The Sport of Bike Commuting

Last week, I rode my bike to and fro work each day during the first week of the new job.

And as we all know, the first week of a new job is always a little confusing; the figuring out of the personalities and the work load and the grooves of the office atmosphere.

You're unsure of it all.

Where should I have lunch and what should I eat, where is the gym and where can I park my bike? Where will I ride at lunch?

But even more confusing during that first week of uncertainty is figuring out the bike commute to and from.

It's the riding your bike through downtown San Francisco, on Market street part. And the riding your bike through downtown Oakland on Broadway part. And the riding your bike up the long steady hills with a 10 pound bag of your days clothes on your back - to get back home after working an 8 hour day part.

Commuting by bike through two major downtown urban cities is a sport all on it's own.

It's not the same as the long leisurely ride to work I used to do once a week. The one where I'd rarely encounter another rider let alone vehicle. The one where I'd ride along the gentle wetlands of the bay listening to happy sounds and singing to myself and waving hi at those I did see.

No, this is a real sport. One where you dodge obstacles that are out to GET you and stuff. And you're OUT there riding and trying to figure out how to ride it all smooth and fast and not get hit and not flip people off. And since you're in downtown Oakland you've got to also keep it real and stuff. Because that's the name of the game in Oakland. Oaktown, keeping it real. And stuff.

It's all CrAZy and shit.

And then there's SF. Market street is filled with trolleys and buses and bike messengers and cars and homeless people and bike lanes that seem to suddenly disappear into right hand turn only lanes with bus stops thrown in the middle here and there. And trolley tracks that'll suck your wheel quickly inside if you look away, even for a split second. And at each block, just as you start to settle into your pedaling rhythm, the light will inevitably turn red and then you're stopping before you can even shift.

In the evenings, from work, I make my way down Market street to the ferry terminal. The ferry that's full of working professionals. The ones who wear tennis shoes with their skirts, and ties with their jackets. The ones who get on and walk straight for the bar to order their after work cocktails and then slowly make their way to the top of the boat where they sit and sip and the wind tosses their hair and their voices carry out onto the bay while they chat with all the others.

I usually perch my bike in the rack towards the back of the boat and make my way to the top, carefully so as not to slip off the stairs while clickity clacking in my cleats.

Up there I eat my after work snacks and stare at the city as we float away, watching my thoughts disappear into the wind. And once in a while another rider will ask me about my route and we'll chat strategy.

Once we dock in Oakland, I ride from the ferry onto Broadway and straight through downtown. I ride as fast as I can, trying to dodge it all. Away and around and in between the buses and the cars and the pedestrians who jump out in front of me.

I'm starting to understand after a week of doing this - that you have to be constantly ON. There's no daydreaming or cruising along or forgetting where you're going. It's a high intensity, sensory overload, dodging things constantly type of thing. You're cranked on, volume up all the way.

And then I'm on Grand Avenue with the nice clean wide bike lanes, where I can cruise for a while on auto pilot and gaze a little at the shirtless fit men, running along Lake Merritt. But only for a few minutes, until the bike lane turns into a right hand turn only lane. And I have to race across two wide lanes of fast car traffic, who are all racing each other to get towards the freeway. I'm racing to get to the far right hand lane so I can stay out of every one's way.

And then the bike lane turns into a freeway entrance and cars to the left of me are turning right in front of me to get onto the freeway.

Once I'm through that mess, and away from the down towns and the obstacle courses and the ferries and the trolley tracks and the on ramps and the buses, well then, next comes the climb. The 45 minutes up to the ridge in the hills climb. The climb that becomes a climb where you have to stand for long stretches at a time because it's too steep to just ride it with a bag full of clothes on my back from a day of work.

And then finally, I'm up there, riding within the trees with the smell of redwoods and eucalyptus and pine and jasmine and lavender and I can finally relax for a few miles. And take a few deep breaths.

And then I'm home.

Downieville, Clampett Style

We spent three days up at Downieville this past weekend. We loaded it all up and took off Thursday night. And true to our nature, we arrived at a little after midnight and set up our tents in a full moon.



When we were kids, we went on a lot of road trips. Our vacations were never luxurious. They were the outdoorsy, backpacky, camp type, waterskiing, houseboating, biking type, loading up the car type things. After a while my mom stopped coming to the camping type ones. She got tired of the whole tent and dirt thing.



