Benefits of Bike Commuting

I've had a pretty hellacious week here at work. Something caused one of my users' reports to go haywire. This is a report for a legacy MS Access system that I inherited, and I didn't really do much to it till now, but it went haywire. So Tuesday night I stayed at work till almost 11:00pm to re-write it (the thing was a huge kludge that no amount of modification was going to make better, so I decided to start from scratch with it). Well, the fixed I made had the effect of making clearer just how poor my users are at data entry and editing in our database... so I've been working to point out where the problems are, how to fix them, etc.

And of course, the users still aren't completely sure that this isn't somehow my fault: after all, I did write the report, so how can it be their fault?

But the point I want to make is that even though I have had two very long days at work, I got home happy and fairly stress-free because of the physical exertion I put in during my commute home. Being outside and exercising are two great ways to calm the nerves (seriously! There have been studies done!) and when you put the two together, you've got a winner. The ride home at 11:00pm on Tuesday was surprisingly refreshing, and last night's ride at around 6:30pm was just the thing - I got to blow by some stopped traffic and I even got to chat briefly with another bike commuter!

And the best part was that when I did get home, I was happy and got to enjoy reading to my son, play with the dog a bit, help my wife a bit with dinner, and the whole nine yards - with no residual stress from the day.

I can't wait for my ride home today!

Comments

  1. Yep, stress relief in abundance.

    How long is the commute?

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  2. Seriously, it's about 1.6 miles according to Bikely, but on the way home it's almost all uphill. Good for a hard sprint all the way home.

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  3. I'm about 3.5 miles, mostly uphill to get home. Actually I take a route that goes higher than home and drop in because I like the route better. I like to see how high a gear I can push getting home and often the high school teams are heading out for training so I can try to keep pace.

    I think next week I'm going to save $2.80 in train fare each day and ride the whole way. It's about 11 or 12 miles total, but the extra distance is mostly flat. I'm hoping that taking my bike to the lock-up area in Berkeley and waiting for the train (plus the stops it makes before mine) makes up for a lot of my extra time traveling by bike.

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  4. There have been many afternoons at work when it's difficult to stay awake. My commute is around 10 miles, and I am ready to do that many more after the ride.There is an abundance of good when we excercise. Something about endorphines or whatever. Like a good drug from 1969. 8>)

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  5. My routes are pretty limited, unfortunately, as my job is just on the other side of the Olentangy River here in Columbus and bridges are few in number. Being few in number, that makes them very busy at times.

    The one I take is probably the least busy one available, and the other one that's a viable option has an on/off-ramp to one of our freeways running next to it and a major hospital close as well, so it's ALWAYS busy.

    And unfortunately I wouldn't know about good drugs from 1969... I was probably somewhere between breast milk and strained peas. :)

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