You can do what I do and enjoy biking around town/your neighborhood as a leisure activity. Bike to whatever stores or appointments make sense. Biking to a hair cut for example is nice because the wind as you bike helps shake the bits of escaped hair out of your clothing!
Current I super commute while I get the money scraped together to move, and even then my job requires me to drive a personal vehicle to customer sites as needed so biking/public transit likely won’t be an option until I land a better role with a company that isn’t as cheap as this one
Half my life I’ve lived more than 5 miles away from the closest store on roads with no shoulders or sidewalks and 50mph speed limits.
I live in a small town surrounded by farming communities, I have family that are farmers (some hobby, some not so) so I absolutely get the kind of living situation you describe
Hey man, I’m being nice. Your initial comment described a ~40 mile commute and made no reference to whether or not you live in town. I’d previously made comments like yours before I picked up biking as a hobby, and I’ve encountered plenty of people who live in town but have to commute to another and use that as the excuse to not bike even though they’d like to. That’s why I left my comment saying “hey you can still do this” but we both know it’s different if you’re in town or not. That’s one of those choices you make when you choose to live in town or outside of town.
Personally, I’m making the choice that just living in town isn’t enough, I have a special needs child so my wants and needs have changed, so I’m going to go further and move into a major city. Right now I super commute while we clean up, fix up and pack to sell our house and move. That seems to be the right choice for me, and none of these choices might be right for you. That’s life, you make these choices that have trade-offs. Sometimes you make the right choice at the right time, sometimes you make the wrong choice or your wants and needs change and you course correct as needed.
You can do what I do and enjoy biking around town/your neighborhood as a leisure activity. Bike to whatever stores or appointments make sense. Biking to a hair cut for example is nice because the wind as you bike helps shake the bits of escaped hair out of your clothing!
Current I super commute while I get the money scraped together to move, and even then my job requires me to drive a personal vehicle to customer sites as needed so biking/public transit likely won’t be an option until I land a better role with a company that isn’t as cheap as this one
What about the 50% of the population that’s not suburban?
Half my life I’ve lived more than 5 miles away from the closest store on roads with no shoulders or sidewalks and 50mph speed limits.
It’s great to give people advice for your situation, but less so for their situation isn’t yours :)
I live in a small town surrounded by farming communities, I have family that are farmers (some hobby, some not so) so I absolutely get the kind of living situation you describe
You live in a town.
You can bike to appointments.
90% of the geographcial and 60% of the total population cannot follow your advice safely.
Hey man, I’m being nice. Your initial comment described a ~40 mile commute and made no reference to whether or not you live in town. I’d previously made comments like yours before I picked up biking as a hobby, and I’ve encountered plenty of people who live in town but have to commute to another and use that as the excuse to not bike even though they’d like to. That’s why I left my comment saying “hey you can still do this” but we both know it’s different if you’re in town or not. That’s one of those choices you make when you choose to live in town or outside of town.
Personally, I’m making the choice that just living in town isn’t enough, I have a special needs child so my wants and needs have changed, so I’m going to go further and move into a major city. Right now I super commute while we clean up, fix up and pack to sell our house and move. That seems to be the right choice for me, and none of these choices might be right for you. That’s life, you make these choices that have trade-offs. Sometimes you make the right choice at the right time, sometimes you make the wrong choice or your wants and needs change and you course correct as needed.