On Thursday last week, I rode my Harley to work so I could take the boss to lunch aboard the bike. I delayed my departure from home until sunrise so that it would not be dark while riding to work.
The boss knows that I gave up riding my Harley to the office since my work hours were such that it was always dark by the time of my arrival, and since my crash, I will not ride in the dark any more. He knows that I would rather commute by Harley, so he asked me,
…”do you want to change your regular work schedule so you can ride to work in daylight?”
Nice thought, but my answer had to be “no way.”
Why? Three main reasons:
1) All my life, I have always, always been an earlier-than-earlybird. I naturally wake every day by 0400. My spouse, however, sleeps later. Since he is retired, he does not have to get up at any particular time, though he usually is up by 0630 or 0700 at the latest.
Anyway, I am at my best very early in the morning. I cherish the quiet in the office before others arrive (and waste so much time talking about sports and other unimportant office chatter). I get a more done in those first two hours than the rest of the day because I am uninterrupted.
2) The Big Cheese has a morning briefing at 0745 every day, and I am a part of that. While I do not prepare the briefing, I do need to be there to answer any questions related to my field of experience. So I would have to be at the office by 0730 anyway, and now that the sun does not rise until after 0700, I could not get to the office in time.
Heck, you say that the office is just six miles (9.6km) from your house? You can’t ride six miles in less than 30 minutes?
That brings me to reason three.
3) Traffic congestion. At dawn, traffic is already at what some people call “rush hour.” I never understood why they call it “rush HOUR” because a) no one is rushing anywhere; and b) this congestion lasts for at least three hours if not longer.
Having to wait three to five cycles for every traffic light is bad enough, but also when traffic is so thick, there is no way that I can protect my safety space (safe riding distance) in front of me. Losing that safety space when someone cut me off is what caused my crash on May 31.
Last Thursday, a commute that takes 20 minutes at 0510 took 55 minutes at 0700. Yep, almost an hour or three times as long. Then by the time I locked my gear on the bike and made myself presentable for the office, I did not arrive at my desk until 0805 and missed the morning briefing with The Big Cheese.
Also, I was exhausted from fighting with traffic. The ride was unpleasant, hot, and frustratingly slow. And there was no reason like a crash or broken down vehicle to cause traffic to be so slow. It was crawling just because there were a zillion times more vehicles on the road than at my usual commute time.
Anyway, I confirmed that while I love to ride my Harley, riding to work at 0700 and then home again two hours after (1700) my usual departure time of 1500 would drive me absolutely insane. I would be much less productive and generally in sad shape IF I had to tolerate “rush hour commuting.” No way.
Life is short: at 0400, the world is much quieter and at 0500, the commute is much sweeter. Become a ultra morning person like me and see how great it can be!