Bike commuting stories

Five Christmases ago, Mark Wyatt and his wife bought each other matching yellow Diamondback mountain bicycles. They decided to break in their presents on a recreational biking trail that had just opened half a mile from their home outside Iowa City. The Wyatts huffed and puffed their way through a five-mile ride.

“I thought, ‘Wow, that was tough,’" Mark Wyatt, 35, recalled.

But he kept pedaling, and now, Wyatt, a paramedic, wakes up before dark, pulls on his cycling clothes and bikes 8 1/2 miles to work before he starts a 24-hour shift. Unlike workers who fight rush hour in their cars only to flop into their cubicles annoyed and exhausted, Wyatt relishes his commute.

“The bike ride changes everything,” he said. “Before I biked to work, I used to go home after those long days at work and take a nap. Now if I ride my bike home I can stay up; I don’t feel like sleeping.”