Ridin'

I suppose I should write about our trip to the zoo last weekend. But instead I'll tell you about today's commute into work.

Nick (coworker buddy of mine) and I decided a few weeks ago that we should ride our bikes into work. This appealed to me greatly, although I was apprehensive about the logistics of changing once we got to work, carrying stuff and all that.

The positive side is that I do have a good, light, sturdy bike to use. And it's a road bike. Nick, on the other hand, has a second (or possibly fifth) hand Huffy. It's basically a pallet of bricks on wheels. Stupid heavy.

So anyway, this morning I intended to wake up at 5, get some cereal, take a shower, and then take my time getting ready for the ride. This did not happen. I got up at 6 -- when Nick said he'd be at my place. I called him and found out he was outside. I asked for more time. He ran over to the Meijer next door to pick up some forgotten items. I hustled to get ready. Fortunately, I had put my change of clothes and everything else out and ready the night before. This degree of foresight for me is quite astounding, although I was pretty pleased with myself.

I don't like carrying anything on my back while I ride, but since I don't have panniers, I threw on the bag, and we headed out. Nick had a backpack as well. We live up around 126th Street north of Indy. Our office is at 10th. 116 blocks and what turned out to be about 16 3/8 miles.

The first three miles or so were spent simply getting to the Monon Trail. This is one of those rails-to-trails deal here in Indy. It's pretty fantastic, and it runs from downtown north to where I live. However, they're rerouting part of the trail under one of the roads, so it's closed for a bit. We had to use regular roads until about 111th street where we picked up the trail.

The Monon is wide, paved and flat. You're supposed to stop at cross streets, but drivers will usually stop instead and let you go. Up north, the cross streets are about every 10-15 blocks. As you get closer to town, it's more like every 5, which is really annoying.

The ride for me was amazingly good considering I haven't ridden the bike in several months. Also, I hadn't eaten anything. Nothing. Not even water. I thought this would bite me in the ass, but now.

Since Nick is relatively new to the whole biking thing, I told him that his best bet to make the trip easier would be to draft off of me. He was amazed at the results. The pacing was pretty easy for me because of the lighter bike -- he had to really stay on top of things to get his Huffbeast at speed.

For whatever reason, I thought the ride down would be a lot harder. It was insanely easy and comfortable, I daresay. The time went by (for me at least) really fast. And while there weren't frequent milemarkers, the descending street numbers were a huge plus. Sometimes we'd be really surprised at how much we'd covered.

At 16th St. we left the trail and headed over to Meridian, about 6 blocks away or something. I needed to go to the bank. I went through the drivethrough ATM for the first time on a bike, which was amusing. Our office is right off Meridian at 10th, so the ride there was easy and in traffic. Fun.

Not a lot of folks at the office at 7:30ish -- the whole ride took about an hour and 10 minutes or so. Not bad. We averaged close to 14 mph. Since the morning was very cool, my sweat wasn't out of control. We changed and stowed the bikes in empty cubicles nearby. It's amazing that once you change into dry clothes (and slather on extra deodorant) you really don't feel the sweat and heat any more.

We thought that the ride home would be a little more difficult since the city is lower in elevation than Carmel. But it's very slight. However, there was an insane amount of wind blowing.

We found out once on the trail again that the wind was blowing ... north. Perfect! It helped out and helped mitigate the burning sun. Fortunately the trail is mostly covered with trees. Nick was struggling a lot more after we got up to about 75th street, though. The bike was getting to be more and more of a pain to slug along. He was hurting for water which we eventually got at 96th street (I bought some Gatorade before we left.)

The trip home took only 3 or so minutes more than the trip down. Some of the crosswinds had to do with that, I think.

I will definitely do this again. I think every Thursday, actually. I truly have no reason not to. I think once I'm done with the silly commuting out to Terre Haute and Beyond I might even consider riding the bike up to three days a week.

I checked the maps online and our new house is ... 25 miles from the office on local roads. And some of those local roads are divided four-lane highway types. Yikes. Not exactly what I want to be riding on considering how Hoosiers really aren't used to bicyclists. I am going to look for smaller roads obviously. But that's for this fall. I'm really not concerned about the 25 miles. The trick is just finding the fastest way onto the trail and going from there.