Concepts in the Paradox

Don’t forget that May 14th is Bike to work day. My commute is one hill shorter this year, so the total commute time should be around 25 minutes, or 4 miles flat. I’ve been able to time the lights along Market and Division Streets, and with any luck, I can do a full scale downhill assault and cut the time to 20 minutes.

Now that the Bikeplan has been unblocked, I can look forward to a safer commute over the next 2 years while construction goes on. Hopefully there will be some new riders who can experience how safe biking in the city is, along with having a healthier, and cheaper, way to get to work and run errands.

Tomorrow is bike to work day, on what is probably going to be one of the nicer days of the year in our normally cold, foggy, and windy city.

Local activists will be handing out free food and free advice all over the city to get people to come out and pedal to the office. There are at least two “energizer stations” on my route to work, so it looks like I’m getting a free breakfast tomorrow!

Time to work on trackless trolley: 50 minutes (6 -> 30)
Time to work on N-Judah light rail: 38 minutes
Time to work on bike: 27 minutes

Total distance: 4.1 miles.

On Sunday I took a long bike ride, from Golden Gate Park, through the Presidio, across the Golden Gate Bridge and back, through the car congested Marina, down the grid locked Embarcadero, around the strangely silent Bay Bridge, and back up Market to home. The journey was about 21 miles, a new road riding record for me, and with all the hills, I couldn’t drink enough water.

This week the bike cage is supposed to be fixed at work, so I will be leaving the N-Judah to the Sunset suckers and enjoying some fresh air while scooting through the wiggle and down Market st. Biking to work, then back home, are both my favorite parts of the day.

Thinking of biking to work, but you don’t live in a city? See:

How to ride your bike to work

I was going through my unsorted stack of receipts today, looking for the my warranty documents for my Marin urban bike. It’s time to take it in for adjustments, and while I’m at it I want to take the Timberline mountain bike in for a tune-up. In the process I came across the registration tags for my Subaru.

It looks like I failed to apply the tags. I must have forgotten in the chaos of moving, and as a result I got two “expired tabs” $50 tickets on my car the last 2 weeks.  I decided to take a bike ride up to my magical street parking permit zone in Western Addition to apply the tags. Luckily, no new citations this time around, but not so luckily me the battery was dead. I had left the map lights on the last time I used the car. Good going me!

$45 later, my automo-car was jump started by a friendly SoMA tow truck driver. Yay insurance reimbursements!

I put the car up on cars.com this time around. CL didn’t yield a single hit. I’m priced lower than all the other Subaru’s in a 250 mile area, so I should get *something* soon.

I did a dry run of my commute, taking Post down to Market then going in the Davis & Market Embarcadero entrance. I then locked up my bike, looked at the time, and from start to finish it took exactly 30 minutes. 6:07 to 6:37. This included my normal fumbling like, “where is my helmet? Gloves? Locks? Oh! I need water!”

The way back also took 30 minutes. I took Drumm up to Sutter, then Sutter all the way back home. The whole process was pretty exhausting.

Here’s what to expect taking a bike on the busy streets of San Francisco:

• If you don’t take up the whole lane, taxis will try to nudge past.

• If someone is driving an old beater, watch out! If you can smell the car, chances are they’ll try to run you over.
• This isn’t a good way to get fresh air. Most of the cars stink, especially gas powered taxis, police cars and police motor bikes.
• The hills aren’t as bad as they look. Expect to hit plenty of red lights so you can get some rest.
• Pedestrians don’t notice you. They’ll walk right into your path, even if you have right of way.
• Don’t worry about Muni. You’ll zoom past the bus and never see it again during your commute.

I need to buy a bell or horn or something so I don’t have to yell at people to get out of the way, as well as some flashing lights so I can get around at dusk.

I must say one thing is for sure, this will get me into shape way faster than the gym did!

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I finally got around to putting my Mac Mini, which has been sitting disused in a box for 2 months, up on Craigslist. I made up a nice little ad, slapped on a price of $450, and immediately got one buyer, and only one buyer, who was interested. Expecting another flake out, I told this guy to pick it up ASAP or I’ll sell it to the first guy who comes to my door. “Sure”, he says, “I’ll be over tomorrow morning”.

Since I had just given some stranger my address and phone number, I figured I’d see if this “Cliff Stoll” guy had any Google juice. And well, uh, I guess he has Wikipedia juice too.

When he showed up, he didn’t even ask me to boot the little Mac up. He said he’d looked at this very blog, decided that since I ran Linux I was trustworthy, and handed me the cash.

I was now $450 richer. So what to do with $450?

I went to the Freewheel Bike Shop on Valencia and asked what they recommended for $450, and they recommended the Marin Muriwoods 20 urban bike. I took it for a ride up the block, in what I can only describe as “frightening” San Francisco traffic (really, is it possible for people to drive any worse?), and loved it. I bought it with a helmet and ulock, and now I have one less way to get fucked by Muni in the morning: