Something to notice on your next commute
Pick one thing on your usual route and really look at it today: the same tree, the same corner.
Nobody sets out to enjoy their commute. It is the part of the day we are told to shorten, automate, or wish away, the grey strip of time between the places where life supposedly happens. Which is what makes it a little surprising how often people who start riding to work find that the commute has become something they look forward to, and would miss if it vanished. It tends to sneak up on you, and it is worth noticing when it does.
The time nobody counts
A bike commute gives you a stretch of the day that belongs to no one else. For twenty minutes or so you are not quite at home and not yet at work, with nothing being asked of you but to keep turning the pedals and watch the road go by. On foot that time can drag, and behind the wheel or on a packed train it is often spent bracing against other people. On a bike, at a human pace, it can settle into something closer to a moving pause, a bit of the day you get to spend mostly in your own head.
What accrues
None of what makes a ridden commute worth keeping is dramatic, which is probably why it takes a while to see it. It is made of small things that add up over weeks of doing the same trip.
A window of the day that belongs to no one else, with nothing to do in it but ride. Not quite home, not yet work, and briefly nobody's to claim.
You feel the day's real temperature, the first cold snap and the first warm morning, instead of reading it off a screen on the way to the car.
The same tree, the same bend, the dog at the same gate. A route you ride daily slowly becomes a set of small, familiar friends.
You watch a season change in slow motion, one morning at a time, in a way that is hard to catch from a car seat or a train window.
You tend to land at the other end with the blood moving and the head a little clearer, the day begun rather than just reached.
The ride back has a way of letting the day off gradually, so you often arrive home more like yourself than you left work.
The two ends of the day
Part of what a commute by bike does, when it works, is give the day two soft edges. The morning ride can wake you up properly, on your own time, so you arrive having already been somewhere and done something before the first meeting. The evening ride can do the opposite favour, spreading the day’s tension out along a few miles of road so that less of it follows you through the front door. Plenty of people find they keep riding partly for that, for the small ceremony of starting and ending the working day under their own steam. It does not always feel like much on any given evening, and it still seems to add up.
No need to chase it
The nice thing about all of this is that it asks nothing of you. You do not have to optimise it, log it, or turn it into training; it mostly just accrues on its own if you let the commute be a ride rather than a transfer. Some mornings will be cold and grim and you will be glad to arrive, and that is fine too. But every so often, often when you least expect it, an ordinary trip to work will be lovely, and those are the ones that make the whole habit worth keeping. If you want to give it a nudge, the button above offers one small thing to notice next time out. The same unhurried spirit runs through the long way home and arriving by bike, whenever you feel like taking it further.
Some links here are affiliate links. They never change a recommendation, a rating, or who we suggest.