into a commuter in early April and started riding to work.

I was cycling for exercise and enjoyment. With young kids I was having trouble finding time too ride, so I figured why not ride to work. Get two birds with one stone.

i rode bikes for fun as a kid. in my 3rd year of undergrad, i got a comfort bike to cruise around campus during good weather (midwest winter - no bueno for a comfort bike.) about 5 years later i had a bf who was big into mountain biking, so i started mountain biking, too. that's when the biking thing really took off for me, i think. i got a used roady (good ol' norma, the steel-framed 1980s-style miyata) for my 1 mile commute and a really nice hardtail mountain bike. when i moved out to california last year, i made the decision to make commuting and errand-running more of a part of my life and i bought a dedicated commuter bike.

i now don't have as much time for mountain biking; my fiance is an occasional road-biker, so we may ride road on occasion someday, but the majority of my biking comes from my 16 mile round trip commute and my around-town riding for errands/socializing.

+1

I didn't own and use a car regularly until I was 22.

I still don't understand the big deal about using a bicycle for everything. Weird. But watching the trolls and saints battle it out is fun. And I learn about things.

I bought my Jamis Durango in 94 with some lottery winnings. I rode it around the MUP a couple times a month during the summer. Would probably go a year or two without touching it though.

As my belly got bigger I became more dismayed about it. Around 99 or 00 I started riding almost every day during the spring, summer, fall. I gradually worked my way up to 20-30 mile rides, still wearing cotton shorts and sneakers.

In 2003 I really started riding in earnest. Not only my Durango but I got the old Peugeot down from the barn and started riding the roads. What fun. I bought a track bike that fall and my brother gave me his Lemond Alpe

In 2004 I decided to try riding to work. I'd thought about it before but thought it would be to big a challenge. My longer distances in 2003 had convinced me otherwise, so I did a practice run one weekend and followed up the next Monday.

First on the Durango, the shortest route possible. Then I started taking alternative routes, longer ones, turning 20 miles into 30 and 40. Next I tried it on the Peugeot, which was now a single speed. Then the track bike.

I bought another bike, a SR Litage MTB which I converted into a mini-touring bike. That fall I got a Surly 1x1 frame and outfitted it as a slow moving fixed gear bike to slog through the winter snow.

During the winter of 04-05 I built up my fixed Surly Cross-Check. I now had seven bikes. I would up converting my dads old Raleigh into a fixed gear so there were eight. The spring of 05 saw the addition of the Bridgestone XO3. All of them were pressed into commuting service, save the Lemond.

The last addition came in the winter of 05-06, with the Commuter/Touring Cross-Check. The dream machine. And then several months later I moved from a plant engineering role to a traveling engineer.

But I still ride, in fact I take longer more challenging rides on weekends.

I just rode ... a lot ... and one day I rode to work.


I've been commuting by bicycle on and off since 1990.

Like others I road to school as soon as I could ride a bike.
Been going ever since.
I think you need to change the poll to include this aspect.