Cycling to the City

So, let's say you live in the suburbs of Melbourne, and work inside the city. You want to be more eco-friendly, and you decide cycling to work would be a good step. Or maybe you don't give a crap about the environment, but you crashed your car, and can't afford to get it fixed.

Whatever.

The problem with riding to work is it's a long ride, and it's really not fun to wear your work attire while riding. Plus, by the time you get to work, you're a sweaty mess. You may be more eco-friendly now, but you're not so olfaction-friendly.

Here's the great thing. In Melbourne, there's a Bike Pod place. It's a FREE shower facility for cyclists who ride into the city. That's pretty cool. Although it's less cool if it's really gross and unclean. I'm very thankful that some beaches provide changing areas, but some of them get disgusting by the end of the day. Then again, in that case you're dealing with water and sand. That can get icky. It's quite a feat to get your underpants on without getting them dirtied with the wet sand on the ground.

Cycling showers are probably easier to keep clean.

Now that I read the fine print though, it seems a little less awesome than I first imagined.

If I'm reading this right, there's only two showers! Two showers? If there's a lot of cyclists trying to get to work, wouldn't that make a pretty long line?

The other issue is what if your place of occupation is not very close to the bike pod? The bike pod is in a fairly central location. It's in City Square. Lord Wiki says that's surrounded by Swanston Street, Collins Street, and Flinders Lane. If you work close to there, it's probably a great service. But what if you're not so close? What do you do then? Hop on your bike with your work clothes, and hope you don't sweat enough to make you feel you wasted a shower? Does the bike pod provide bike parking? Maybe they do because the photo the City of Melbourne site provides has a bunch of parked bikes. There's not a bunch of people in line for the shower, so maybe they already showered, parked, and then took a short stroll to work.