{sqt} – biking!

I’m joining the SQT link-up today, hosted by Jen at Meditatio this week! She mentions in her takes that she’s been blogging for 20 years which I find completely amazing – head over to read the rest of her post as well as the other linkers 🙂

1. I’ve worked at the same place for close to 10 years now and I’ve commuted by bike off and on throughout that time – from two different homes, on three different bikes, and across widely varying work schedules. Currently I’m riding a $5 3-speed cruiser with pedal brakes that I bought from a retiree in a trailer park in Apache Junction and biking mostly at night.
2. Biking at night is very different than biking in the day. I actually wear a helmet now (with a headlight strapped around it and a built-in taillight), and a fluorescent pink vest with reflective stripes. I have pictures but they’re pretty awful 😛 Safety over fashion though! I’m very visible and I can tell that most drivers are giving me a wide berth, but a lot of people just aren’t expecting a biker or feel irritated by the presence of a biker and don’t drive as safely as they could.
3. I also put cost over fashion and instead of using something like real bike panniers to carry everything I need each day at work, I just have a plastic crate zip-tied to the rear rack of the bike. (I actually Googled how to do this just to make sure it would be stable and I found the most hilarious step-by-step guide. If you need a laugh, or want to attach a crate to your own bike, check it out!)

4. The hardest part about biking to work is making myself do it. Every day I think, “I’m tired, I don’t want to push myself that hard”, or I put off packing a change of clothes or procrastinate checking my tire pressure and lubricating my chain ($5 bikes haven’t had a lot of TLC in their lives and they can really benefit from it. I reduced my commute time by 10 minutes just by lubricating the gear chain, after one horrendous commute home where the bike was fighting me the whole way.). It’s just easier to take the car, since most days I don’t leave until after Paul gets home and his little commuter car is available and driving it doesn’t mean stranding him with the kids.
5. So why go to the effort? Because every time I get off my bike at the end of my commute, I feel less depressed, less anxious, and more motivated than I did when I got on it. (The therapist I saw after Aubade was born described it as mindfulness biking and it’s pretty accurate – I just sink into the present world around me, the warmth of the sun or the whir of the wheels or the light catching on the trees, and the whirl of anxiety fades.) Of course, in the long-term it’s also just a healthy practice since I don’t have another way to squeeze 25 minute intervals of hard exercise into my daily life, but those short-term benefits are what keep me getting on the bike each day.
6. Another benefit to biking is the sensory experience of commuting in the dark. I really, really, really loathe driving at night. Between the windshield and my glasses, all the head lights and tail lights and traffic lights and building lights fracture across my vision like broken shards, stars and lines and webs and points that feel like they’re stabbing me, and I have to stay on maximum capacity and focus the entire time just to deal with the lights and be safe and aware. When I bike, head lights are sometimes too bright (and police lights are still desperately painful) but I don’t feel like my whole field of vision is splintering apart.
7. The flip side, of course, is that a car with a loud engine and a driver who wants to rev that engine proudly is much, much louder without the walls of the car to muffle the sound; it makes me want to get off the bike and stim until I can feel calm again. I wear headphones and listen to music or podcasts when I bike during the day, but at night with the added risk of poor visibility I don’t want to dampen my other senses. So it can make things difficult – but still definitely worth it.

Do any of you have the option of biking to work? Have you tried it? I’d love to hear your stories and thoughts and experiences 🙂