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Mon, 18 Apr 2011

All winter, I've had big plans to start biking to work this summer. A few weeks ago, I guy I know informed me that gas prices were going to skyrocket this summer. "Dammit," I said. "I've been planning on using a bike for transportation once the weather warms up. If gas prices go up and other people start biking too, that's going to put a serious dent in my self-righteousness."

My reasons for wanting to bike are manifold, and probably predictable. For one thing, I now live just a little over a mile from work. Last week I was going to make a CD for my car, since I've been driving in silence for quite some time now. When the burn malfunctioned, I just shrugged and realized that I really don't need music for my two-minute drive anyway. My "commute" lasts less than one song. Silence is not even noticeable; it's not like I'm going to be bored.

I figured out awhile back that I average fewer than 20 miles per week in my car. There's the 1.5-ish miles to and from work every day, which adds up to about three miles for those of you who are even worse at math than I am. The grocery store is in the opposite direction from work, and is about a mile away. Sometimes I have to/want to go downtown for a doctor's appointment or to go to a movie or to the public library. I really would like to get that mileage down somewhere around eight or nine miles a week, if that's possible.

A few years ago, I tried biking to work, and that adventure lasted exactly one day. I did live further away from work back then -- about three or four miles of hilly terrain which normally wouldn't have been a problem -- but in addition to that I also did just about everything wrong. For one thing, I picked what was probably the hottest day of the summer to start biking. I woke up really dehydrated, and instead of gulping down water in preparation for my ride, I gulped down coffee, which is a diuretic. Then I strapped a black helmet to my head and took off. When I got to work, I didn't feel well at all. I hydrated some, but my job is very physical and involves a lot of sweating. Eventually, some flu-like symptoms set in, and instead of going home sick, I toughed it out. Then I rode my bike home again, like an idiot, and when I got home, I was dizzy and shivering with fever. I think I might have thrown up.

I'm confident that that won't happen again. For one thing, my hours have changed, which means I'll only be riding in the cooler hours of the day. For another thing, I now know what heat exhaustion is.

The bike I own now is about 15 years old, and is not the ideal bike for general transportation. It's geared way too low. I've been meaning to upgrade for quite some time, but it's hard because there's nothing wrong with my old bike. Today I went to a local bike swap, but all they had were huge, knobby-tired mountain bikes, and skinny, vintage road bikes priced in the $600-$800 range. If those are my options, I'll stick with my old Trek.

Will I actually do this? Well, I want to. There are no good reasons not to. But like most things of this nature, the bad reasons are very compelling. We'll see if they wind up being too compelling. Yeah, we'll see.

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