The downhill journey to work

Text: an original contemporary personal-column-style practice extract.

My colleague called my route an easy commute because the journey to work was downhill. He was right about the slope. At eight in the morning, I reached the office with little effort and a good opinion of my decision to cycle. The mistake was to treat that arrival as the whole journey.

At six, the same road pointed upwards. I carried a laptop and the groceries I had collected near the office. A headwind made the last straight section seem longer without changing its length. None of this turned cycling into a catastrophe. It did mean that an account beginning with my fresh arrival and ending before my return would describe a different habit from the one I actually had.

I still cycle three days a week. On the other two, I use the bus, especially when I need to carry more. The route is neither a heroic ordeal nor a frictionless improvement to my life. It is a useful arrangement with two directions. Advice based on only one of them asks the listener to complete a journey the adviser has stopped describing.

In this extract, the writer tries to challenge an overly simple picture of a cycle commute.

Evaluate how successfully this is achieved. Support your views with detailed reference to the extract.