Bike to Work 2009

And so this morning heralded the beginning of the 2009 Summer bike to work (Once a week). Last year I stopped after 3 trips due to a combination of vacation, weather and the closure of the cafeteria. The latter point was a real deal breaker as the last day I did it, I had to scramble to find food that I could both afford and get to me. I finally found a Chinese food joint but the prospect for walking around hungry after the ride was not appealing.

To that end, this year I have a small fridge in my office. I have plenty of water as I refuse to pay $2 for a 16 oz. bottle out the vending machine and on bike days I can easily hit that machine up 3-4 times. I keep lunch meat, bread, lettuce and carrot cake in there too. The object being to not to crash round 'bout midday.

See, the ride to work is mostly uphill with some steep portions. The ride back is easier but a bit more dangerous because it is downhill and I attain higher speeds and it appears that most people do not think a bike is moving 25 MPH (I've hit 33 MPH).

Today was humid and I had on layers because it was below 65 degrees so I sweated. A lot. I'll probably leave two of the layers in the locker overnight and take them home tomorrow. This leads me to the highlight of this post. There's a lot of talk about how people ought to bike to work. I think that most of the people who say this fall in the following categories:

1) They only need to go a mile or so and can take their own sweet time and not get sweaty.
2) The only go a mile or so and have access to showers at work.
3) Can go to work sweaty and nobody cares because everyone else is sweaty.

Most people are not in the shape to go long distance such as my commute (12 miles each way). It takes me an hour to make that trip thanks to the hills. For most people it would take closer to two hours to do. Who's leaving home 2.5 hours ahead of time to get to work when they don't have to?

Most places of employment to do not have community showers and lockers so that the employees can shower and change clothes, so a lot of people, even if they wanted to, could not bike to work.

Lastly, many places simply do not have storage for bikes. I know that when I started last year, one of my biggest concerns was where to put my bike. it could not go into my office and I didn't want to just leave it out. I ended up leaving it out but viewable by other staff members. Still it's not like there are bike racks all over the place.

Anyway, my N800 seems to have a dying touchscreen so I did not run e-coach to map my speed and altitude. I'll probably end up purchasing an 810 since I've come to depend on this thing for many things. I may run it this afternoon provided I haven't killed the battery (which usually happens on days I don't bring my laptop).

'Till next time.