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| *Vultures Knob>>>Cycling |
Cycling commuters please help.? |
I am new to cycling and I am trying to find out the basics on equipment and clothing that I should get. I will be commuting via bike and bus. Should I just wear my work clothes on the bike or should I carry them in a backpack and change at work? My work does have a locker room with showers. Is it best to just keep several outfits at work and ride to work in cycling clothes? The dress code at work is very strict with Friday being casual. I am thinking that my suits will get wrinkled in a back pack. Any Suggestions would be appreciated. here is what i do. i take all of the wrinkle sensitive clothes in on one day either by car or by buss and i leave them there. then i commute wearing my gear with only fresh unders in the bag on my back to save weight. on my drop off days i pick up the dirty stuff from the week prior. this is a space and clothing intensive procedure but i have a room dedicated to bikes and gear at the office that is out of the way of the public and can smell like dirty laundry with out problems. if you dry clean alot od your clothes try to find a place near your office and you can rotate a few times a week. ive gotten it down to a pretty tight system and am willing to drive in on saturadays to make the swaps when necesary. good luck How far are you riding? If it's a short distance (a subjective measure) then riding in work clothes might be the answer if you can discipline yourself to keep your speed down below perspiration levels. OTOH if you are going to be sweating then you will want to pack your clothes. Clothes and fabric dictate whether they are packable or not. I have become quite adept at rolling clothes to prevent wrinkles but I do not have to wear suits (perma-press shirts and khakis for the dress-up days, jeans and a polo will do most of the time). If your dress code is not that relaxed then I would recommend driving in one day a week to bring clothes in and take clothes out and biking the rest of the week if you can get a locker. Now if you really get into the bike commuting process there are panniers that are designed for protecting suits and such but they can get pretty pricey (see the link below). Myself, I am able to stick to a pair of Ortlieb Front Rollers (second link), one for emergency repair gear, the other for my clothes and lunch. They are just about as expensive as the suit pannier but they are absolutely waterproof (I have forded flood swollen streams with water levels over the bottom bracket without anything getting wet). http://inertiadesigns.com/catalog/produc... http://www.ortliebusa.com/cartgenie/prod... Monday is usually a rest day for most cyclists or runners. So use this day to take the rest of the weeks work clothes in to the office. Then at the end of each day, when you change to ride home, put the work clothes you had on into your backpack. There you have it. 10 points please. Due to the type of outfits that you wear for work I recommend driving 1 day a week and keeping your work clothes at work. Make sure that you have enough undies. LOL. I do the same thing. As I teacher, surprisingly enough, my choice of what to wear is pretty open, yet in order to maintain my professional status, I prefer dress slacks and a button up shirt. The setup that I have right now is that I cycle to work in my cycling clothes. That includes a helmet--please wear one. When you're cycling, particularly in the commuting mode, your chances of getting hit by a car go up about ten-fold. Needless to say, I use a dry cleaners about 1/4 mile from the school I work at, and leave the clothes at work. I change when I get to work. Generally speaking, I will drop my dry cleaning off on Friday evening and pick it up Monday morning on my way in. Works out great! I definitely recommend wearing your biking gear and keeping multiple changes of clothes in the locker room. You just don't want to be sweating in your work clothes. I keep multiple different outfits at work so that I've always got different things to select from and I'll just carry a garment bag into work some days (riding the bus, not bike) and swap out clothes. It's such a huge benefit having a locker room and since in most offices, I've found that people rarely utilize these, you can usually also grab a couple lockers and keep plenty of stuff at work for your work clothes! My dress code at my office sounds similar, with business attire expected Mon-Thu and casual Fridays. I don't want all of my stuff wrinkled up at work and I don't have an iron here, so I wouldn't want to bring my clothes in a backpack, personally. |
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