The CEO and CFO are real dicks about my riding style. They always mention how "cute" my spandex are....jokingly...but hey it came to their mind. Anyways they are extremely unhealthy. I told them to check out my bank account and talk with my doctor about how cute I am.

QUOTE=Steely Dan;14466241]i ride to work everyday because it's good for my soul.

Best Answer Yet

1. Lose weight.

2. I make a lot of money but have failed to save one dime.
Commuting more frequently and eventually relinquishing my car payments will save me a considerable amount of money considering I have clearly neither the inclination or the common sense to invest and/or save.

I commute twice a week on average. I'm a pretty big guy, so most are impressed, especially when i tell them I live over 10 miles away.

I've been doing it pretty consistently for about a year, so most people don't even pay much attention anymore, anyways.

I am full agree with you.

1. My truck broke last September. I was still paying child support a the time (it's done now, thank goodness) and the repair was an expensive one. I started riding Houston Metro. An average day was two hours bus stop to bus stop, and that didn't take into consideration the time spent walking to the bus stop. Add another twenty minutes each way. A bad day was three hours stop to stop. I tried riding my bike to the bus stop and then putting it onto the bike rack on the front of the bus, but far too often the bus I needed would show up w/ two already in the rack, which meant another half hour wait to catch the next bus.

2. I went to the doctor, stepped onto the scale and found I had broken the 300 lb barrier. I moped about that for a couple more months.

3. I started hearing people who were about my age (47) complaining about the pills they were taking for high blood pressure, cardiac disease, high cholesterol levels and diabetes. According to my doctor my blood work numbers were good, but it was a bit spooky to hear that my brother (two years younger than me) had started taking Lipitor, or that my brother-in-law (three years older than me) had a defibrillator implanted in his chest.

4. One day I was at the bus stop after work and the bus was 45 minutes late. I thought "This is ridiculous. I could ride a bicycle home faster than I could make it taking the bus, and I'd probably lose weight. I bet it would help stave off all those health issues that I keep hearing about from others as well...."

So I started riding to work.

Well, actually, I started riding 2/3 of the way to work; to a convenient bus stop about 2/3 of the way there. I couldn't manage the whole commute to start. Now, three months later, I'm commuting the entire way (20 miles each way) daily. I feel great. At last count - about three weeks ago - I had lost twenty pounds. My heart rate is down and so is my blood pressure. When I first started riding the entire distance it took 1 hr, 50 min to do the ride, and I was just hosed out from the trip. Working was difficult, but I stuck with it. Now my average trip is around 1 hr, 30 min, and today I did it in 1 hr 26 min. My goal is to get to the point where I can do the ride in something close to one hour. I know that's going to take a while, but I figure it only took me three months to knock twenty minutes off my average time. I have much more weight to lose, and I have gotten faster as I've lost the weight. I believe ~ one hour is doable. If I can get to an hour each way I'll match what my average drive time used to be.

Houston traffic is maddening. I miss all of it when I ride since I'm moving through residential neighborhoods most of the way rather than down congested highways.

It's just a much better way to move my fat rear end from point A to point B.

I have two kids who think that it's the coolest thing in the world that their dad rides a bike to work; if they are playing in the yard when I get home it's like having my own personal TdF finish line. Plus I have a wife who can't keep her hands off me.

So to answer your question, it is working out great! :D

Sounds like it is working out well!

I don't have a TdF finish line reception, but I do have a wife that greets me w/ an enormous tub o' ice water and a kiss when I get home - no matter how sweaty I am.

So, it's working pretty well for me too. ;)

Cutest thing ever. I am usually home before they get home but I may ride a little slower today just to get my due applause.

Well done on cycling to get fitter and to work faster, hope you do the hour commute pretty soon.


Here is another inspiring Cycle Commuter's story:


You'll need to scroll down to the bottom of the page to watch the video, its certainly worth it:)


http://www.realcycles.com/

I was trying to gain a job where a commute would take me through a Water Park Sports Centre and over a river and would be about 25 mins in total, a very relaxed and pretty stroll in really or longer if I went the whole way round.

No luck tho, oh well lol.

Great reasons. Thank you for taking the time to write it out. Inspiring.

I ride everywhere because I don't own a car. I also enjoy riding my bike a lot. I love the money I save , the exercise, I've just purchased a new rack and panniers to help with going to get food and is super fun more fun then riding my bike to work.
But also I ride because I don't make enough money to be able to buy a car. Which now that I've been biking for almost 5 years year round I don't think ill buy a car. Ever. Cars are just not what I'm into.

