Steve Stoller Reflects on his first Bike to Work Day.
It all started innocently. I got a mass email from someone unknown, located somewhere in downtown Toronto, in the vast organization known as Ontario Public Service.
It was advertising “Bike To Work” week. They suggested that employees should try to ride their bicycles to work, at least one day, on of a specific week in the month of June. If you registered, and rode a bike to work that week, you would get a T shirt. “Whoo hoo”, free swag, I was in.
I was familiar with the concept, as I had previously attended City of Toronto’s “Bike To Work Day” festivities in Nathan Phillips Square.
To tell you the truth, it wasn’t really a slam dunk that I would do it. Although I really do like free swag, the nagging reality was that, although I had been enjoying riding bikes for most of my life, and the distance to work was easily manageable (fifteen kilometres from my house in Brampton to my workplace in Rexdale), I confess I was stymied by the same excuses that a lot of people give for not riding their bikes to work. Thoughts like; how am I going to carry my clothes? Do I have to take a shower when I get to work? Where am I going to park my bike? What if I get a flat? How much extra time should I leave? Is my lock good enough if I leave my bike outside? What if it rains?
The number one thing about bicycle commuting to work is thinking about the logistics. Bike to Work Week was held in June, which meant these were the days of longest sunlight hours. This was important because, at that point, I did not do a lot of riding at night, so I didn’t have a proper lighting system for my bike. Next, I had to consider how to carry what I would need for a twelve hour work day. Luckily, I had an assigned full size locker, in a change room with a shower area. I would leave bulky items in my locker and just carry the clothing I needed folded into a back pack. At the time, I did not consider bringing my bike into the building, so I was forced to carry a lock, to secure it outside.
Since I don’t normally eat lunch, I did not have to worry about carrying food. I had decided on riding my mountain bike, since I figured I rarely got a flat tire with this bike.
The selected week looked like good weather. Since I worked a compressed work week schedule, I only had a few days to choose for my bike to work attempt.
It’s not like I had never done it before. But my previous rides to work centred around picking something up or meeting with people. This would be a full twelve-hour work day.
The weather turned out to be fine all week. I jammed all the things I thought I needed into my knapsack and headed off in the early morning. The ride went as planned and I arrived with plenty of time to spare. I locked my bike in an inconspicuous alcove at the front of the building. When getting ready in the change room, I realized after riding through the cool air in the early dawn of morning, I did not feel sweaty at all, except for that spot on my back, where the knapsack rested. Once I had towelled off my back and put on my work clothes, I was ready to go.
I rode to my shifts that all week and marvelled how easy it seemed. It was then I decided to “walk the walk and talk the talk”. Meaning that if I considered myself a cyclist, which I did, then this is what cyclists did, they rode to work. It seemed a no-brainer, once I calculated the time difference. Believe it or not, because of traffic congestion around Malton and the usual prevailing winds, it was only taking me ten to fifteen minutes longer to ride in the morning. Plus, it was my cardio exercise for the day. There was no reason to stop. Once I got going with this commitment, I become an amateur weather forecaster. I would look at long range forecasts for the week, as well as checking Environment Canada website several times per day. Early on, I was even using their weather phone line. My decision to drive the car instead of taking the bike was based on the likelihood of precipitation in the morning. I never wanted to arrive at work a sodden mess. Riding home was a different story. Sometimes I revelled in a nice ride home in a warm summer rain, knowing there would be plenty of time that evening to clean my bike up, lubricate the chain, and get into dry clothes.
I saw no need to stop riding to work. I was getting hooked. There was always something to fine tune or adapt, to make things more efficient and lighten the load. I questioned, why am I carrying a lock and leaving my bike outside, in the elements? I found a convenient place, which happened to be a back hallway, off the inner lobby of the building. Problem solved.
The next challenge came when the days became shorter, so I had to deal with riding in the dark. I will admit although I had been riding for many years, I rarely road in the dark. Seeing how some motorists drove in the daytime, made me think riding at night would be a trip to an early grave. Fortunately, this period coincided with an increase in bicycle lighting technology and a decrease in price. You could get lights with a higher lumen count, that were USB rechargeable. Since my ride was through streets with streetlights, lighting was all about my visibility. Eventually I ended up running two good quality lights on the front and two on the back; all of them set on strobe, to capture more attention.
I continued to ride my Kona Caldera mountain bike to work, even though it wasn’t the most efficient ride. Since it was only 15 kilometres, I did not really care about efficiency. Those 2.4 inch wide knobby tires came in handy one winter night, when I took a chance on the weather forecast. One of my colleagues was leaving for another job, so a get together was organized at a restaurant/bar on the airport strip after work. The forecast was a medium chance of snow, later in the evening. I thought I would chance it. The snow came early and thickly. Luckily, even though Airport Road had yet to be plowed, magically, the sidewalk plow had just passed. With no pedestrians on the sidewalk at that time, I had a decent journey, all the way up Airport Road. Don’t get me wrong. It was a slog, and I was tired by the time I got home. But with little wind, there was something magical about that ride.
