bike to work day

Goal #2 achieved! Yesterday in honor of Bike to Work Day, I finally biked to work.

My bike is 18-years-old and crappy; my parents bought it for me when I was in high school. I was a little concerned about the bike surviving all the way to work since it's nearly 20 miles door-to-door.

The first three miles from my house down to 101 are a steep descent; I literally did not have to pedal for over a mile and a half. I stopped by Oracle briefly to meet up with a friend, and from there we took the second half of the bayway route.

The route was pretty complicated but luckily I had written up a little card with directions and pasted it on my bike. Also, there were often little colored arrows pasted on the ground at the more confusing intersections, and then as we approached Mountain View there were lots of other bikers to follow.

In the end it took about 1 hour and 40 minutes, which works out to roughly 12 mph. Not great, but then again it was my longest bike ride in over fifteen years.

Anyway, that's ten items done or in progress, which gives me 2.5 years to knock off another twenty. Still on track!

step by step

I've been thinking for awhile that I should get into biking. I used to bike when I was a kid, but then since college, my only experiences with biking have been between buildings at work, on ultra-ghetto cruisers that use pedal brakes and have no gears.

This train of thought started probably a year ago. I asked my parents to drop off my old 18-speed bike from high school at my house, which they did a few weeks later. At that point I discovered my bike actually seemed to be in okay shape, with the exception of some very flat tires. Nevertheless, I thought I might want to get it checked out before riding it any real distance.

Unfortunately we left soon afterwards on our round-the-world trip, and after we got back it was winter and rainy and ski season, so it was March or April before I thought about biking again. We moved out of our house in late April due to our remodelling project, to go live with some friends down the street, and my bike got left behind in our garage.

Bike-to-Work Day was May 13th, and ideally I would have brought my bike in to get tuned that week, but I completely forgot. Then, a week ago, I got an invitation for a friend's birthday party for which the main event will be a bike ride on the Los Gatos Creek Trail. I figured I'd use that as my motivation to get my bike in shape, and responded yes.

This afternoon I stopped by our house to pick up my bike. I tried to put it in the trunk of my Subaru Impreza. Not even close. I folded down the passenger seat and tried to put it in the backseat of my car. I succeeded in scratching up the center console pretty badly with the pedals, but was unable to get the bike into the car.

I fiddled with the front tire for a few minutes and finally figured out how to take it off. Then, I again tried to put the rest of the bike in the trunk. Nope. In the end, I managed to just barely jam the front-tire-less bike into the backseat of my car, threw the front tire in the trunk, and drove back to our friends' house.

Since our friends bike quite a bit, I was able to use their pump to re-inflate the tires. I even biked in a couple of small circles in the garage, but have yet to try it outdoors. The bike *seems* okay, as far as I can tell...

eek!

My spinning instructor quit teaching my spin class! Apparently her schedule got too crazy, so she decided to only teach Pilates classes, at least at my gym. I'll miss her a lot; her teaching style is super upbeat but she's also great at motivating without resorting to yelling. Much sadness...

stupidity and stubbornness

I was pretty freaked out yesterday reading articles about Natasha Richardson's death. It sounds like she took a normal fall on a beginner slope and somehow that led to a brain injury causing death. How does that happen?

I had mixed feelings when I heard the report of her not wearing a helmet. On the one hand, I do have a ski helmet, and I wear it all the time now. On the other hand, I skied my whole life sans helmet up until two years ago. It felt weird to me to wear a helmet, and I generally can tell when I'm going to fall, so I've yet to hit my head falling while skiing, knock on wood. (Snowboarding is a completely different story; I quit snowboarding after a particularly bad fall involving head-to-slope impact.)

I was stupidly stubborn on the helmet issue until I got demolished by an out-of-control boarder one day while standing completely still. At that point I realized that even if I knew what I was doing, it was entirely possible for me to get screwed by someone else who didn't. Two weeks later I was at Sports Basement looking for end-of-season sales on helmets.

I still don't wear a helmet when I use the public bikes around campus at work. I think I'm too lazy to hunt down a helmet and then wear it, for just a few minutes of riding. Maybe that's stupid too. Bleah.

motivation

I'd been debating signing up for this year's Bay to Breakers all week, ever since a friend asked me to join him.

Today, I found out that my spinning instructor is turning 50 this year. 50!! I would have guessed she was maybe 40, except that she'd mentioned her "15-year-old" a few times before, so at some point I'd revised my mental estimate to "early 40s". This woman teaches multiple spinning and pilates classes every day, has two teenagers and a husband who does triathlons, seems to be in Tahoe every other weekend, and regularly bikes and runs on weekends as well.

Anyway, I decided to sign up for the race. I figured I better get started now on the being-in-shape-when-I'm-50 thing.