We used to have a joke in our family about the modes of transportation we took to work. It was based on a TV commercial for a bar soap that, once used, inspired even the sleepiest professional to liven up for the workday. “How are you getting to work today, Honey?” the wife in the ad would call to her husband, just freshly showered. Energized by the soap, he would swim his arms through the air and call out: “Backstroke!”

In our own large family, there was only one car. Out of necessity, we had several ways of getting to work: car pool, bus, subway and motorcycle. Some of us were propelled – not always enthusiastically – by the Shoe Leather Express, also known as walking.

But that was city life. Here in Maine, where most residents live in rural areas, much of the work force has to contend with long distances, severe weather in winter, severe traffic in summer, minimal public transportation and the soaring cost of gasoline. More than 95 percent of working Mainers travel outside their home to jobs. That’s about 1 percent less than the national average. They travel for an average of about 24 minutes from home to work (also less than the national average of 27 minutes), and less than 1 percent use public transportation, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

During the last month, I spoke with a variety of commuters. A man who was

once employed in the mill at Millinocket told me he used to hitchhike to work. Another person had a commute so adventurous, he asked me not to reveal it. But in every case, commuters were making lifestyle choices: They want to live in Maine. They want to live in a family home. They prefer not to own a car. They can’t afford gas. They need the job. They are passionate about the environment, exercise, a bus ride.

So they commute the way they commute.

Ginger Cook, who grew up in Augusta, rises at 5 a.m. in Lamoine, drives to Northeast Harbor or Southwest Harbor (depending on the season), and by 6:30 a.m. is guiding her 17-foot motorboat across the harbor to a boatyard on Great Cranberry Island. For 10 years she lived in Utah and worked as a chef. In 1998, she followed a dream back to Maine by attending the Eastport Boat School, from which she graduated five years ago. For her first boatyard job, also on Great Cranberry, Cook lived on the island and walked to work. Now she has changed island boatyards and, two years ago, moved to the mainland.

“It’s really not that bad a commute,” said Cook of her morning jaunt across the water. “When I was in Salt Lake, I had a 45-minute commute on a freeway. Now I have a 15-minute boat ride. It’s a great feeling. I’m not just back in a car.”

As with most commuters, the biggest challenge for Cook, who is 36, is winter weather. She always carries a change of clothes in case she does get stuck on the island. If she ends up taking the mail boat, she loses 10 hours per pay period. “Everybody knows everybody and helps out everybody in that situation. It’s good,” she said.

The boat commute came about during an overall change in Cook’s life direction. “Growing up here, you tend to end up coming back,” she said. “I’m glad to be back. Maine is home. It feels good to be home.”

But not everyone hears the call from the past. Others, such as Alan Garber, aspired to a job in a place with natural beauty and outdoor activities. In high school in New York, he was on the football and wrestling teams. In college, he played lacrosse. Now in his 50s, the physician is a runner and skier. When he was considering moving to Greater Bangor, he interviewed the owner of a local bike shop.

His method of commuting? Garber rides a mountain bike – sometimes towing his therapy dogs in a trailer – the seven miles from his home in Orono to his job at Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor. He cycles year round. It takes him 30 minutes. He calls it “free exercise.”

When a commute involves exercise, however, that may mean arriving to work sweaty or, in Garber’s case in winter, covered by wet dirt and grime. Incentives such as a protected parking area close to the building, as well as employee showers, increase the possibility that workers will make the cycling choice. Garber also would like to see official bike lanes paved on the roadways so cyclists and motorists could safely share the road.

He’s also an advocate for the environment and health.

“Mainers are not exercising enough,” said Garber, who also runs three to four miles five to six days a week. “I live on the main drag in Orono. I see students: one car, one person. We’re all guilty of that. There are ways to embrace alternatives and encourage them, such as giving rebates to students without cars. But rather than it being a trendy thing, it needs to be part of a lifestyle.”

Those are the same students, by the way, who, along with all University of Maine faculty and staff, can take advantage of a commuter incentive program that includes free use of Bangor Area Transportation, also known as the BAT.

“It saves gas,” said Andrew Knightly, a math professor who takes the hour-long bus ride from Bangor to the Orono campus each day. A few years ago when he lived in Rochester, N.Y., Knightly cycled to work, and when he lived in Los Angeles, he took the bus. “I really don’t like driving. I find it stressful. Even though it takes more time on the bus, I can get work done. I find it relaxing. I’d describe myself as very enthusiastic about the BAT. I meet a lot of interesting people.”

Anthony Godfrey, a kitchen porter at UMaine, also grew up in the city and became accustomed to taking public transportation.

“It’s somebody else doing the driving,” he said. “I make a lot of friends. I talk to everybody.”

Other businesses, such as The Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor, offer transportation for segments of their work force in outlying areas. Each morning, commuter vans leave Franklin, Cherryfield and Bangor and deliver workers to the lab. “Traffic can be congested on the island, and parking is a nightmare in Bar Harbor,” said Stacie Wilson, an administrative assistant in the lab’s facilities services. “By stepping up our commuter possibilities, the lab can be environmentally conscious and can recruit more off-island people. For the price of gas, I wouldn’t want to drive from Cherryfield, would you?”

Riders pay a monthly fee – about $20 – for the service and, if a family emergency arises during the day, Wilson calls a taxi, which transports them for free through Go Maine, a statewide commuter services program.

