Bicycle: Yay

I've been without a car for a couple of weeks now, which means that my primary transport is my trusty bicycle. Well, it might be too soon to use the word "trusty", because I only got the bike after my car died. But so far, it's working out okay.

Actually, better than okay. For some reason, I'm enjoying riding a bicycle around town. Even this last weekend, when I had to be at work at midnight (and worked fifteen hours on Saturdayy and seventeen hours on Sunday, I'm just saying), the ride to work was not only pretty quick (fifteen minutes both times), but fun. Certainly more fun than driving a car.

Maybe it's just because I've never really bought into that whole "Complete Driving Satisfaction" thing. To me, a car is just a thing you sit in until you're at your destination; joyriding has never been my cup of tea. Neither has tea, come to think of it.

But when I'm riding a bicycle, I get to cut through parking lots and zip around like a maniac. And even if I'm not going as fast as I would in a car, I'm still going faster than I would on foot. And the wind is in my face, so it feels faster than a car does.

There are a few bad points, of course. I live up on a hill, so that 15-minute ride to word translates to about 25 on the way home. But I can get around that by swallowing my pride and taking a bus up the hill, if I can convince myself that it's worth a dollar to not have to exert myself. And it usually is, because the hill's so steep that I haven't yet made it all the way up without having to walk my bike. And as silly as I feel riding a bike while cars whoosh past, that's nothing compared to walking it. I might as well hold up a sign saying "I am not man enough to ride a bike". I'm sure I'll either get over it or build my thighs up to some freakish level so I can get home.

The other problem is that all this happened too late for me to get a messenger bag from Cafe Press, the people that make merchandise for 90% of the websites in the world. All those Mighty Big TV messenger bags? Gone. I might have made my own, but it's too late for that, even if I wasn't worried that I'd look like King Geek with a bag for my own website. Oh well.

The real bicycle-riders, the ones who bicycle-commute every day in their lycra pants, probably hate me. I usually ride on the sidewalk to stay out of the way of the cars; that goes directly against all the "We Have a Right to the Road" rhetoric. And I do feel bad about them paying lobbyists for better bicycle-protection laws, but there's more room on the sidewalk, dammit. And anyway, it's easier to feel like Mr. Cool Bike Messenger Guy and cut through parking lots and back alleys if you're already off the road.

Now, having said all that, I expect I will shortly get fed up with not having a car. If I want to go any distance, I have to take the bus (which I'm really good at, because I used to ride the bus all the time). If I want to go book or cd shopping, it's a major operation. Okay, so that's actually a secret benefit, because I save money. But it's also a hassle to go grocery shopping. It turns out that one of the ways bicycle-riding helps you lose weight is by making it hard to get food.