Bicycling

Me and the bike

Let’s have a minute’s silence for all those Americans who are currently sitting in traffic on the way to the gym to ride a stationary bicycle.

Earl Blumenauer

It’s the 2000’s and people are talking about running out of oil… just like in the 1970s. We just change the words we use to describe the feeling of inevitable environmental chaos and the story’s the same. And both then and now, suddenly people remember that they don’t actually have to drive places but can return to their child’s toy, from before they were a big bad adult with a car, to go places.

I guess that’s a valid reason to get a bike, but I got a bicycle for completely unrelated reasons. See, I hate working out. I hate doing exercise. And I’m an hacker, so I sit in front of a keyboard for quite a few hours a day. One ought to recognize that our bodies are engineered for a reasonable amount of physical activity so it only makes sense that a decided lack of exercise is going to screw you up.

So I find that I really do feel better in a lot of ways when I bike. And then I feel down when I don’t bike for a while. So clearly it’s either I really do need to get exercise or I’ve psychosomatically convinced myself that I need to. Either way, at the very least the studies show I’ll at least live longer.

So it turns out that the way things are set up where I live, I can bike to work and there’s interesting things to see along the way. Like the time I was biking right in front of Moffett Field and saw a trio of T-38’s in formation with NASA logos on them coming in for a landing. And there’s plenty of neat stuff to bike to in the area on my own time that I can take pictures of.

The part that works out for me is that walking is too slow but driving is too fast to really enjoy what I’m seeing. So, this way, I can kinda forget that I’m exercising. This is really why I bike. I mean, it’s nice to know that when we run out of oil, my car may be useless but my bike will still work just fine, but we are capable of astonishing amounts of self-delusion when we hear the “there’s only so much oil… we’re going to run out” message… like in most of the nineties.

Anyway, I decided that I’m committed enough to the bike-centric lifestyle that I should put some notes on the web about stuff. I tend to geek out about things, so be warned.