After buying my bike, I practiced riding around the neighborhood 15-20 minutes at a time. San Francisco is a very hilly place, so I wanted to be sure that I would be able to ride these hills without having a heart attach. Being out of shape, these first few jaunts were tiring to say the least, but that's why I practiced instead of just getting on my bike and riding the 4 plus miles to work.
To Work:
For my first trip to work, I rode with some friends to get my bearings, and to get comfortable riding around with all of cars and other cyclists. It was about one mile to their place, but it was a pretty flat route, so it wasn't too difficult. We went from their place to Golden Gate Park, through the park to
The Wiggle, and finally to Market Street where I headed to work. All told, it was about 6.2 miles to work. As it was my first day riding to work, I was kind of just soaking it all in. From my friend's place to work was about 5 miles and I made it to work in about 35 minutes, which wasn't half bad.
From Work:
The ride home was not fun at all. As I was preparing to leave work, I looked in the direction of home and noticed a blanket of fog slowly working its way towards downtown. Fog is no fun, and when you're watching it move towards you, it means that there is also wind, which, I learned, makes your ride home pretty crappy. As I trekked down Market Street back towards The Wiggle, I tried to find people who were about as slow as me, so I could draft off of them. This was good in theory, but I quickly learned that not many people were as slow as me.
Being slow does have its benefits though. As I was at a stoplight on Market, I heard a wonderful tune. Someone was playing Stevie Wonder's "Isn't She Lovely" from a stereo. As I looked around trying to determine the source of this glorious tune, I was surprised to see that it was coming from a woman who was dancing around holding a boom-box. This woman looked like she'd seen better days, and reminds me of the quote from the woman in the "Leprechaun in the Hood" video: "Could be a crackhead..." As I watched this lady, dancing to Stevie Wonder, holding a boom-box to her ear, she began doing something peculiar. There was a fire hydrant close to her, right near the cross-walk, and she seductively approached this innocent fire hydrant and began dancing with it. This was not nice dancing though. She was grinding and twerking on the fire hydrant as the music continued to play.
As this was happening (remember, I was stopped at a stop light), a man crossed the street. He looked normal enough and was just walking along, minding his own business. When he finished crossing the street, he walked perilously close to the fire hydrant, and the dancing crack head smacked his ass.
Then the light turned green and I had to move on.
The rest of the ride was a mixture of sweat, fog, labored breathing and burning thigh muscles, but I successfully made it home.
