Bicycle commuting:
My One Year Challenge

Bike vs car. Here are my experiences.

I have an 18 km roundtrip commute to work every day. Up until now I’ve been using my 1994 Volvo station wagon, which of course runs on gasoline. But the underlying guilt for contributing to climate change, and the curiosity to try something new, led me to take on a challenge. I decided that for one year I would bike to work every day – come snow or rain – and see how that would affect my life.

For this purpose I bought an electric box bike. Yes, it was rather expensive. But it won’t need any gasoline. And the maintenance costs are super low, especially when compared to my old Volvo, which constantly needs to be fixed in one way or another.

So, the economic side of it makes sense. Now it’s just the rest of it that needs examining. How will I feel about my new commuting routine – which takes three times as long and requires a good measure of self control. Especially during rainy, snowy or windy days. Check out the film above to find out.

Thank you Josefine!

A huge thank you to Josefine Thuresson-Kämpe, who has just finished her internship at the Campfire Stories office. (And in case anyone’s wondering, that’s Ben the office dog who desperately needed to jump into the shot at the last moment). Josefine has been in charge of many things here, but maybe the biggest one was to piece together the editing of this bicycle film from all of the bits and pieces of video from the year-long challenge.

When Josefine isn’t an intern here, she works as a podcast host for her own show “Visdomsjakten” (roughly “The Wisdom Hunt”). Most of the episodes are in Swedish, but a few of them are in English. I’d like to particularly recommend this one titled “Our Existence is a Miracle” featuring the poet, mystic and carpenter Ben Bushill (in English).