Go Ride a Bike

I love commuting by bike.  It's sweet to be able to arrive somewhere and knowing that I didn't just burn a bunch of fossil fuels.  Walking place is pretty awesome too, but biking throws in the fun factor and the workout factor.  I've been doing a lot of this of late, and really enjoying it.  Right now my morning ride takes somewhere in the 35-minute ballpark, and back takes more like 45 minutes, all the way to an hour if it's windy/nasty out.  This is on a hardtail mountain bike with slicks on it, I'm sure it would be much faster on a road bike or cycle-cross, but I don't own either one of those.  The other day it only took me 40 minutes back, because there was no wind at all.  Glorious.  It's funny, I was trying to figure out why the way home is always so much slower.  I think there are three factors that add up to drop my time by 15+ minutes:  1) It's slightly uphill at the end.  It's pretty flat, in a car you would never notice, but it is slightly uphill, and that makes a big difference.  2) The giant killer wind.  The same one that is at my back on the way to work.  3) Left turns.  The way there has lots of right turns (I, like, totally paused), but on the way home I have to yield to traffic a lot of the time, holding my left arm out like a *)*#)$*#.  (I'll stop f-bombing and saying r&#($&(#o).

I'm hoping to go to MEC tomorrow and grab a cheap cycling computer, so I can dork out even more.  Wait, "grab" makes it sound like I'm going to shoplift it.  Don't worry, I'm planning to pay.  I'd go for something more valuable if I was going to risk shoplifting. ;)

A couple of things from my recent rides:

• squirrels are ricardo.  I almost hit one the other day.  I was heading downhill, and I slowed right down because it was running out into the street.  It stopped, and when I went to roll by it, barely moving, it made it's break for my front tire.  I didn't hit it, but it was close enough the I said "fucking squirrels!", which means it was close.
• Most drivers share the road and are pretty courteous.  A lot of the idiots are big idiots.  I had a guy in a big truck (of course), try to pass me between two stop signs that were about 60 ft apart.  He couldn't quite make it, so instead he basically turned his truck horizontally in front of me, so that I had to stop and wait.  He then had to wait at the stop sign for a gap in traffic.  I'm pretty sure he didn't think that was going to happen, because he looked guiltily back in his rearview mirror at me, and I sympathetically and clearly mouthed "you bastard" at him.  Okay, so not so sympathetically. 
• Brookfield Properties claims to be a green company, but really they are smog-coloured.  More on this later, but I'm going to make it a separate blog.

Anyway, these are just semi-memorable things that happened.  I don't really look at them negatively, they were just strange and therefore worth mentioning.  I think I am finally my legs used to this much extra riding.  It's been an adjustment for sure.  And I love it.  :)