But we kept doing them anyway. Dad was always willing to pack up and go and usually it was with a bunch of other families whose mom's had gotten sick of the camp style vacations as well.



Just the dads and the kids and camping and budweiser and "the Eagles" and chaos. I still sing that song, Desperado to myself every time I go camping.

Back then, our station wagon didn't have a big safari type rack on top like we have on our truck now. But that didn't stop my dad. He'd tie it all up on top anyway, Clampett style. And then we'd take off.

And on just about every single trip - on the way up to Tahoe or Yosemite or Nevada City, something would fall off the roof onto the freeway.



And we'd all sit quietly in the station wagon and watch our dad, running along the side of the freeway gathering our tent poles and freeze dried food and pillows, muttering to himself. And then we'd have to sit with whatever had fallen, in our laps, for the rest of the way.



And then we'd get finally make it up to the camp spot and it would be 11pm, and dad would put up the tent in the dark. And it'd take an hour because back then, well, you remember - all those tent poles you had and none of them came attached like nowadays.



All all the other dads would stand around and heckle my dad and eventually they'd pitch in and help.

Nothing fell off our roof on our trip. And it only took about 15 minutes to get our tents up in the dark. We work like ninjas.



And I rode Downieville for my first time. And fell in love with it. 20 miles of almost ALL downhill with a rare climb is like art. It was one of those perfect rides, where you ride almost all of it, creek crossings and baby heads and bridges and cliffs and all. And you smile hard while you ride it.

I'm Practicing

I got up kind of early and did a road ride yesterday. I figured I should start getting up early and practicing some early morning riding.

It was hot.

I did a little loop around here that we call the pinehurst loop. It's a favorite during hot weather. You're down in the canyon with all the pretty trees and it's nice and cool.

It wasn't early, early. It was an 8:30 a.m. ride. But that's early for me nowadays. Lately I don't get going on the bike till 11 a.m. or noon, after working on my part time gig.

I forgot how many more people are out riding in the morning. Aha, I thought, here they all are.

And then I spent the rest of the day at school, listening to a poetry slam, eating potlucked lunches, having cake, watching balloon tossing, saying goodbyes and so on. At the end of the day, we went home with a years worth of papers and stuff - it being the last day of school and all.



It's officially summer vacation here.



So in celebration of summer vacation, I decided to cook dinner. I'm not one of those who really likes to cook a lot. I will and I do because that's what moms do - but if I can get out of it I will. But I did, since it's now summer and all.

And I drank a can of budweiser while I was making dinner, because that's all we had down in the garage fridge.

And then the oven caught on fire.

And I realized I might be terrible in an emergency situation. Much like how I often stare at the toilet overflowing (i say often, because it's an event that occurs often in a household with children) in disbelief, I did the same with the oven while on fire.

At first I thought the oven light was on. And I looked in to see if the stuff I was cooking was cooking ok. And it took a few seconds to register that what I was seeing was fire. So I opened the oven and stared some more. And I was on the phone at the time, and had to tell the person I was talking to that I had to go and then I put the phone on the cradle.

And after staring some more and still seeing flames, I called Morgan. Who was in the shower having just arrived home from his bike ride. And he came out and put it out.

And then I said that I think we need to clean the oven.

At least I was calm. That would probably help in an emergency.

the Sweet Spot

I landed a full time gig yesterday. That's what I'm going to call my job(s) from now on, gigs. I think it sounds better that way. I have the cyclocross mag gig and also, now, a regular full time gig.

And I can ride my bike to it. I don't have to drive at all. No driving. NO DRIVING! I keep thinking about that part - riding my bike to work, every day. Every, EVERY day. It makes me happy. The job makes me happy too. It's a fun, creative, interesting environment. And there's a dog who hangs out in the office. And I can ride my bike to work.

Here's how it happened.

Last week on one of those perfect long rides, the kind where you have enough time to figure out how you're going to save the world and tell everyone you know how much you love them, I decided to start my own contracting business. I had the business plan all mapped out in my head and it made perfect sense. And I knew who I was going to contact to start the work rolling.

So I did. And he was game.

And then I decided I'd start contacting some others and start focusing even more on this game plan. So I continued on. And while researching, I found this company in SF that was already doing what I was starting to contact contacts about doing - but targeting the opposite type of the business. So I contacted him and asked him if he wanted to hire me. And he replied - that he wasn't really looking for anyone right now, but that he'd be interested in talking to me.

