Biking to work

BoarderDave

I think that reply may have meant it like, we always think the weather is this good everywhere outside of here.. hehe. Only thing stopping us now and then is rain.. whereas other areas deal with snow and such.

mikesbytes

Paid to ride to work. WOW what a great idea.

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kdelong

I have no metro in this area. In fact, there is no public transportation in between Cincinnati and Dayton. Fortunately I only live three miles from work so biking, when the weather is cooperating, is definitely in my future. The only down sides to this is that the road that I live on is extremely busy in the morning and there is a major highway with no cross walks and very fast traffic lights that I would have to cross.

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Eden

They are really great to those of us with alternative commutes - I forgot to mention even though I'm part time, they still handed me a super duper, get you anywhere in the 3 surrounding counties, yearly bus pass for free too!

kdelong

I spent a week in Bellingham in January of 2007. It was beautiful and the weather was great until it snowed. Sort of shut everthing down since they had no snow removal equipment. From what I was told, is snows very infrequently in that part of Washington State. They did have a great inexpensive mass transit system. I wish we had the same around here.

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Eden

I'm in Seattle, a bit south of Bellingham, but yeah we've got it pretty good up here. It snows once or twice a year and those of us from out of state go out and entertain ourselves with how hopeless the natives are in it - they don't even really know how to walk in snow or ice.... There are a few sand trucks and the like, but usually its better just to wait a few hours until it melts....
Transit is pretty good. Many of the buses are frequent enough to be useful and a good number of employers are like mine, and put a good amount of thought into their commuter programs. As long as you dress for cold and rain its easy to bike commute year round here.

stlblues

My sister lived in Tacoma and used to laugh her butt off at the natives there. One night it snowed two inches and it paralized the city. She didn't think anything of it and drove to work in her 2 wheel drive toyota truck. She got there and the previous shift had spent the night at the hospital because they "couldn't" get home. They couldn't believe she made it in to work, she was asking what the hell was wrong with you people, it's not bad at all out there. We get a fair amount of snow and ice, especially ice, in MO and we don't think much of it. I was running around in the 16" snowfall we had with no problem, not on the bike of course. We've driven 130 miles to my sons hockey game in an ice storm more than once. All those SUVs and tons of Subaru Outbacks up there in WA and no one can get around.....insane.

mikesbytes

The fitness will build pretty quickly, you could do something like;
Week 1 - ride to work once
Week 2 - ride to work twice
Week 3 - 6 ride to work 3 times each week
Week 6 - 10 ride to work 4 times each week. This means you will be riding back to back days.
Week 11 onwards ride to work every day.

Initially you just ride yourself in, taking your stuff to/from work on non riding days and as the weeks go by you carry more and more stuff, so by the time you get to 5 days a week you are carrying all of your stuff.

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MarkInNC

I start work at 6am and have an 18 mile commute. I am trying to get into the habit of riding the bike twice a week. It takes me an hour and a half each way so it makes for a long day.

Getting clothing, shower stuff, and where all the stuff is was more difficult to get sorted out than actually doing the rides. Riding in the dark mornings turned out to be less of an issue than I thought.

I normally do not ride if I wake up to less than fourty degrees. The weather is warming up now so more opportunities.

Mark

TheDarkLord

Is there a particular way to walk in snow or ice? In my experience, walking on ice is almost futile unless you have shoes with cleats.