Today I rode my bike to work for the first time in many months. It's taken a couple weeks of talking about it and a few more of thinking about it for this to come to fruition. As with the best laid plans, I got to bed late and slept in an extra half hour. Thank you Tatonka for deciding to chew up your food bin last night, which was discovered when Smokey went downstairs to feed you dinner and let you inside for the night. Because we felt sorry for you having not been outside enough in the past day or two. After a slow start, I rapidly got in the groove. It may have been a while, but this idea of bike commuting is not foreign to my life. Smokey promised to bring me breakfast and lunch after exercising the dogs and getting just a little more sleep. He was not happy when I asked him to please get out of bed and locate his bike light for me. I refuse to dig through his tub of stuff to find anything. Murphy's law was tested and found to be operational. The light was easy enough to find....including the dead batteries. After he duct taped (in coordinating blue tape) the light to my bike he found the mounting bracket.
Despite having purchased quality tools when I started bike commuting last year, I could not find my pump, tools, tubes, or patch kit this morning. I am fairly fanatical about my gear being organized and putting things away, but somehow there was no sign of these items. Now I recognize I'm no Jill of Up in Alaska (http://arcticglass.blogspot.com) but I do manage to get out and put some miles on my bike. For instance, I have studded tires on my bike, but not on my truck. Nevermind the fact that Smokey switches my studs out for me in the spring and fall.
Seeing as how late it was getting I started to wonder if I would even need the light. We carefully scouted the route on the way home last night and discovered a few sections where I would need a light to see with (as opposed to the light I have, designed more for people to see me). And then the race was on. Sunrise today was at about 9:30.
The most uncertain part of the ride was at the beginning, in getting to the trail so I didn't have to ride along the busy road with no shoulders. This was fairly easy and after one stop to switch gloves and zip up my windstop top, I was cruising. The hills even seemed a little less steep. And that's when I discovered the art of peddling on the downhill. Because if you don't it's not the gleeful cruising expereinced in summer, it's just you sitting still in the cold with the wind blasting you and it's cold.
Later on I discovered the art of praying while flying. Because at times it was more like flying than biking; there was no stopping. This is really only a problem when you discover you are way too close to a curb with the dip for wheels full of chunky snow from the snowplow. That's where the praying comes in.
I arrived safely and plan on repeating this epic journey to get home tonight and hopefully every week. And I'll deffinately be going through all the possible hidden spots to find my missing gear. I suspect Smokey's truck because it has history of harboring all things that go missing.
1 comment:
My dog is going to start coming to work with me this week. THe kicker is that I also want to continue riding my bike to work. It's maybe a bit too far to ride both ways with him. So I have created a system that I intend to test tomorrow, involving driving my car to the point, unloading bike and dog, riding to work along the coastal Dyke Trail, walking the last few blocks because they are in the city, changing at work...etc. But I guess tomorrow I have to drive because I need the dog kennel and that will be a bitch to bike with.
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