And then, he did a search on me.

And read my blog.

Gulp.

And found the very post that I'd found when I'd searched on myself, pretending to be some prospective employer. The one about weiner mints and dildos and so forth. He mentioned this in the email he sent back to me - those words. Actually, I think he called them dick tacs. You know, like tick tacs?

And then he decided he really did want to talk to me. And we did, last week.

And yesterday, after we met, we decided that we'd work together. And he hired me. And that was that. And so now I have a week and a half of free time, before I start working again, to mess around.

I'm in the sweet spot.

I think I'll try doing a crazy ass epic ride every day next week. And then we'll cap it off with a weekend of camping and riding at downieville.

And then I'll get on my bike and ride it to work on the first day of my full time gig.

Ridingcations

Morgan's on a mancation.

You know, where a bunch of men get together and go on a little vacation together.

I was going to go on a ladycation later in June, but it turns out that the ladycationers are heading to the same place we were thinking about going camping at as a family. So now I'll just camp there with the family and meet up with the ladycationers to ride one day.

This weekend's mancation and the later on, ladycation weekend and the camping weekend are all ridingcations. They're mountain bike ridingcations, because that's all we do on vacations - is ride mostly. And camp. And swim in rivers.

We even did that on our honeymoon. We rode and camped and camped and rode. We rode a tandem bike across the desert for two weeks with all our stuff, stuffed on our bike. Some day I'll write about it, after I recover from the memory.

Anyway, it's up in Downieville this weekend, the mancation is.




I noticed when I was brushing my teeth to go to bed, that Morgan had forgotten his toothbrush and hadn't taken the toothpaste. And it made me ponder what happens on mancations.




Probably stuff like not brushing teeth. And sitting around in your bike shorts for a long time after you ride.




I asked Morgan to be careful. This group of mancationers is from Big Wednesday, which is another night ride Morgan does once in a while on Wednesday nights on the other side of the Bay.



But Big Wednesday's don't sound as tame as the Thursday Night Ride. They're hard core. It usually takes him a few days to recover from a Big Wednesday. His eyes seem a little crazy after he returns from one. All crazy eyed and shit.

Both these rides deserve some capital letters, but I think Big Wednesday might even deserve an exclamation point.



The nice thing about Morgan being gone is that I don't have to lift the piles of unfolded, but clean laundry off the bed and onto the den futon. Instead I just move the piles over to his side of the bed. And then there's a narrow sliver on my side to slip in and go to sleep in.

The Art of Riding Slow

On our sunday ride, I believe I was the slowest.

They all complained that they were sick, or had just raced and won the previous day, or raced at the track a few nights before, or hadn't been riding in months, or that their legs were heavy from the big ride the day before, or they had the flu. But they all zipped up that god damn hill.



I warned them that I'd be the slowest because, well, I didn't have an excuse at all.

I just said I was slow. And I didn't feel like I had to back it up in anyway. I like saying that on rides sometimes. They wait for you to say why, but you don't and then they stare at you with anticipation and you just smile.

There's no excuse for me nowadays.

I'm slow because I'm not working and I'm slow because I'm petting my cat a lot and I'm slow because I'm gardening a lot and I'm slow because I'm spending Friday nights having cocktails at soccer practice and because I haven't shaved my legs in a week or maybe because I have red hair. Or I'm slow because I'm slow.

So yeah, you're listening to me complain about having too much time on my hands and lolly gagging around a lot in it.

Onto more exciting things...

I landed a part time gig with Cyclocross Magazine. I'm very excited. I mean come on, a gig with a magazine in the cycling discipline that I dig the most?! What the hell! THAT'S CRAZY! They must be CRAZY.

But it's true! And there's CRAZY potential. So watch out!

There are times in my life, when I'm hanging around, maybe racing at a cyclocross race or on a mtb ride, or in the middle of that perfect ride when I'm not slow or flipping my husband off while I'm laying on the couch and he asks me to get up and make dinner or when we're camping and sitting around the campfire late at night with a bunch of fun people and I think to myself, Where's the adult here? Who's in charge? How is it that I'm allowed to run around like this having such a good time?

It's CRAZY.

So what if I'm slow right now, it's still fun. And besides it's almost cyclocross season.