During the Toronto Bicycle Fall Blowout Sale, I decided to purchase a single speed road bike. My thinking was that it would be more efficient for commuting. There would be less to go wrong, and it would be easier to clean up after a messy ride. It was a Specialized Langster, with an aluminum frame and a carbon fork. It had a flip/flop rear hub, meaning I could freewheel, or flip the wheel over and ride it as a ‘fixie’. The Specialized company was riding a trend, by copying what the urban messengers were putting together to ride for their jobs. I liked the polished aluminum, high profile Alex rims. These would come in handy, later on. And also the price was right, $499.
I remember another summer night in 2013. The morning forecast was good, so of course I rode my bike. There was a chance of rain starting in the late afternoon, but what’s a little rain on a warm summer evening? What came was the mother of all rainstorms. I was still intending to ride home, but when I came out the front door of the building, it was pouring, and my wife was sitting there in the car. She explained how wild things were getting and I grudgingly put my bike in the car. As we made a left turn out of the parking lot onto my usual route home, the road was closed. About 500 metres up the road, a sink hole had opened up, swallowing a car. We turned around and went east. I racked my brain to come up with a route that did not involve underpasses, as they were all flooding. The storm drainage system could not take the volume of water. With a lot of zigging and zagging, we made it to Brampton, but in my own neighbourhood, creek channels were overflowing the roads they normally went under. Luckily, we only had to drive through one flooded section of road. The car never stalled. This was a lesson in bicycle commuting – sometimes the weather forecast is wrong!
I settled into a routine of commuting. One of the things that I did not anticipate, was how consistent riding was, in terms of time. Barring any unforeseen traffic obstructions, I would arrive at work within the same five-minute window every time. With my built-in time buffer for mechanical problems, I was never late. The direction of travel was southeast and the majority of the time, if there was a wind, it would be at my back. Going home was usually a different story. Many times I would be riding into a head wind, but it didn’t matter since there was no time constraint. I learned to ride at a consistent high pace, mostly because I wanted to generate more body heat in the colder weather. Top speed was limited by my single speed gearing. I had already learned the previous winter, riding the mountain bike to work, that there were not a lot of days when the road was unrideable. Since I was now running 700 by 23 mm tires at 120 psi, this was important. In the greater Toronto area, I found there is an obsession with getting the roads back down to the asphalt by using plows and salt. Usually a sunny day, after a snowy day, brought the roads back to perfect riding condition.
A major change occurred several years into my riding to work routine. My workplace shifted. Although it would still be in Etobicoke, it would now be in Mimico. This roughly doubled the commute distance to 30 kilometres. This led to some hard thinking about my ability to ride to work. Looking for a solution, I remembered meeting a woman who was building her business importing electrically assisted bicycles. It was early in the growth of this industry, and I didn’t know a lot about them, even after riding one of her early production models, so I rode my bike down to her store. She wasn’t there, but I ended up speaking to one of the mechanics for over an hour. I realized the electric assisted bicycle would do the job, but at that point, they were still quite expensive.
I decided that before I made the commitment to buy an electric assisted bicycle, I would try the commute with the Specialized Langster. When I was on the early shift, I was on the road by 4:30 a.m. Although I had to rearrange my sleep patterns, there was the benefit of not a lot of vehicles being on the road at this time, and mostly the weather was calm. If there was a wind, it would usually be a tail wind from the north. I frequented work safety stores to find the best high visibility clothing, that was still comfortable for cycling. At one point on a dark evening ride, while we were stopped at a light, a motorist thanked me for being so highly visible.
Another ‘aha’ moment was changing from a knapsack to panniers for carrying what I needed. I had a rear rack fitted to my bike at the Cyclepath store and bought a duel set of Louis Garneau panniers. I would ride with both, balancing the weight of the load between them. When I arrived at work, I no longer had a wet and clammy back.
One thing I noticed going to work at the same time everyday was that I saw the same cars, at the same places. There is one occasion when this stood out in my mind. I had changed to a shorter, yet heavier traffic route which took me down Dixie Road. One dark morning, I was coming down the south slope of the 401 over pass, with some speed. I had the green light on Dixie, as I approached the eastbound #401 exit ramp. There were several vehicles stopped at the red light in the left-hand turn lane. As usual, I was scanning for threat assessment. Through the trailer wheels of the semi truck, waiting to make the left-hand turn, I saw a car in the dedicated right hand turn lane, to go south on Dixie. I surmised from the speed of this car that he was not going to stop at the hash mark, putting us on a collision course. I did a shoulder check and adjusted my position to the outside of the curb lane. Sure enough, I was correct. The car rolled the corner at full speed and made the turn. I was still in a safe spot until I realized the car was coming immediately over to the middle lane, which I was occupying. I moved over to the third lane, and for a split second made eye contact with the driver, who was right beside me. He seemed shaken, when he saw a cyclist in with strobing lights in an orange reflective safety shirt, right beside him, and he backed off the accelerator immediately.
