The Go Somewhere Goal

I envy my friends who live in town who can hop on their bikes and quickly pedal to the grocery store for, say, a red bell pepper needed in order to finish dinner or ride to the library to return books. I also envy my friends who commute to work via bike paths in the cities or by road in Northfield.

It seems so ideal, replacing a car trip with a bike trip and it has long been my goal to ride my bike instead of driving my van on a trip to town. The thing is, I live 7 miles from the nearest town and about 14 miles from Northfield, the town in which I work and run most of my errands. A ride to Northfield would take me about an hour and fifteen minutes. A lot of the route is on busy roads and I don't like riding them alone and don't have panniers to haul stuff and wasn't comfortable riding on gravel and....well,  I haven't managed to complete my go somewhere goal.

Until today, that is.

Today I rode my bike home from work.

True, I have to go back to town now to pick up my van so that sort of defeats the saving money on gas benefit of riding home. But I'm not going to focus on that because today I accomplished a my Go Somewhere Goal!

I packed my Salsa Vaya in my van this morning, worked my shift and changed into my bike clothes. By 12:15 I was on my bike heading for home. It took me an hour and 16 minutes. To avoid the busy roads, I took a route that mostly gravel (a good compromise as I like biking gravel). I saw two red foxes. I got tired and sweaty. My knee hurt. But I did it. Yay!

Now that I know what it takes to ride from work, I can plan to ride to work and back home again and completely replace a vehicle trip with a bike trip.  I'm not sure I'm ready for that 30 mile round trip commute quite yet. Here are my obstacles

  1. I am a little concerned about how I will, uh, smell, after riding 14 miles to work
  2. I don't have a shower at work so I can clean up
  3. I'd have to get up really early to get to work by 8:30. I'd have to leave home at 7:00 a.m.
  4. I'm scared I'll get a flat, fall off, get too tired etc. etc.
Here's how I can deal with these obstacles:


  1. I'm thinking if I leave early enough it will be cool and I won't get too sweaty. I will change into work clothes and they will not smell
  2. In place of a shower, I can always clean up in the bathroom with moist towelettes or something.
  3. Well, I can wake up at 6 and get ready, I guess. It's only 30 - 45 minutes earlier than my normal wake time.
  4. I can pick a day to bike to work that Owen is working from home so I have a backup crew to help me - just in case.
All for now. I'm going to get a whole mile latte to celebrate accomplishing Go Somewhere Goal!





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