Joel Hainley

At the beginning of May, after thinking about it for over a month, I went down and bought myself a bicycle. A Cannondale Touring Model road bike, unfortunately I had to order it because they didn’t have any in stock. Cannondale had some sort of problems getting the order out the door on time, due to a tardy shipment from a supplier so I didn’t receive the bike until last tuesday.

Once I had settled up with the bicycle shop, and gotten some adjustments made, i rode it back to the office, then rode it home. I’ve ridden to work every day since then, so i’m coming up on a week that i’ve been riding. It has been awesome thus far, I haven’t ridden in years, and to be able to ride a bike of this quality is a complete pleasure.

I ride to the BART station in Baypoint, and get off at North Concord ( the next stop ), the only reason I take bart at all is because there isn’t really a safe way to get to concord from baypoint on a bicycle. Something I hope they fix soon. This gives me about a 4 mile ride, for approximately 8 miles each day. A good amount I would guess.

It has been really nice, a great way to start and end the workday. I’m getting stronger already, my time to get to work and back is getting shorter and shorter, and i’m able to make it the whole way without requiring a stop. Something I couldn’t manage the first few days.

When I decided to buy the bike, the idea was to incorporate some exercise into my daily routine, so on that point I’m definitely making out. However, now I’m starting to wonder what it would take to get into shape for a century, maybe do a metric century or something. I need to get into a bit better shape before I could do something like that, but who knows. maybe i’ll give it a go at some point. Riding around lake tahoe would be fun, perhaps I can do that again ( the last time I rode around lake tahoe was on my 10th birthday )

Another oddity about this is that my chevron bill is going to be really skinny this month, I don’t think i’ve been to the gas station in over 10 days now, and I’m pretty sure that the last time i bought a tank of gas it was about $11 for the motorcycle. Gotta love it.

The short amount of time I’m on Bart doesn’t really afford me much time to read but that’s ok, i spend a good portion of the time on the train trying to catch my breath from the riding I just did to get there.

One rather odd point, my bicycle cost me more than my truck did. Go Figure.