Bike Blog

How my landlord decides to inconvenience me for not driving...

I had intended to set a personal distance-covered record.... but then I had two brainos in a row...

It's about the same for me...

I was chatting with my boss (a competition-grade triathlete with several bikes who is much more hardcore than I am) about my average commute speed now that I've got a speedometer to measure it with. And on a flat segment of pavement, I can usually maintain 19-22 mph, which is allegedly impressive for a non-athlete on a mountain-ish bike. We decided it's largely the tires, since that's the main difference between my bike and a mountain bike. The way he said it was "I bet you are getting a couple of extra miles per hour because of the tires," which then required me to follow that with "Yeah, and I think I can get a few more with an exhaust tip".

My biking brethren in LA have done the ultimate protest. Better than Critical Mass, even.

It was very hot and the VTA train was having problems, so I ended up biking all the way to work, then around a bit at lunch time (free lunch + ride for us cyclists) and then home.

I came to a sad realization... If I want to get cycling shoes that actually fit, I'm going to spend an ton of money. And toe clips aren't made for feet my size.

So I have biked all of the bikeable areas of Rancho San Antonio now. Sadly, there aren't very many. I blame asshole mountain bikers for wrecking too many trails trying to look like the mountain bike advertisements. Many of the trails I know that I could bike without running people down or causing any more wear than a jogger, but I'm just not allowed.

So, first decently long ride on the new bike. I'm not sure exactly how long because the cyclecomputer got confuzzled after a bit about things (needed to be moved down the fork, I think) and thought I'd reached 75mph. Somewhere in the 15-20 mile range.

Okay, the ride isn't so bad now. I have a nice cargo net for the bike so I can strap down a piece of tupperware with my lunch in it and not worry about it leaking over my backpack.

Riding with my new bike

So, getting back into riding after several months of no riding is kicking my ass big time...

So I opted for another hybrid-ish bike. I wanted something that would work like the one I had before because that was working quite well for me.

Sometime between 9:30 last night and 9 this morning, somebody jacked my bike.

So, it turns out that biking is a drug. If I go too long without biking, I get depressive and moody and want to hide under my desk at work. When I start biking again, I stop feeling like that.

So I just finished my morning bike ride...

So our _________ was acting up today and I had to fix it. So ____ and I spent a bunch of time on the phone with _________ (who, I might add, are prone to EXCEPTIONAL bouts of stupidity in a "getting paged at 2am" sort of way).

So, I've been biking to work routinely now, plus biking for fun.

I've been wanting to get a bike for a few months now. The way I figure it, given that WireCorp is in Sunnyvale and is only a few miles away, there's no point in not biking to work...