in message , Patrick Herring
') wrote:

"Just zis Guy, you know?" wrote:

|
| That's one of the excuses. Remove that and it becomes the hills.
| Or the
| weather. Or the lack of changing facilities at the office. Or they
| ran outta gas. Had a flat tyre. Didn't have enough money for cab
| fare. Their tux didn't come back from the cleaners. An old friend
| came in from outta town. Someone stole their bike. There was an
| earthquake, a terrible flood, locusts. It isn't their fault, they
| swear to God!

IMHO a major unacknowledged factor is wanting to prolong personal
space for as long as possible, particularly when commuting to work.
Houses and cars are personal space; bikes, pavements, buses, offices
are not.

While I'd agree with you that (in the days I worked in cities), getting
back into _my_ car with _my_ familiar things around me and _my_ choice
of news program or no news program was a very significant event at the
end of a stressful day and this was certainly one of my reasons for
travelling by car (the other being that it was 100 miles with no public
transport at all on a substantial part of the route), I disagree that
bicycles don't have this effect. Getting on your own familiar bike and
just getting out of there is very similar (mind you, it was more
similar in the days I used habitually to cycle with a walkman with loud
rock music - something I wouldn't do now).

Come to think of it, I have in my life commuted far more often by cycle
than by any other mode of transport.

--
(Simon Brooke) http://www.jasmine.org.uk/~simon/

X-no-archive: No, I'm not *that* naive.