There was a feeling of ‘déjà vu’ when our paths met the very next morning. Luckily, this time I was about one second behind. That same car rolled the red light to make right turn to Dixie Road south. It not only rolled the stop, but, without signalling, faded across three lanes to get into the left turn lane at Mathieson Road. So much for our encounter the day before. His poor driving habits persisted. Needless-to-say, all future morning commutes included a scan for this driver!
In the hours of darkness that I travelled, I saw more than my share of strange things and erratic driver behaviour. In those early morning hours, going down six-lane Dixie Road, it always amazed me when there were only two other vehicles on that stretch of road, they would try to run into each other! Usually, it involved a car trying to run into a semi truck, that was minding its own business. The incident I remember clearly occurred late one evening on Evans Avenue, in Etobicoke. There was hardly anyone on Evans as I was heading westbound, going home. I saw the headlights of a car coming toward me in the eastbound lanes. I saw the left turn signal of the car go on, and the car turned left at a place where there should be no left turn. At first I thought it was an optical illusion, and that the car did not turn left where I thought it did, however, when I reached the spot, I saw what happened. Since it was sloped off, I could still see the car’s taillights and it’s backup lights, about two hundred metres down the ramp. The driver had mistakenly entered the off ramp of Highway 427, the wrong way and, having finally realized it, was gingerly backing all the way, back up the off ramp.
People often asked me about commuting in the winter, and how uncomfortable it must be. The word that best describes it is invigorating. Regardless of the time of year I was riding, I would ride at the highest pace I felt comfortable with. With the proper clothing and a concentration of keeping my core warm, I found that even on cold winter days, I felt warm all through the work day, after my morning ride. A balaclava and limiting exposed skin was essential for comfort. I did establish a temperature parameter, and it is a temperature that is not consistently reached during a GTA winter. That is -30 degrees Celsius. At this temperature your body is actually experiencing colder temperatures, because of windchill and generated windchill , from your own speed. So it could translate to -35 or more. This, I decided, was the limit, not because of an overall comfort issue, but because of the chance of skin tissue damage. At this temperature, I found, the dividing line between protection and safety was reached. At -30, all skin must be covered to avoid frostbite. The problem occurs because you have to wear a balaclava and ski goggles. As your respiration increases, the warm, damp exhalation rises up and fogs or freezes on your goggles, decreasing your vision to almost zero. I learned the hard way that the solution was not to lower the balaclava to your bottom lip. Sure it stopped the fogging, but I ended up with numb red marks on my cheeks and nose for that entire day. Fortunately, I did no permanent damage, and my facial skin returned to it’s original colour by the following day.
As far as mechanical issues, I had a few, but nothing that caused a huge inconvenience. It was mostly flats. I tried to make them less likely, by using Kevlar belted tires, but they still occurred, on rare occasions. I was lucky enough that I never had to change a flat on the road, as the flats took place within a kilometre of work or home. I do not recommend this, but because of the high profile, stoutly built Alex wheels on the Specialized Langster, I would actually ride the remaining distance with a flat tire. If it was on the back wheel, I would stand up and pedal, with my weight over the front wheel. If it was on the front wheel, I would shift my weight to the back of the saddle and put little weight on the handlebars. A word to the wise. If you are ever going to do this, recognize that the bike will not handle very well while being ridden with a flat tire.
During my years of commuting on my bicycle, I found my passion for cycling was quenched almost every day. There was not as great a disappointment when it rained on my days off, as I was riding all week, most of the time. My bike more than paid for itself, in gasoline costs alone, if I had stuck to driving. Plus I my time spent commuting was part of my enjoyment of the day. My car was always there to fall back on, depending on conditions. Interestingly enough, on those days when a forecasted winter storm necessitated taking the car, the journey home, with slow traffic, in the conditions, would take at least the same amount of time as the bicycle commute, in decent conditions.
One thing that I will always remember, and it still makes me chuckle, is the way my co-workers reacted to me as a bicycle commuter. There were always comments, mostly good natured, followed by an excuse why they themselves could not ride to work. One memorable incident was when one of my fellow employees cut out a newspaper article and taped it to my locker door. The headline was “Why Bicycling Commuters Make Better Employees”. The article covered a study that found that cycling commuters, were less likely to be late, call in sick and were more productive. Although I was only able to get a few of my co-workers to join me as cycling commuter, over the years, at least a lot of them were interested in the concept.
Take from this what you may, but I do recommend giving commuting by bicycle a try. You can always switch back.
by Steve Stoller
photo credit: Lisa Stokes