Alaska cyclists deal with cold and dark in the winter, and sometimes snow, ice, wind, rain… you name it.
But some still manage to bike to work every day. Even in winter. Who does that?
Well, as it turns out, me. Yes, I bike to work every day. And I’m not the only one.
The reasons for doing so – as well as the lessons and pieces of gear – are many. But how does someone actually convince themselves to get back in the saddle day after day?
For our Alaska Survival Kit series, I asked other Alaskans who ride year-round. Here are four key strategies they shared to make a bike commute stick, even in terrible weather.
1. Make it a commitment
This exploration of how we convince ourselves to bike to work every day landed me at the home of Tony Levario, who does a daily bike commute about twice as long as mine, a combination of trails, streets and even cutting through a busy gas station parking lot.
But here’s the thing: Tony starts his ride at 6:20 a.m. every weekday. It was a little earlier than that when we sat down at his kitchen table to chat, quietly, while his wife and four kids slept.
“At this point in the day,” I asked him, “do you ever have to convince yourself to bike to work? Is it hard or no?”
“To be brutally honest, yeah, sometimes, especially when the weather's awful,” Tony said. “But you make a commitment, have it set in your mind that, you know what? I'm just gonna go ahead and do this. Especially Mondays. Mondays are always tough. Like, Monday, it isn’t so much the ride, it's just the work.”
That part about making it a commitment? It’s important, and that’s our first key point: If you marry yourself to the idea of bike commuting every day, it’s a lot harder to break up with that idea.
Tony’s commitment came from wanting to get more exercise, for health reasons, plus his daughter’s car broke down, so he started letting her drive his. She eventually replaced her car, but by then Tony’s daily bike commute had become a habit. He was committed.
2. Make biking the easiest option
Outside, Tony lifted open his garage door to get his bike – always pointed out and ready to go – and pretty soon we were on our way. It was a perfect, cold, clear morning and we could see stars between the streetlights.
“I had a friend ask me, ‘What’s the worst trail you’ve ridden and what’s the best trail?’” he said, as we pedaled our way out of his West Anchorage neighborhood. “You know, the ride to work is always the worst trail, and the best trail is the one coming home.”
Tony also eliminates his car from the equation. It’s often buried in snow, and his family's cars are always blocking it in. That’s our second important point: Make biking the easiest option.
It’s something Nancy Fresco pointed to. Nancy researches climate change at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, but she talked to me as an expert on daily winter bike commuting.
And Nancy ought to know: She’s been a daily bike commuter for 26 years, in a place that saw its second-longest stretch of subzero days ever this winter, including 11 straight days colder than 40 below.
Nancy is absolutely not a gearhead. She’s been riding the same bike for 14 years, long enough that its logo has worn off, it’s faded from purple to gray, and she couldn’t remember what brand it is.
But one example of how Nancy makes winter bike commuting the easiest option is by investing in really warm clothes.
“If you don't have the right gear and you're not comfortable and you're getting hot or cold or wet, then that makes the biking feel undesirable, and it makes it a difficult choice,” she said. “Whereas if you do have all of that lined out, it makes it the easy and lazy choice.”
Another example is finding a home that’s close enough to work that riding there every day is easy. For me, because of the Anchorage trail system, biking is actually more of a straight shot to work than driving. Nancy also lives on trails close enough to UAF that the thought of starting and warming up her car is a much bigger burden than bundling up and hopping on her bike.
There is, of course, the expense of the bike and gear. Riding with studded mountain bike tires – how both Nancy and I started out – is doable on some days, but a fat tire bike makes it possible most days.
3. Don’t beat yourself up over it
So, not everybody is lucky enough – or privileged enough – to live close to work like that, nor can everyone afford the bike and the gear. So that brings up a third important thing to remember: If you want to bike to work but can’t do it every day, start out small, and don’t beat yourself up over it. Try one or two days a week. It might be possible to rearrange afterschool kid dropoffs or other car-dependent transportation issues to make bike commuting possible a couple days a month, for example.
Even if a bike and warm clothing cost some money up front, it’s nothing compared to constantly filling up your gas tank, Nancy said.
“And everyone knows that any maintenance on a car is a lot of dollar signs,” she said. “Biking, absolutely, is cheaper overall.”
4. Make it fun
Along with committing to it, making it the easiest option and starting out small, there’s a fourth, really simple, thing that can help a lot: Make it fun.
Sometimes I’ll race to catch up to other people on the trail, riders who have no idea I’m treating it like the end of a stage in the Tour de France. I also track my rides on Strava. A couple years ago, there was a piece of trail near work that my neighbor and I were battling over, vying to be what the app calls the “local legend.” It caused me to bike an extra couple of miles every day and has become a way of turning an overly familiar bike ride – one that I do about 250 times a year – into a sort of game.
Then there are the little things.
Nancy, Tony and I all agreed on that. We see beautiful sunrises and sunsets and the occasional auroral display. There are moose, including shaky-legged calves in the spring and, in the fall, the biggest rack I’ve ever seen on a bull moose, laid down on the side of the trail. I’ve seen black bear sows with their cubs, ambling across my route. In the winter, I get to cruise across a frozen lake. In summer, I see ducks and loons at the lake pair off and hatch chicks that have grown more each day that I ride by.
I’ll never forget the child walking with her parent one sunny day, who said, “Look at the baby ducks, they’re getting bigger like me!”
Back on the ride with Tony, we’re almost to his work. He tells me he used to ride with headphones on, but then he forgot to charge them one day.
“It was just something about the crunching,” he said. “It’s just like, ah, that sounds so good. It’s so satisfying. It’s like riding on bubble wrap.”
And I’d have to agree. It’s the sights – and sounds – that help make the daily ride more fun.
