A Year of Bike Commuting

Sunday, dear friends, marked my one year bike commuting anniversary. Woo! Apparently I set a calendar reminder and totally forgot about it until a text showed up proclaiming the event.

It's not a big thing, but I am proud. The only things I'm really able to continue doing for an entire year is your moms, so this feels like a real, albeit subtle, achievement. Kinda like, "Oh, I've been coming to this same bar for a year." If you've know me personally for any decent length of time you're aware I'm not a big goal setter. This just happened, and I'm glad.

Let's do math! This is going to be so horribly generalized that it's nowhere near accurate, but so what. It's my party. Before I got let go I was commuting 6.5 miles each way. I worked there for about nine months, if I remember correctly. So that's 2,340 miles right there. Then for months and months I was doing 24 to 35 miles every Saturday with the Portsmouth gang. Let's say I did that for... six months at an average of 29.5 miles. There's another 708 miles. All together, 3,048 miles in less than a year strictly going to work and riding on Saturdays. That doesn't count the few races, numerous store runs, and general daily dicking around I do on two wheels. Hells yeah, that's a lot of miles.

Even though it's vaguely unrelated, the recent truck-ectomy I've undergone makes my transition to the dark side feel complete. I do still drive Kasey's car on occasion but if she ever found my collection of questionably-legal "reading material" I'd be four-wheeled vehicle free. Concerning the aforementioned removal of my truck, I would like to say I paint it cleaner and prettier than it actually was. I do like being bicycle-only, but I don't like the way it went down, and I apologize to those that had to deal with it.

As other peeps online (see the Stalk Others section, stage right) have already said, it's not really about saving money or the environment (which are both good) although I admit to resorting to charts & graphs regularly when attempting to convert non-riders. Cycling is a huge complex of simple pleasures, beauty, and logistics all working smoothly together to produce a phenomenon that's just good. I feel dumb trying to name it so I'm done. Just try it. Twice. Even if it hurts the first time. ;)

In celebration I rode My Girl Friday, recently retrofitted with a front brake, into work yesterday. I want to take her out more, but she's like the hot teen-aged daughter I hope to never have: I think everyone wants to take her away from me and do horrible, horrible things. I see them eying her as we go by, leering like construction workers. Jenny is the tomboy, I don't worry about her much. We'll see how it turns out.

In closing, I'd like to thank Kasey for putting up with my ever-increasing bike dorkiness, and my friend Kurtz for being the first car-free guy I know and showing me it could be done with style and a hefty drinking schedule. Also Google Maps for only steering me wrong once out of a million routes, and all the guys at Cycle Classics for fixing my shit and giving me a place to hang. And God. Because I feel Him in this blog tonight. But not Jesus. Jesus can suck it.

- David