It finally happened, despite every excuse I could come up with. The universe put me on a bike.
When I started working at Mixte, I wrote a blog post about how I should commute to work by bike instead of car. But I didn’t think it would actually happen. It was a tree on the top of Mt. Should. I didn’t even own a bike.
A week later, I was helping my in-laws put away groceries and noticed an old bike in the corner. Suddenly it was offered to me and I was driving home with it in my trunk. But I lived way too far away from the office to commute by bike, I told myself. Ocean Beach seemed like an ocean away from La Jolla. I might ride to the post office and back, but that’s it.
Another week later I was chatting with Joel from the San Diego Bicycle Coalition. Turns out he lives a block away from me and commutes to Ocean Beach often. He even offered to ride with me. He said the ride was “really not that bad.” Of course he could do it, but he worked at the Bike Coalition, I told myself. I hadn’t ridden a bike since I was twelve. It wasn’t happening.
Somehow I kept finding myself talking to cyclists (a common side effect of working at Mixte) who all had an opinion on the ride from my apartment to the Mixte office, and the opinions were all along the lines of, “it’s really not that bad… take Rose Canyon... you’ll be fine… it’s not as hard as it seems.”
Then I stubbed my toe at the gas station.
Then I spent half an hour looking for parking outside my own apartment.
Then my sister needed to borrow my car.
My wife was going to have to drive me to work, ten miles in the opposite direction of her office. I felt bad. So I sneered at the bike on my porch, shook my fist at the universe and made the decision to tackle the bike commute.
I knew a week in advance and announced it to the office to make sure I went through with it. Jamie was thrilled, and she and Karim offered to ride all the way back to La Jolla with me in solidarity. That was surprisingly nice and incredibly supportive. I was now also locked in further with a layer of guilt.