Go Maine, which is coordinated by the Greater Portland Council of Governments and sponsored by MDOT and the Maine Turnpike Authority, provides services and information for travelers on the state’s 8,300 miles of roads. (The total mileage is about 25,000 counting state, private and other roads.) More than 3,000 active commuters are registered with the service. Many of them park their cars for free in the state’s 48 park-and-ride lots. Like a dating service, Go Maine specializes in car pool matches and van pool networks.

“Maine in general has some pretty darn long commutes,” said Carey Kish, program manager at Go Maine. “It’s not timewise, like in New York City or Boston. But certainly distancewise.” Bangor, he added, has a growing database of commuters.

“Things are changing up there in Bangor,” Kish said. “People are going longer distances, spending more time in their cars. Maine is changing. Employment isn’t at the mill downtown any more. People are choosing not to move but to travel.”

David Cole, state commissioner of transportation, called from his cell phone during his daily commute. “I live in this car,” was the first thing he said. In fact, he lives in Brewer and drives to Augusta most days. That’s about 80 minutes one way.

“There’s a history of people commuting for good jobs in Maine,” said Cole, who favors Don Imus’ talk show as morning entertainment. “We’re a mobile state because of our rural nature. To make it work as a car pooler, you need to be able to link up with people in similar situations. And the higher the price of energy, the more incentive there is to car pool. An organization like Go Maine helps find that needle in the haystack.”

While that needle may be key to maximizing commuting habits, there is always an opportunity cost to long drives to work.

“If you have to drive an hour to work, then work eight hours, you’ve devoted 10 hours of your day to work but you’re getting paid for only eight,” said Maine State Economist Catherine Reilly. For some, the two-hour time loss may be preferable to or more economical than working a 10-hour day in the office.

Corina Hamlin, who lives in Brownville and works as a support professional for adults with special needs in the Bangor area, is thinking about trying to find a job that doesn’t cost her those two hours each time she goes to work.

“If I want to do anything around here, I have to drive,” said Hamlin, whose husband, Jeff, is a teacher in Guilford, in the opposite direction from her commute. “We were living in Denver when we inherited Jeff’s family home in Brownville,” Corina said. “When we moved here, Jeff and I both worked in Bangor, and we could go together. It was nice. It was our time together to discuss and communicate. Now we’re farther apart, and it’s tough.”

But the Hamlins want to stay in the small village, where they have reliable neighbors rather than employment, shopping malls and a variety of restaurants. Jeff likes to tell the story of the day his daughter became ill at school. He called his neighbor, the town postmaster who was off that day, to ask if she would let his daughter into the house. Instead, the neighbor took care of the daughter for the afternoon.

“There’s that,” said Jeff. “It’s small-town living. It’s being comfortable and not being afraid to walk on the street. There’s a lot to be said for this kind of life. Everybody knows everybody. If something were to happen here, there’d be 10 people at the house in a heartbeat. The other part of the puzzle is: If I move to Bangor for work, who is going to buy my house here?”

And then there’s Rod Wiley, seemingly the most content commuter in the world. Wiley, who has hiked the Appalachian Trail and several other trails, walks four miles one way to work each day at Epic Sports in Bangor. And he usually arrives early. At the end of the day, he walks back home to outer Union Street. He’s not opposed, he said, to getting a ride to other events, but he is a committed daily walker. He also runs five miles every other day.

“I started early,” said Wiley, who grew up near Boothbay Harbor. “I hiked the AT when I was 14 and that got me started. I got to a point in my life where I decided that my mental and physical health were more important than the things we might acquire.”

Including a car. Wiley’s commuting choice is philosophical. An illness several years ago focused his life, and he realized that the people he wanted to meet and the journeys he wanted to take did not happen in cars. His total recorded miles of walking is 20,900. In August, he and his partner took a two-week walking vacation from Hermit Island, near Popham Beach, to Washington County.

Sometimes when I have to make the 37-mile trip from home to work in Bangor, I think of the man in the soap commercial years ago. As a swimmer, I imagine doing the backstroke up the Penobscot River, which I hug on my commute. “There are those intangibles,” Reilly, the economist, told me. “Are we less stressed because our commute involves a beautiful scenic ride?” Indeed, drivers, cyclists and bus riders said their commute was a time to prepare, reflect, relax, breathe. It was Wiley, however, who took commuting to a whole new level for me: “It’s not an alternative,” he said of his daily walk. “It’s a lifestyle. I’m grateful to the Spirit who moves through all things that I can do this.”

Alicia Anstead can be reached at 990-8266 and aanstead@bangordailynews.net. Tell us about your particular commute and why you made that choice in 100 words. Submissions will be edited for length. Include name, town and daytime telephone number. Send to Why We Commute, Bangor Daily News Style Desk, P.O. Box 1329, Bangor 04402, or e-mail, with Why We Commute in the header, to bdynstyle@bangordailynews.net.

For commuters

For information about Go Maine, which offers transportation options to commuters and employers throughout the state, visit www.gomaine.org or call (800) 280-RIDE. The Maine Department of Transportation provides a free travel information service, which is frequently updated. Advisories, major delays, road work, weather forecasts and road conditions are available by calling 511, a free interactive voice response system. For information, visit www.511Maine.com.