Cycling in the City Part I
Joel on August 10th, 2011
My life has always been full of long commutes. My first job out of high school was delivering pizza, and while the restaurant was fairly close, my evening essentially consistent of perpetual commuting.
After that I started painting for a company based in Coquitlam, an hour-long drive (on a good day) over the busiest bridge in Metro Van from White Rock. The following year I worked construction everywhere from Richmond to Burnaby to Downtown. 30, 60, or 90 minutes on any given day.
Tired of commuting, I made sure to apply to a job on the peninsula the following year. My commute was a mere 7-minutes– that is, until after a month I was transferred to the Langley branch, where I spent the next three years. Then it was mostly 1.5 hour commutes via transit from White Rock to Van for internships, until I moved into Van a year ago– only to find myself commuting back into the valley as far as Langley and Maple Ridge.
All this to say that now I am incredibly grateful that as of a month ago, I am finally living in the same city I work in. In that span I’ve been taking advantage of the proximity and the warm weather by cycling into work (on days that I’m not too lazy, that is). It’s about a half hour ride from my East Van home to the Coal Harbour office. Best of all are the nights when I ride straight from work to a friend’s house for dinner, then slowly meander home as the evening slows and stills. Twilight has long been my favourite time of day, and cycling home in it is the perfect way to end a workday. I’ll stop and photograph the odd scene that catches my eye (like the two above), but mostly I just enjoy the leisure of a short, beautiful commute.
- Joel
