this happened today... i had to take a bus in and and out of CBD. my pre-pay bus card scanned and said "pay driver", so i did. it's been a while since i used the card, so i figured it was just out of credit. while i was in the city i put $20 on the card, got on a bus to get home, and again it scanned and said "pay driver". wtf??? what i found out later in the day... if you don't use the card for a year or so, it gets "red listed" and they have to manually re-enable it.

You ride 1600 miles a month? That's really impressive.

....when management offers you a company car and you politely say "no, thank you" and ask for a raise instead.

I had this wonderful dream once and woke up just when the boss was about to give me the raise!

holy crap! you ride 70 miles every single workday? 12 months a year? in chicago?

that is indeed extremely hardcore. how do you find the time?

i ride 30 miles a day, 12 months a year, in chicago, and i thought i was hardcore, but not anymore.

One the one-hour, car, road trip leaves you saddle sore. That's something that doesn't happen on your bike.

+1 to this, even in 107 temps.

When your work calendar looks so odd because all your offsite meetings are on one day - the day you plan to drive instead of ride.

This is OT, but you need to tell us about this. It sounds like an interesting concept.... maybe not so much fun for the wrenchers.

OTOH, may it is on topic."You know you're hardcore if someone mentions a Repairapalooza and you have a vague idea what they are talking about."

...when duct tape is also used as a band-aid.

You ride only for commuting (can walk to other needed locations), at a medical clinic (for unrelated check-up) get put into one of those "gowns", the doc walks in, takes one look at your legs hanging out, and says, "Oh, you ride a bicycle, don't you?"

Reid

you are hardcore. just because someone else is insanely hardcore doesn't make you any less hardcore.

To paraphrase the weather related posts;

You know you're hardcore when you realize that a forecast of rain is not enough to make you not ride. At least, say, 5 out of 6 times you'll be disappointed because the rain went somewhere else or it didn't show up when you would have been riding.

And, as a matter of fact, I wore out a front set of chainrings once. Just little tiny 'nipples' was all that was left. But I didn't save them because it didn't occur to me that that was so extraordinary.

Just now getting back to this thread. My commute is just about always multimodal since I sold my car. Leave house and ride 10 miles, train ride, ride 5 more miles on another bike to office. Repeat in reverse on way home.

I sometimes ride the whole way from my house to my office. That ends up being around a 75 mile roundtrip with the route I take. That takes me a good couple hours each way. Plus my route takes me through Maywood when I ride the whole way, which I prefer to do in the wee hours of the morning on the way in and in the daylight of afternoon on the way home.

There is no way around that it takes longer to multimodal commute than drive, except maybe during some crazy snowstorms slamming the traffic on the tollways. I'm just a lot happier riding than driving everyday.

When you can't close both hands around your thighs because the muscles are too big.

When you haven't ridden the Metro in weeks and feel great about it. :)

Have you ever been able to do that? Never thought about it before, but can most people do that? I don't think I ever have been able to.

When you've had a car for 7 years and driven it 50 miles; 40 of those miles being the drive home from where you bought it.