Originally Posted by
Mobile 155
How far do you have to ride to work?
About 10km one way.
Originally Posted by
I-Like-To-Bike
Do you leave your home to travel to any other destination besides your work site?
I go to church, to my friends, to the grocery store, choir practice, coffee shops, etc - all of which are easy riding distance. If anything, work is the farther destination. Admittedly, I need to figure out a strategy for other shopping destinations (or alternatives) for ones that are not as conveniently accessed by bike. And I do periodically travel out of town to visit my folks, but if the car free thing goes well in the long term, I can always rent a vehicle for when I want to go out of town if other arrangement cannot be made. There are certainly problems to be solved and hurdles to overcome, and I'll not get it all figured overnight, but problem solving and wargaming different solutions is fun (and, fortunately, it doesn't all need to get figured out overnight).
Originally Posted by
I-Like-To-Bike
How do plan to get to and fro, year round from your home in Calgary?
If all goes well, come winter I'll put my winter tires on the bike, and take the train on days when there is too much uncleared snow on the ground.
Originally Posted by
I-Like-To-Bike
Anybody else live in your household? How do they get around?
At this time, I am single and have nobody else to concern myself with in that regard.
Originally Posted by
wphamilton
I would suggest not disabling the vehicle (separating the keys from it) to force yourself to ride, but rather ride because you've made a decision and have the self-confidence to stick to it. Reason being, you probably see right through that self-manipulation and will find ways to compensate. Counter-productive to your goal.
I find such good intentions on their own to be largely ineffectual for changing my behavior. I might decide in the evening that I am going to ride to work the following morning, but when I wake I may feel tired or like sleeping in an extra half hour and thus sleepy me overrides the decision made by not-sleepy-me. So I have created something of a Ulysses pact - I am making a decision in advance and creating the circumstances to aide me in sticking with it.
At the end of the day, this is an experiment - nothing is permanent yet. If I decide that it is too much all at once, I'll look to adjust things - whether that be taking the train a couple times a week to break things up or bringing my car keys home for weekends (or taking some of the above advice and keeping my keys at home...
) or some other such thing.