What is your bike to work routine?

For the past two months, I’ve been regularly biking to work–and I love it. While this won’t surprise any seasoned rider, I was shocked to realize that taking a bike to work is the fastest way for me to get from my home in Petworth to my office downtown–way faster than Metro, bus, or even car.

Despite the looming threat of death, squishing, and stuff like that, I think “biking” part of biking to work is the easy part. To me, the hardest part is the “work” part. I’m not a fussy person, really. But after a good ride in, I don’t want to spend the rest of the day smelling like the dude passed out on the sidewalk outside. So that involves a lot of things–like showering (read: being naked in front of other biking/running co-workers), and bringing towels, soap, and shampoo to work.

Then, though I find my tight bike shorts to be quite comfortable (not to mention very flattering), it doesn’t really fall into the category of “business attire.” So I need to have something else to wear all day.

So I’ve been experimenting around with different systems. Sometimes I shower at work–sometimes I bring in some baby wipes and clean up in the privacy of my office (blinds closed–don’t get too excited). Sometimes I bring in clothes in a backpack, sometimes I stop in on a weekend and drop of some clothes for the week.

I ask everyone I know about their bike to work routine and almost everyone has a religious like adherence to their “perfect system.”

But nothing seems to work consistently well for me. For example, the other weekend we were going out one evening and I remembered that my black dress shoes were in my office, thus requiring a last minute drive to the office…to get some shoes.

So I ask all my fellow biker out there–how do you coordinate getting from home to work, then preparing for your day in big boy/girl clothes?