Mission Possible: Bike to work

After a few trips to work on the Metro, I decided I didn’t want to spend every weekday morning contorting my body to squeeze into the Orange Line train, bracing myself on seats, overhead handles and some lady’s shoulder blade. If I was going to work up a sweat on my way to work, I might as well do it on my bike, and Tuesday, June 12 was the day I decided I would ride for the first time.

My previous experience with bike commuting is not extensive. Three days a week throughout the past school year, I rode to a job about 2 miles from my house in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. The ride was a soothing blend of lazy suburban streets, a quiet bike path, and a handful of traffic lights. It rarely took me more than ten minutes.

Not exactly the kind of commute I was going to encounter from Arlington to DC, certainly, but I was determined to try riding to work this summer, so I did my homework. I spent thirty minutes studying the DOT map of bike paths in the city. I rode to the NPR offices from my house in Arlington near the Court House Metro on a Sunday afternoon so I could ride with certainty (read: moderate instead of severe perplexity) on Tuesday morning. On Monday, I brought a change of clothes to wear after my shower in the lower level locker room. I went to CVS and bought extra soap and shampoo to keep at the office.

Monday night, I set my alarm for 6:15 a.m. so that I could grab a bite to eat before I left for the office at 7. I figured that the early departure time would a.) allow me time to recover if I got lost on the way, which I had deemed inevitable and b.) put me on the street before the peak of rush hour, when I feared I would become merely a moving target for the cars speeding into the city. After the third alarm, I rolled out of bed, donned my rarely-used spandex shorts, and grabbed a quick breakfast.

One of my roommates, usually the only person in the house awake at 7 a.m., looked at me with his eyebrows raised as I jostled my bike through the front door; after all, I was dressed as if I was about to attend an aerobics class in the mid-1980s.

“Good luck with that,” he said, knotting his tie.

Always the optimist, I replied, “If you hear about a cyclist being hit by a truck on his way into the city, at least you’ll know who it is.”

With a bulky duffel bag over my shoulder, I departed on my grand adventure. And immediately sat at a traffic light for five minutes so I could get across Lee Highway. Then carried my bike down thirty stairs so I could get to the Custis Trail. The open road, at last!

The ride itself was…remarkably uneventful. I stopped along the way to photograph the Lincoln Memorial and Washington Monument from the Virginia side of the Potomac (as an area resident for only ten days, I have not yet outgrown tourist status). I cruised along roads sparsely populated with early commuters, rarely even encountering a red light. I didn’t lose my sense of direction a single time. It was a thoroughly enjoyable ride—much more so than my morning trips on the Metro. Good trails, good views, good exercise—and to top it off, I even saved $1.55.

By Mike Winters, Digital Media