I started bike commuting when I was a teenager in the '90s... Although I had never heard of that term at the time... So this will be a bit of a long story. :)

I grew up in the country, I had my drivers license but generally all three vehicles where in use most days... My mother, father and older brother where all working full time in the summer and I did odd jobs in various nearby towns to make some spending cash and it beat sitting at home alone. Plus, the car I spent two summers fixing up so I could drive it, my brother drove into the ground before I got the chance.
It wasn't feasible to get a drive into town most days and odd jobs don't pay for gas, insurance and car payments, and I had no intent on flipping burgers full-time just to afford my own car. It seemed self-defeating.

I found some old books on bicycle maintenance, raided my dad's tools and learned to do my own wrenching on my POS department store MTB every spring and would ride for an hour or two to get to the next towns to visit my friends, or paint a fence, or clean windows in a new housing development, or run sound boards for fringe festivals, or play guitar in my band, or whatever I needed to do.

To be honest, it never even occurred to me that what I was doing was unusual... It was just a cheap and easy solution to a transportation issue I had. I found some old bicycles behind my dad's shed and ended up fixing up a 1968 Raleigh Grand Prix. Boy, did I ever make some mistakes on it, but it lasted a good decade of abuse because of/in spite of my work on it, and it became my main ride because I fell in love with drop bars and vintage steel bikes.

I moved into the city to be closer to college when I was 19, the MTB and Raleigh moved with me and didn't get ridden as much because the college was a 10 minute bus ride away. I met a girl, adjusted the MTB for her and we used to ride the local paths for fun, until the cheap cranks gave out on the MTB. (I knew nothing about good vs cheap bikes at the time but looking back, that Ridge Runner from Zellers was a beast for how many thousands of miles it lasted).

I moved around a lot for a while and generally ended up working on the other side of the city and continued being bus dependant for several years. I kept the Grand Prix and rode it for long distances in my spare time, despite a couple of non-bicycle related knee surgeries.

In my late 20's I was working 20km from where I lived, and the Grand Prix eventually suffered failure of pretty much every single part and I finally gave up on rebuilding it on what seemed to be a nearly weekly basis just to keep it rolling for short rides. I had mentioned something to this effect to a co-worker and she mentioned that her husband had an old steel road-bike neglected in the yard and offered to give it to me.
What she brought in to me was a 1980 Sekine and I managed to ride it from work to my girlfriend's house (not the same that broke the MTB, but I digress). This was after some basic tune up done outside the office, it managed to survive the trip and so did I, barely.
I strapped it on the front of a bus and took it home, rebuilt it from advice on these forums (bike linked in my signature actually, and currently being restored) and got this idea in my head that I could start riding it to work.

My bus ride commute at the time was an hour and a half, included transfers, delays, and general frustration. I had a co-worker for a while who sometimes gave me a drive, but she was more inconsistent than the buses. After fixing up the Sekine I did some test rides and found that I could, in fact, ride the 20km to work in less time than it took to bus there. Thus, I started bike commuting again. I could ride in, arrive with a clear mind and get there in less time than it took to bus there. Plus, my body was getting pretty fit in the process.
I did this for a year, then ended up moving closer to work and my girlfriend. I kept riding to work for another year, using buses or co-workers on really bad weather days as an alternate, even riding in the Winter after a while on department store bikes I found in the trash during the summer and hoarded for parts to abuse with salt and slush and let rust.

Eventually I got a better paying job which I was able to do from home, so that kind of killed the commuting aspect. I built up a 2001 Miele MTB as a grocery getting machine however and used it for a quite a while. I even moved once using a trailer I built and that bike, just for the fun/challenge of doing so.
I thought it was a good idea around this time to take the Sekine apart to remove a frozen stem that was always a slight bit off. That MTB has been no end of trouble somehow, and no matter what configuration it's been in, it's been the cause of the only bike related injuries I've ever gotten since the Grand Prix started to fall apart. I couldn't ride the Sekine because it was in pieces while I fixed and ultimately replaced the fork.

Two years ago my girlfriend (now wife) and I moved into the city. After watching me do it for many years, for the past two years she now rides the 20km to work on the same trails that I used to, most days of the week. When she rides home she sends me a text message and I head out on my bike around the same time, we meet in the middle of the commute and ride home together. The past two weeks I've been doing this on a Miyata 1000lt that I've been fixing up and customizing, and she's warmed up to the idea of doing a loaded tour so we're building up to that, hopefully next Summer.

