Category Archives: Teaching You to Bike Every Day

Teaching You to Bike Every Day

The Golden Rule: My Bicycle Commute Shall Inconvenience No One

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My bicycle commute shall inconvenience no one.  

This is a fundamental principle that all Business Casual Bikers should hold close to their incredibly healthy hearts.  Remember that you as an everyday bicycle commuter are rolling in the benefits of your bicycle nirvana.  You are getting valuable fresh air to breath every morning and afternoon; you are getting obligatory, stress reducing exercise everyday; you are never waiting in seemingly endless bumper to bumper traffic jams; you are not blowing any smog out of your tailpipe; you are not needlessly spending your hard-earned money on fuel and car maintenance.  I could go on forever (and I plan to on this blog).  Because you are reaping all of these benefits every day, you are in a perfect position to tolerate a small amount of inconvenience.  Thus, I strongly recommend that you do not pass any inconvenience on to anybody else.

The possibilities of the inconvenience factor may creep in when, for example, something unexpected happens.  Let us say you have a flat tire and you are 10 miles into you 14 mile jaunt home from the office.  Your options include:

 

OPTION 1. Walk

OPTION 2. Take the bus (if you live in a city with this option)

OPTION 3. Call your significant other, family member, co-worker, etc. to pick you up

 

Note: There will be a future in-depth post on this blog to describe how to NEVER-EVER get a flat tire but I felt like releasing this post is a prerequisite for basically everything else.

Anyway, to abide by the Golden rule, OPTION 3 (call for a ride) is not generally an acceptable way to handle this situation.

OPTION 2, Take the bus: Remember, that as a BCB you have much more patience from all of your mostly stress free commutes and your laid back nature builds up over time so a minor, infrequent inconvenience can be handled with a shrug of the shoulders.  I recommend that all BCB’s have at least a vague idea of which buses go where and approximately how often.  If you happen to carry a cellular telephone with data features, you can use Google Maps and choose the public transit option that will give you the most efficient transit route home.

OPTION 1, walk: If you live in a city without a bus anywhere near you or if you are me, you would just walk home.  A four mile walk is a light stroll that gives you a form of exercise that you might not otherwise undertake.  But more importantly, you get the opportunity to observe the route that you normally ride from a different perspective. This can be a surprisingly valuable experience if you take the same route every day.  You might find a shorter way than what you normally take.  If time permits, just walk.

OPTION 3:  The caveat to OPTION 1 is of course if you violate the Golden Rule (My bicycle commute shall inconvenience no one) taking too long to get home.  Let’s say that your spouse has made dinner or is expecting you to make dinner.  If I know this is the case I might allow for someone to pick me up.  On one such instance, I actually hailed a cab (which was really lucky for the area I was in) and made it home approximately on schedule.

The Golden Rule should have an influence on basically all actions one takes while bicycle commuting so feel free to apply the rule broadly.  Consider your interactions with cars: Some bicycle riders assume that they are entitled to as much of the road as a car would take.  I DO NOT like this attitude and I hope that as the calm, cool, collective BCB that you are, you will agree with me that we can ride as far to the edge of the road as possible and even consider pulling over to allow cars to go by if the road is too narrow for the car to safely pass.  There is no reason to further stress out the already stressed-out folks behind the steering wheel stalking your back side.

I don’t think that all bikes need to stop at all STOP signs all the time.  This is more of a Silver Rule kind of issue (I hate to keep saying this but stay tuned), but the Golden Rule of course applies in all areas of the BCB life so if a car-driver really thinks its his or her turn to go, give them the Business Casual Bikers go-ahead wave.

As one of the inaugural posts of the Business Casual Biker website, I hope that this article sets the tone for the rest of the website.  Thank you very much for choosing to read what I write and feel free to leave any comments below.  I am particularly interested in other ways others have applied the Golden Rule in their commute.

 

Biking is Badass (Motivation), Teaching You to Bike Every Day

Just Another Day in Bicycle Commuting Paradise

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My initial plan for this blog was to start simple and build up the basic principles for how and why business casual biking (BCBiking) is the most rational way to get to work for many (if not most) people.  However, working out the details of how to operate a blog through WordPress and a crappy internet connection over the weekend prevented me from laying the groundwork.

Then, nature stepped in and delivered a little snow to the east side of the Rocky Mountains, turning my home-city and the surrounding area into a winter wonderland. Thus, I will dedicate my first blog post to celebrating this somewhat uncommon occasion.

With the small amount of snow came the hyperbole of the local news stations, who had spread out their teams all over the metro area starting at 5 o’ clock this morning with hopes of catching the first snow flakes touching the ground.  The banter was filled with dire warnings of getting stuck in the potential drifts on the way to work and the infinitely more likely traffic jams.  My favorite accompanying comment was the ominous threat that it only takes 30 minutes for frostbite to set in.

The daily news cycle always struggles to find news/stories that people actually care about and since almost everybody has to go out in the snow to get to work or school, the weather is a popular topic. Even loose, distant predictions of snow will lead to rerunning pre-recorded segments about the importance of snow tires or 4-wheel-drives or of keeping an emergency kit in your car.

All of this excitement and talks of preparedness seems to trump the true beauty that accompanies a nice dusting of snow.

The BCBiking perspective is much more positive.  It is true that I needed to be prepared with the proper clothing (stay tuned for more details on this) and potentially some slight modifications to the bicycling unit, but in many ways a day like today is just another day for me to enjoy my time outside. The bonuses of a day like today are the natural beauty of snow falling on the trees with the bunnies and squirrels frolicking about, getting the trails and parks all to myself, and the few extra calories required to burn pushing through the small snow drifts.

As I rode through the neighborhood near our home, there were dozens of pickup trucks prestarted and parked out front of peoples’ homes. Just to defrost the windows, the internal combustion engines get the opportunity to puff nice plumes of smog into the crisp winter air. I took the time to observe the people shivering as they swept the half inch of snow off the hood before hopping into the toasty cabin. I waved to the gawkers who act as if my way of getting to work is somehow inferior their own.  I wait at the stoplights alongside the tank sized SUV’s.  As they spin their wheels on the ice I calmly engage my gluteal muscles with a smug smile on my face.

I know that since this is my first real post, basically no one will be reading this but I welcome anyone who accidentally stopped by to offer some comments about riding in snow or whatever you feel like talking about.  If you are currently worried about the danger of riding a bike in these conditions, I welcome you to come back over the next few weeks as I anticipate this to be a common topic as the winter progresses onward.