Madness Shop Manual

I’ve been fighting to make time for my project cars since my bassist first showed me how to perform an oil change. It’s difficult to predict how much time a project will take to complete before you start on it. Sometimes a stud will break unexpectedly during the weekend you’ve set aside for ‘car stuff’, and you won’t have it until Wednesday of that week. What do you do, if you have to work Mon-Fri and don’t have a designated ‘daily driver’ car?

A bicycle is an elegant solution for many of us. It’s not hard to get ahold of a decent mountain bike, and it’s cheap and easy to convert a mountain bike to an easy-to-ride commuter. Really, all you need is normal maintenance and some road tires. For around $150 you’ll have a healthy alternative to driving to work. I paid $50 for the bike itself, $50 for all new brake and shifting levers/cables, and $50 on tires. Given the option, I’ll take the bicycle almost every day.

Not only is this a good way to get to work and get into some semblance of shape, it’s also cheap! Paying over $3/gallon for gas is obscene, especially with a tuned go-fast machine that gets 20mpg. It just doesn’t make sense to me to drive into work any more. On a good day, I ride around 30 miles round trip. Most of the time I wuss out and take the bus for some portion of that.

The next time you’re putting your car up on jackstands, think about what could go wrong and always have a way out. A bike might just be that way out for you. For those of you interested in commuting by bicycle, check out the following sites:

• 6-tips-for-commuting-to-work-by-bike
• http://bikehugger.com/
• http://commutebybike.com/ (this one happens to be my favorite)
• http://therecord.blogs.com/take_the_lane/

I’m no hardcore bicyclist and I’m not in as good a shape as I’d like to be, but this keeps me from feeling sluggish. I get home from work and feel energized and ready to tackle whatever project happens to be in front of me. There’s no reason you can’t feel the same!