It's kind of funny, it used to be her trying to keep up with my riding stamina after riding 40km a day... Now I do 20km a day and have to chase her better tuned legs. :)
I work for a small business that is growing and soon we will have an office - I hope to bike commute to this future office as well.

I guess my answer as to "Why I bike commute" is, essentially, it never occurred or appealed to me not to. I hold a small bit of pride (smugness?) knowing that I inspired my wife to bike commute, as well as my brother who also does so when he can. Despite spending several years as a teen learning automotive repair and intending to drive one, I've never driven anything with four wheels bigger than a go-cart, lawn tractor or a four-wheeler recreational vehicle. Although, I have driven a larger vehicle with tank treads and a digging scoop, because, that's just awesome fun if you can get the chance to do it! I'm 34 and don't feel that I've missed anything by not driving cars.

If you got this far... Thanks for reading. :)

Yeah - are you on the right forum?

Edit:

I did later see your great response, but I still like my comment about not being on the right forum!:thumb:

http://bikeforums.net/attachment.php...hmentid=263442
​case-closed

I live at beach, and work is only 4.5 miles away. Turns out in the summer it's much easier and less aggravating to ride to work than take the car. And when it's a beach day, commuting time is a wash.

Yes, the bus system in Ottawa leaves much to be desired. My bike commute takes the same length of time as my bus commute. That's my primary reason for biking to work.

For me, there's 3 reasons.
1) It's fun
2) It's a lot better most of the time than cramming into the sardine can that is the Shanghai Metro at rush hour
3) It is good exercise

:)

$700 parking pass. (per year)

I will be living 2.5 miles from school. It's a no-brainer.

Why do I commute?

To get to work.

Haven't we been over this before?

I had to drive yesterday and as I was putting $10 into the machine, I was thinking that I need to pay my supersecret bike slush fund $200/month.

Hiya everyone. Why do i commute on a bike?
Back in March 2012 I went to see my doctor & get a check up. After my b.p. was taken & all the other rig a ma roll that they do to get you ready b 4 the doctor comes in. Doc told me that i was slightly overweight 225 lbs on a 5' 10" frame that should be carrying 175 lbs or there abouts. SLIGHTLY OVERWEIGHT? Made me feel like the Goodyear blimp plus the fact that i was 1.5 points away from being diabetic. DIABETIC?? O HELLLLLLL NOOOOOO!!!.yOU AIN'T GONNA STICK NO NEEDLES IN ME & MAKE ME FEEL LIKE A PIN CUSHION! :roflmao2:

Well,it was like a bombshell that hit me & that is when i made up my mind to lose weight.So i started looking at bikes at wal mart & on line & finally chose a Polaris Sportsman 21 speed comfort bike.Now i am 57 years old & haven't rode a bike since i was 15 so while it wasn't something i hadn't done b 4,it had been just a few moons & several suns later when i did. After 6 weeks of riding as i had a doctors appointment to retest my b.p.,to my happiness i had lost 10 lbs. & lowered my blood pressure quite a bit.:thumb: yeaaaaaaaa, no needles to worry about.:) Not so fast the doc says.you still need to come off with some more flubber from that gut you have. well at that time i rode 3-5 miles every afternoon after i got off work.time for another check up 6 weeks later.I lost another8 lbs. & went from a size 38 waist back down to a size 34.I haven't seen size 34 in 5 years.:roflmao2:
Well i ride my bike back & forth to work 3 - 4 times a week now & have been for the past several months. It's a 20 mile round trip but now i have made an Ebike out of my bike for the commute. True, I don't peddle as much as i used to but i love riding the bike as it helps save gas & i still peddle around the block on the weekends.It's more fun just to hear the wind rushing past your ears & knowing your helping the ecology out as well plus your getting exercise & helping to maintain your health.

I started to commute because it's only a few miles and the stop and go through the city in the car increased gas and repair costs. I also need more exercise and because the I can use the Mid Town Greenway it's actually faster to ride than drive. The Greenway is prett much a bike highway that's about 5 miles long (I think) with very few stops for car traffic. I think there are only 2-3 stops from one end of the trail to the other. There's a nice bike shop right below where I work too that is right on the Greenway and they have showers, lockers and secure bike starage for a resonable fee as well.

While I was looking out my hotel room in Amsterdam, someone handed me a funny-tasting cigarette. Watching the bike traffic outside, appreciating the human scale of it all, I knew I would become a bike commuter. That was six years ago. Truth.

Awesome!