The Ten Minute Problem

Huffy Centuric e-bike

My commute is ten minutes. Car or bike, it doesn’t matter, the distance is short enough that the choice of vehicle says more about me than about the trip.

The car makes sense on days I need to stop for groceries or run errands after work. Otherwise it doesn’t. I drive a 2007 Toyota Sienna, a minivan, and it barely gets warm before I’m parking it again. Ten minutes isn’t enough for the engine to do anything but idle in disguise. The average is 16.4 mpg. On a ten minute hop that number feels almost insulting, like the van knows it’s being wasted and is charging me for the privilege of air conditioning.

A motorcycle is the wrong tool too, and that surprised me the first time I thought it through. Gearing up, helmet, jacket, gloves, boots, all of it for a ride that’s over before the engine oil has circulated twice. The ritual costs more time than the ride does. I could forgot half of that and accept the risks, but I’d rather not when I can reach 70 km/h on the commute. I like motorcycles. Actually, I love motorcycles. I don’t like feeling like I’m suiting up for battle to go make coffee for other people at work. With a 45 minute commute the motorcycle would always win.

Bicycles are the obvious answer half the year. I have even commuted by bike in the dead of winter. At -17 you still warm up pretty quick on a pedal bike. The other half, Korea’s humidity turns any bike ride into a shower you take with your clothes on. I’ve shown up to work sweated through more times than I want to admit, and nobody funky smells from their coworker at 7 in the morning.

So I bought an e-bike. My first electric vehicle of any kind, which is a strange thing to admit after years of gasoline engines and clutch cables. A Huffy Centuric. New, they run $1200, which is steep for what amounts to a budget commuter. I didn’t pay that. I found one used with 50 miles on it for $300, which changes the math considerably. At full retail I’d have skipped it. At $300 for a bike with barely any wear on it, there wasn’t much to think about.

My son test rode it with me before I committed. We both liked it enough that the decision took about ten minutes, fitting, given what it’s for. It’s a basic Class 2 bike, 350 watt motor, fat tires, nothing exotic. It rolls nicely though, no complaints there. The cruise control is the detail I didn’t expect to care about and now do. Ten minutes of not having to think about throttle input is worth something on a commute.

Heavy rain is coming for the next few days. I’m looking forward to riding it anyway. We’ll see how the fenders hold up, and how it feels to arrive at work dry, on time, and without having burned a gallon of gas to travel two miles.

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