The Roving Reporter

Midway through the bike experiment

Posted by: Amy Reiter

Thursday, July 10, 2008 9:17 PM

I'm really enjoying the rides to and from work, the commuter part. But, to be honest, I'm not sure how great the doing-my-work part of this is working out.

Generally, I spend part of every day out interviewing people. I love this about my job, meeting people and learning something new every day. But I'm also often on tight deadlines, and cycling takes me two to three (or more) times as long as driving would take.

And then, rarely, things happen like what happened today: I arrived in West Champaign for an event at a store, and it turns out the information I was given about the location was incorrect, and the event was at the same store, but at its location in Savoy. By the time I figured this out, the event started two minutes ago.

Thankfully, the photographer was there, and I took the front tire off my bike, loaded it in her car and hurried over to Savoy, making most of the event. But, without the car assist, I'd have missed the vast majority of it.

Or then there are the fires or accident scenes I sometimes have to rush to -- not my favorite part of my job, but part of it nonetheless.

So how does a bicycle figure into all this rushing?

When I can plan everything out, I'm loving the pace of cycling: the breeze, the neighborhoods to pass through and people to exchange smiles with as I go by. But when I'm on a tight schedule, I find it frustrating to be slower than I know is possible.

Still, I've got three more days of trying to go bike-only and I'm feeling better every day. And thanks for the route suggestion, "consider." Every time I've driven to Homer Lake, I've thought it looked like a nice bike ride. I'll have to try it in the next week or so (with lots of water, of course).

Mileage: 6.8 miles

Amy

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