For about six weeks I cycled to work. Then the bike went to Tredz for a fortnight, and I went back underground.
My commute is the District line from Upney to Mile End, then the Central to Bethnal Green, with some walking stitched on at each end. In good conditions it takes about as long as the bike does. I had it down to a craft. I knew which door to stand at so I would come up the station stairs ahead of the crowd. I still get the markers wrong sometimes, but mostly I had memorised where the doors open and where to stand. Even the commute I did not want, I had quietly got good at.
Two of those days, the Tuesday and the Thursday, TfL was on strike. Going in was fine, a little emptier than usual, more people working from home. Coming back was something else. The trains ran late and rare, the platform filled and kept filling, and when one finally came nobody on it wanted to get off and everybody on the platform wanted on. I was one of them, pushing, not giving way. At one point a stranger started shoving people bodily into the carriage to get the doors to shut, the thing you see in the videos from Tokyo. It worked. There was not really another option. The next train was an hour off and the station was only getting busier.
The rest of the time it was just the Tube. I would put a book on and within a few stops find my thumb moving on the phone instead. I do not like to stand, so I sat whenever I could, carried along, doing nothing with my hands or my legs.
It costs six to eight pounds a day, which does not sound like much until you lay a fortnight of it end to end. And I have not been to the gym in a while. The cycling was the gym. It was the thing keeping me in some kind of shape, and standing in a carriage is not.
At least it rained nearly the whole two weeks, so the bike picked a good time to be away. If I had been riding I would have had to buy the waterproofs sooner. And the Underground has one thing on the bike: I sweat easily, even just walking, but a day down there only left me a little damp, never the kind that needs a change of clothes.
I missed it anyway. All of it. The bike goes almost anywhere, and fast: walking the same small errand near home takes me three times as long. The Tube was alright, honestly. I just wanted the bike back. It is back now, and the winter is the part I am not sure about yet.
