bike commuting

I try to commute to and from school on my bike as much as I can (the photo is my bike set up for camping - the bike's name is Cardenio). The idea of my son driving the truck a mile and a quarter to the high school and me riding my bike four miles to campus may seem a little backwards, but there’s a whole lot of high school cool at stake and it’s actually faster for me to go from home to the door of the classroom on the bike than to drive, park, and walk.

On top of the commute, the bike gives me mobility on the ever-growing A&M campus. I’ve tried different configurations, but the best way to haul books and gear is in a pannier hooked to a rack on the back. It’s a big heavy mountain bike, so I’m slower than the people on road bikes but the fat tires come in handy negotiating the centralamerica-esque streets on campus that are twenty years past needing to be re-paved.

Bike commuting makes you have to put a little thought into what you’re going to wear and you have to accept (especially this time of year) that you’re going to sweat some. The sweating problem is worse in the mornings when the humidity his high. Last summer I rode home from class one day when it was 107 degrees and I didn’t sweat. I did feel like I was being blasted by a hair drier, though.

I believe more people would ride to campus if bikes could be more secure. It hasn’t happened to me yet, but bikes get stolen by the hundreds on campus during the course of a semester. Apparently, people just pull up next to a bike rack, cut locks, and haul bikes away. The time of day doesn’t matter. The answer from the campus police is, “If somebody really wants your bike, they’re going to get it.” Forgive the pun, but this is a huge cop-out. When bike racks are installed in the middle of campus and people lock their bikes there during the school day for an hour and a half, they should have a pretty high expectation of security. Would they say the same thing if your car was stolen on campus? Your $500 bike doesn’t matter to us even if it’s your primary means of transpo. Now, it goes without saying that the decision makers on campus don’t ride bikes to school. In fact, they park in multi-level garages with video surveillance. Hmm.

Rant aside, I’ll still ride.