Hi everyone (a.k.a. Mom and Dad)! This is my first blog post ever and I completely feel the power of the microphone. In the coming days, weeks, months, and years – all dependent on when I get tired of writing posts – I want to discuss biking and public transportation around Columbus. With my inaugural post, I wanted to discuss how and why I began biking.
I’ve lived in Columbus my entire life but since I lived in Suburbia Columbus, I never realized that biking or walking was something that adults could do. After graduating from Theeee Ohio State University in 2007, I moved to the Short North (Dennison & Buttles) but I continued to commute via car to my job (State & High) which was about 1.5 miles away. Via Google Maps, this took 9 minutes to drive to my parking lot ($65 per month) followed by a 5 minute walk to work.
One day, I endured a flat tire (gasp!) and decided to take public transportation. I kept walking towards work but by the time a bus arrived, I was already there. Overall, it took 30 minutes to walk one-way. I immediately decided to cancel my parking pass to save money and to exercise some.
My coworkers persuaded me to try biking, but it went horribly. I did not ride that much as a youth so I crashed even when I was trying out bikes to buy although no harm was done. I did not bike for the first year after I purchased the bike.
Finally, I decided to take a Spanish class at Columbus State Community College which required me to use a bike. The commute to work via bike was 13 minutes. Due to the pressures of biking to class every day, I became a daily biker which has lasted every since. And for you kids at home keeping track, this is how my commute methods stacked up:
Commute Method | Time (minutes) | Cost |
Biking | 13 | $0 |
Driving | 14 | $65 |
Public Transit | 18 | $55 |
Walking | 30 | $0 |
That’s right. The cheapest and quickest route for my commute for work was biking. It was an easy decision to make.
Next time: What my current commute is like.
Cool link of the day: Robot riding a bike!
