Do not bike to work this week

This week is Na­tion­al Bike to Work week in the US. In hon­or of that, I would like to ask you to please con­sider not rid­ing your bike to work this week. The bike lanes are just too damn crowded lately. And it’s bad for you and the en­vir­on­ment. Yeah, that’s it - bad stuff.

For those of you in Europe and Asia, where cyc­ling is more of the cul­ture… well, I’d have to en­cour­age you to re­con­sider as well. You’re set­ting a bad ex­ample for us over here.

Be care­ful! There is a lot of pro­pa­ganda out there try­ing to con­vince you that it’s a good idea, or easy, or healthy.

Thanks to all of this zealot mar­ket­ing and ex­cess­ive left­ist green so­cial­ism diabol­ic­al non­sense, I real­ize that many of you might be con­sid­er­ing com­mut­ing in all week, or per­haps even for a day. And to those of you who are think­ing like this, I’d like to dredge up the pile of ex­cu- er, uh, sound reas­ons why, at this time last year, I also did not com­mute in by bike. I’m sure these will be very con­vin­cing.

  1. I’d rather sit in traffic. I mean ser­i­ously - I dig sit­ting at red lights listen­ing to tunes & tex­ting. I love the time spend id­ling at ran­dom spots in Cam­bridge and on Route 2. And the last thing I want to do is get that smug “I’m go­ing faster than you” look I see on cyc­lists faces in Cam­bridge all the time… very un­couth.
  1. It’s a pain to get all my junk to work on a bike. I mean, I take a LOT of crap to work. Laptops, clothes, tech, food, more tech, phones, this in­cred­ibly big and heavy thing called a “car”, and some ex­tra tech. Turns out that, while I can fit everything I need, in­clud­ing a change of clothes, in a small back­pack and a bike pouch, I can’t ac­tu­ally fit the whole pile of junk on my bike. Ad­mit­tedly, some folks keep ex­tra clothes, tow­els and stuff at their desks - I think this could help, but don’t ex­plore this op­tion. Those of us on the busy bike lanes will thank you.
  1. I will smell bad all day after sweat­ing my way in to work. It’s totally true. Es­pe­cially if I don’t take a shower in the base­ment at 250 Mass Ave or at Fit­corp. Plus there aren’t enough showers or lock­ers at work.
  1. My bike will get stolen. If you don’t lock it up in one of the se­cure bike lock areas we have, it’s en­tirely pos­sible someone will swipe it.
  1. It’s un­safe. Very true. Es­pe­cially if you ride without a hel­met or with head­phones on. Al­most as dan­ger­ous as driv­ing.
  1. I will get rained on. This is the same reas­on that I don’t go back­pack­ing. Raingear is use­less.
  1. It takes too long. I’ve tried this out and done the math. It takes me, on a good day, 50 minutes to drive to work, plus 5 minutes on either end to load/un­load stuff. So that’s an hour door-to-door. It takes me an hour and a half to bike to work, plus 30 minutes to prep stuff and shower. When I drive, I also shower on one end (be­lieve it or not!) which some­how seems to take longer (“no An­dre, I will not fix your lunch today”, “no Joelle, I don’t know where you put your fa­vor­ite doll”), so call that 30 minutes. And then on an ex­er­cise day, I’ll get an hour of work­ing out in - per­haps a run or a bike ride or some core work, and that re­quires a shower, so that’s about 30 minutes of over­head. So on a day when I com­mute to work and back, I get 50 miles of rid­ing in and a com­mute in 4 total hours. Where­as when I drive, if I don’t get stuck in rush hour, which of course nev­er hap­pens, I get a full com­mute and a less of a workout in 3 hours and 30 minutes. That 30 minutes is TOTALLY WORTH IT. Drive drive drive.
  1. I don’t know the route. Get­ting through Cam­bridge is in­deed a pain in the butt. (Here’s a route that Tom Evans showed me that gets me from Alewife to Tech Square on bike lanes the whole way. It’s really hard to do - wouldn’t re­com­mend it.) And for those of you in East Han­over and Emeryville - I have no idea. You’re outta luck. I’m sure there’s no way to get there.
  1. Bike clothes look dorky. ‘nuff said. And let’s be clear - it’s ab­so­lutely re­quired you wear those skin tight things that show all your pier­cings. (And if you ever get to the point where you think bike clothes kinda look cool, or you can re­cog­nize dif­fer­ent styles of cyc­lists by the clothes they wear - then you are WAY FAR GONE. It is all over for you at that point. Next thing you know you will be try­ing to go up steep hills or long rides or meas­ur­ing your power out­put. Loser.)
  1. It’s very un­healthy. Your av­er­age bike com­muter will lose 10lbs in the first year of com­mut­ing with no oth­er life style changes. You don’t want to risk that - you might fade away to noth­ing!
  1. I might get ad­dicted. You don’t want to risk that. Week­end rides, Pan Mass Chal­lenge, watch­ing and un­der­stand­ing the Tour de France, Betty Ford clin­ic. Bad stuff.

So that should do it. No way. Bad idea.

Once you’re com­fort­ably not rid­ing a bike, I would also sug­gest tak­ing up smoking. There are too many hu­mans on the plan­et, really.

All that said… if you do hap­pen to ride in­to work this week from any of the west­ern sub­urbs around Cam­bridge, gimme a holler. I’d be happy to link up on the Minute­man trail, route 2A, Trapelo Road, 117, or any­thing else run­ning mostly east/west. Rid­ing to­geth­er is a blast. I’d love to carve through the wind with oth­er bike com­muters. We can en­joy the great out­doors, ex­plore parts of town some people nev­er see, and dis­cuss our ne­far­i­ous plots to get every­one back in those met­al pol­lut­ing death-ma­chine things.

But don’t tell any­one we’ll have fun, be­cause the bike routes are get­ting way too busy.

-r’m