I've spent the majority of my career cycling to work. I first discovered the joys and economic rewards of cycling as a medical student when I moved from the family home in the Adelaide Hills, where the daily commute down Old Belair Rd featured a view of the 1970s smog soup we were descending into, to share accomodation on the smog covered plains. There I followed one of the first of Adelaide's cycle tracks, that along the river Torrens from Thebarton to Adelaide Uni and the Royal Adelaide Hospital.
In the Royal Australian Navy at the airbase HMAS Albatross in Nowra, it was a quick ride from quarters to the medical unit across the base, but also then easy to go for an after work recreational ride through the fire tracks of the national forest that surrounded the base and within minutes to be in a place that could have been a million years from modern civilization.
Later with our family growing and living in Adelaide's inner south at Westbourne Pk it was relatively easy to negotiate the long straight side streets of Colonel Light's planned metropolis to the RAH, FMC, Glenside hospital and the WCH. We could remain a 1 car family most of the time which helped on a registrar's wage with 4 children and Elley not working.
A good sweaty summer ride or the bracing freshness of riding through a spring breeze or winter shower is just the tonic to face the challenges of an adolescent psychiatric unit, or clear the mind of them on the way home. A decent change rooms and shower helps and fortunately most of those institutions do provide. Particularly saving of sanity was to ride home after the old proximate call 36 hour shifts at Glenside psychiatric hospital.
A couple of years in drizzly semi-rural North Wales meant a return to relatively quick car commuting and dropping kids at school, though the hedge row lined by-ways led to a lot of recreational cycling and enjoying the views of Snowdonia, as well as a feast of blackberries.
Back in Adelaide, jobs on the northside (Pt Adelaide and Paradise CAMHS) and house on the south - Bellevue Heights - meant further car traffic, but this time a tortuous and claustrophobic 45 minute commute through traffic, albeit in a quiet smooth Toyota Prius. Thus when a job at the Marion child and adolescent mental health service became available I jumped at it. Now it is a 15 minute downhill to work and a good 30 minute uphill workout home.
All along I've managed to avoid main roads almost entirely. This may mean a more circuitous route - though not so much in Adelaide's rectangular grid of streets - but less fumes, less noise and less danger. More than half my current commute is through cycleways in scrub. My return to the bike has allowed us to remain a 3 car family with now 5 drivers in the family and as the young adults use more bike time there is at least serious talk of maybe cutting back to 2 cars.