I’ve been attending the University of Victoria to various degrees since 2005. Yes, writing that does make me feel old. But that’s not the point. The point is that, as someone who has lived in the Beacon Hill area for most of my life, I’ve always thought of UVic as being somewhere that I could get to quickest from home by driving a car. So when I decided to start biking more as a means of integrating fitness into my daily life, I decided to see if driving to UVic really was the quickest option. From my house, it takes about 20 minutes, give or take, to get to UVic. Once I added the time it took to find parking, pay ($9 a day currently), and walk to whatever building my class is in, the total commute time from door to door was approximately 30 minutes. During the first week of class this year, I timed how long it took to bike to school and the result surprised me: door to door – and with no charge for ‘parking’ my bike – the commute took me 23 minutes. The point of all this is that not only is biking to school good exercise (thanks largely to that damn hill on Foul Bay Rd.), but that it is actually much quicker than driving – by about 7 minutes! A car might often seem like the quickest option, but with a bike you get to bypass a lot of traffic and congestion, especially in towns like Victoria where there is a huge amount of construction going on. And you generally go just about as fast as car, at least in the city or on downhill sections. So, I can now kill two birds with one stone: I can take the quickest, and cheapest, means of transportation to school, all while getting in a decent workout. What a fun, practical, cost-effect, and ‘green’ way to integrate fitness into a busy life!