The Long Commute
I’ve been busier and more stressed than usual lately and it’s started catching up with me. The other day at work I found myself completely exhausted. I could not wait to go home…
…And pass out. It was all I could think about. The second the workday was done I hopped on my bike and raced across town toward my couch.
But once I sat down I had an unexpected change of heart.
My head was clear and my energy had returned. My couch was boring. Was I really going to just stay home? And sleep? I was bummed that my commute was only 4.1 miles. Some days that’s just too short. I wanted to bike more.
I remembered I had been invited to a party across town. Seven miles across town. It was one of those parties I had no intention of going to. Suddenly it was the most appealing party in the world. So delightfully far away. With that, I was off…
More energized and less stressed than any other commuter….
The Saturday morning ride to work is where I sweat out all of Friday night’s overindulgences.
Hominids evolved on the plains of East Africa as bipedal roamers, able to walk hundreds of miles in a season to follow the migrating animal herds on which they preyed. So really it’s not very surprising that half a million years later their descendants are still built for getting around on their own two legs, and find the present oyster-like existence enforced upon them by the motor car and the computer screen both physically and emotionally irksome.
So, Bikeyface, your sudden an unexpected urge to leap onto your bicycle and set off again after coming home from work was not in the least pathological. Quite the opposite in fact: your blood had been re-oxygenated after eight hours spent vegetating at your desk, your metabolism had switched back from “Standby Mode” to “Normal Running”, and so long as you fed in the kilojoules you would have been able to keep going until the dawn came up or the police arrested you for whatever is the US equivalent of conduct likely to cause a breach of the peace.
When I was at school in the 1960s we would often go on all-night bike rides to celebrate things like the end of exams. Pedalling along the roads of the Welsh border country at 2:00am under a full moon is something which few, if any, children these days will ever experience. Not the least of its charms was that at night you always seemed to be going much faster than you really were.
(Tip against being left temporarily blinded by oncoming car headlights: wear a hat or a helmet with a brim, and incline it down for a few moments to shield your eyes. Also works well against nocturnal insects. Low-flying bats aren’t a problem: far too agile to run into you).
Love this. I get tired a lot during the day, so when I first started bike commuting, I worried that having to bike home every day would be too draining. As you illustrate here, biking home has the opposite affect on me and I’m almost always more energized afterward.
My commute is 18 miles one way, and I make 2-6 trips per week. Only in the summer do I try to make longer rides. I can get 8 miles of dirt out of 20 on the mt bike going through 3 different parks.
When I was younger, I got so worn out on my 20-mile-per-day commute, that my spouse suggested that I should take a day or two off per week and drive. Gradually I got more used to the daily ride–through Boston’s Emerald Necklace and up the Charles River–that I did it more and more often. The last year I had a parking permit at work, I only used it twice, so I gave it up and have biked every day since. It’s easy to add errands, events, and social life to your ride when you don’t have to worry about traffic or parking!