Riding Down the Road

I've recently made an important decision in my life. I've decided to start riding my bike to work a couple of days every week. I'm sure that, with the price of gas, I'm not the only one making decisions such as this. However, it made me wonder if this was the safest choice I could have made. For starters, much of my ride to work (roughly 10 miles each way) was originally on highways so I had to find some other way to get there. Once I figured out the best route to take, I kind of shuddered because there are several roads I have to ride down that aren't necessarily the safest for bikers. However, Louisville prides itself as a bike-friendly community.

Now I personally had never helped the city to reinforce this idea, as I used to get really angry at bikers. I was the guy who, after passing a biker on the road, cut back over into his lane a little too close. And I would show my displeasure for these bikers by passing close on their side or just plain trying to scare them. I never did anything dangerous, but it made me feel better about myself. I think most of this anger stems from being a runner. I could never understand why a biker couldn't stay within his/her bike lane when as a runner, I stayed as far away from cars as I could (most of the time...my running etiquette is definitely something for an entirely different post). But now that I've biked to work once (today), I've completely changed my attitude on these fellow endurance athletes.

As I rode down Lexington Road (a hilly, windy 4-lane road) I was amazed at how courteous most of the cars on the road were to me. I was nervous starting out my journey, but once I got about halfway down this road, I realized that most cars would watch out for me. It took me roughly 40 minutes to bike to work today, and while I'm not looking forward to going home during the evening rush hour, I think this is a good decision for me, and one which I will pursue further in the future. Of course, I need to find a better way to transport my clothes to work, as I rolled in sweaty and tired and had to spend about 15 minutes cleaning up and making myself look presentable. But that's 15 minutes I wasn't working, so that's another advantage.

I think this biking will set me up for further adventures in endurance sports. Perhaps a bike ride to my sister's place about 30 miles away is in order in the future. I fully plan to follow through, probably this fall, on my plan to run about 18 miles from my parents' house in St. Louis to Steve's house. The possibilities are endless, and I encourage anyone reading this to think about ways to make crazy adventures like this.

Speaking of, this reminds me of a time about 6 or 7 years ago when Steve and I went to see Poison in concert in St. Louis. At the time Steve lived probably about 3 or 4 miles from where the concert was taking place. So of course, at the end of the concert, instead of getting a ride home and dealing with traffic, we decided that walking was obviously the best idea we could have had. Unfortunately, Steve wasn't entirely sure of the way to go. So instead of this walk taking the hour or so we had estimated, it ended up turning into a 4-hour debacle in which we walked into his apartment at around 2:30 in the morning. This was after taking a full hour walking in a circle, as I specifically remember saying, "Weren't we here an hour ago." Either way, we walked away from this experience with a great story to tell, and no lesson was learned by anyone.

On a different note, I've finally won the battle with my apartment complex. After over two months of fighting, and a few weeks of them not getting back to me, they finally sent me an email allowing me out of my lease early. Of course, it still took another correspondence to put the fact that they are allowing me to do this without penalty in writing, but now I have it and I'm officially on the market to rent a house. Winning=Good Times!!!