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May
15
In the spirit of Bike to Work Week, I thought I’d show a few scenes from my bike commute. I live in northern San Diego County and my commute is multi-modal: 14 miles by bike to the Oceanside (California) train station and then a 25-or-so minute train ride up the coast to San Juan Capistrano in Orange County – mostly through the Camp Pendleton Marine Corps base. I try to leave the house by 6:15 when I commute by bike. I can be showered and ready to go by the 8:30 start of our work day.
For simplicity’s sake and to protect my nice camera, I just used the camera on my cell phone. Not bad, but not exactly stunning color repro – there was actually beautiful blue sky this morning that doesn’t come out in these photos.
That’s my bike in front of a piece of sculpture in Oceanside. This is near the start of my own version of the “Stupidest Bike Lane.” It’s seperated from the street (as you can see in the photo above), is perfectly paved and striped, has nice signage but it is only about 500 feet long through a residential neighborhood and has 2 stops signs along its route. At either end of this path there’s nothing more than some of those “Bike Route” signs. Not lane, no path. This is just a random piece of bike facility that lives in a vacuum.
This is my local shop. It’s not the closest to me by any stretch, but it’s the one I chose to frequent. I have two bike “super centers” – one that I can even walk to – and while they’re nice and all, I still prefer the old- school independant shops like Pacific Coast Cycles in Oceanside. Chuck, the owner, used to work for Masi Bikes years ago and is a great guy to chat with and he’s got a bunch of cool classic bikes and parts in the shop. He’s also very opinionated about what he likes and dislikes in bikes and the bike industry. Worth a visit if you’re in the area. I try to make a point of stopping in to say hi on my ride home.
The Oceanside train station is near the beach and pier (visible in the background). Also near the station is this blue house that you may recognize from a little old movie called TopGun that took place in and around San Diego. This is where Charlie (Kelly McGillis) lived and was visited by Maverick (Tom Cruise). It’s in pretty bad shape and is scheduled to be torn down, the last I heard, to make way for a big resort complex. Pity. Not exactly a significant piece of American heritage, but a neat part of American pop-culture.
There’s my bike on the train now. The Metrolink trains have room for two bikes on each car. Not a problem in the morning as I get on at the first stop, but it can be a problem going home at the end of the day since the train comes down from LA with lots of commuters. I have to guess which car will be emptiest and hope for the best since there’s no time to “browse” all the cars to see which has room for me. More often than not I’m stuck holding my bike the whole trip in a crowded car. No telling what Bike to Work week crowds will be like.
Here’s a little nod to our friends at Timbuk2 bags. I love this backpack they made for us with the Interbike logo. It’s a nice change from the messenger bag I usually use. This is also a nod to the guys at Bike Hugger that recently had a discussion about the best bags for laptops and bikes. This one holds a MacBook Pro very nicely, by the way.
This is a typical view out the window of the train during the commute. What you see here is the pier in San Clemente and some nice waves. I tried to catch some of the many surfers in action, but the phone camera makes them look like specs. Suffice it to say that this is probably one of the most beautiful train rides you can do: along the beaches and coastline of Southern California. Dolphin sightings are common, too.
We’re there! Waiting for the train to pull away so I can cross over the tracks to roll to the office.
This what’s on the other side of the tracks: the Los Rios district of San Juan Capistrano. I believe that it’s the oldest neighborhood in California going back to the time of the missions (don’t quote me, though). Very cool old neighboorhood that feels more like something you’d see in Disney World’s frontierland – but it’s authentic.
From the station, I hop on the San Juan Creek bike trail for about a minute. I runs along a small canal that looks like the ones they always had car chases in in 70′s police shows and the movie Grease. Being a non-native Californian myself, I always enjoy seeing this type of Hollywood-inspired California imagery. Along the same lines, I still chuckle when I see CHiPs officers on motorcycles.
That’s our office as seen from the bike path. If you keep heading down the path, you’ll hit Doheny beach in a couple of miles. That’s the way we usually head during our lunch time rides.
So door to door, it’s about an hour and forty minutes. At 14 miles of riding each way, it’s a decent enough workout. And the shower at work helps make the commute more enjoyable for my co-workers.
What’s your commute like?
Update: Per Carlton’s request in the comments, here’s where my bike I live between commutes:
The bike lives just around the corner from my cube during the day. Jennie, our art director, keeps her Electra beach cruiser on the other side of my cube. During any given week, you can see a Fuji (mine), an Electra, a Giant, a Burley, a Ridley, a Trek, and a Felt. Sometimes I break out the old Bridgestone RB-1 with Campy C-Record and Delta brakes for fun and style on the commute. Downstairs in the bike rack are a couple of rusty cruisers that a couple of people use for running errands or getting lunch.
My cube. Not much to say about a cube. Actually, looking at it in this photo, it looks pretty sparse – even for a cube. We moved cubes earlier this year, so there’s not much decoration other than the Eddy Merckx being interviewed in the Interbike Media Center poster on the left and the Bikes Belong musette hanging on the wall. Up on the shelf there’s a team High Road/Shimano/Giant pint glass that I got at the Tour of California, a Trek shot glass and cowbell from Sea Otter and a travel mug from the Interbike/Bikes Belong coffee giveaway at last year’s show. That’s about it. Feel free to send me some schwag to help decorate the cube…
Comments
6 Responses to “Scenes from a Bike Commute”
Great description! I now feel like I know your ride. Nice empty train, in the pic anyway. Where do you stash your bike? Somewhere corporate and fancy? And who else cycles, % of company?
My commute is from bedroom to home office. I could unicycle it in about three revolutions.
Just took a couple of office photos to see where the bike (and I) live between commutes. I’ll add to the end of this post in a bit.
The train is a double-decker and upstairs fills first (for the better view). I stay downstairs near the bike, of course. I also get on at the first stop on the way north toward L.A. It will get much more crowded after my stop. Way home is always crowded and bike racks usually full.
As for riders at the office, I’d say we’ve got about 9 bikers (not all commuters, yet) out of 40-45 people.
Great post Rich. I need to get Chip to do one about his commute. He has been riding to work off and on for the last few weeks.
Yep, Chuck’s great. I worked there from about 87? to 93 and he was a big inspiration for my opening my own “old-school independant” bike shop last year.
Howdy to Chip – Been a while since I seen him last.
Fantastic, thanks, Rich!
I love seeing where people work, kinda home-ifies emails, blog posts and the like.
Good to see a wide spread of (many) bikes, too. 9/40 is way bigger than usual, I guess.
Hi. Please join the Bicycle to Work! LinkedIn networking group. Members pledge that they will try to ride their bicycle to work or on an errand at least once a week. Although the benefits should be obvious, let me outline them here.
Right now people in the industrialized world are facing two very grave problems: obesity and a growing scarcity of oil. Compounding this problem is the new food shortage brought about, in part, by the conversion of food cropland to bio-fuel crop production. Most people feel powerless to help, but there is one thing that we can do. Ride our bicycles to work.
If everyone would agree to ride their bikes to work one day per week we could cut oil consumption by as much as 10-15%. No one would argue that riding a bike burns more calories than driving the car. Although popular politically right now, most bio-fuels consume more energy than they produce. We would be much better to eat those bio-crops then use our own energy to transport us around.
So spread the word. Make it a movement! Bicycle to work one day a week and do your part to cut back obesity and the overuse of oil and precious cropland.
Just go to my profile at http://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffreylstevenson and you can click on the group to be included. While you are there, don’t forget to ask to link to my network of more than 9,000,000 like-minded professionals. I accept all invitations and look forward to meeting you.
Jeff