Biking to work

I rode into work yesterday. My bike ride for Habitat for Humanity is Saturday and I've been a little lax. Definition of "lax" - haven't really spent any time on my bike in 3-4 months. I was doing 30+ mile rides there for a while in spring and early summer. Now I'm struggling to keep up a good pace for 10 miles :(.

Raleigh is far more friendly for bikes than Richmond. Here they at least care if there is a hit and run death of a cyclist. But yesterday was very nice in that no one beeped at me or tried to run me off the road. Its the little things that I consider wins. It was the ride home that make me the mot concerned. It was raining and late. We had a 5pm demo and I didn't want to miss it. I didn't leave the office until 5:30 and still had to change and get on the road. Fortunately the ride home is much quicker than the ride in (mostly down hill). With the rain and low visibility, I thought I would have more problems with the other traffic, but it turns out no one is walking during this time - which opens up a nice friendly path - the sidewalk. Normally I would not be a proponent of bikes on sidewalks - too much can go wrong with different speed critters on the same path, but since Raleigh doesn't have bike lanes on every road - you need to do wants require to not risk your life unnecessarily.

I did make it back to the house before it was completely dark - which would have sucked on my last leg, along the community greenway. I was covered in mud though and my back pack took much of the abuse (it also had my MacBook Pro in it - which fortunately did not get wet at all). I am glad that I got the cycle-cross bike instead of a regular road bike. I was able to handle the standing water and mud without too much problems.

Thursdays is supposed to be nice so I'll have to ride then too and I'll have a hope of not dying Saturday. I still haven't ridden in a group. I'm more a solitary person when I'm exercising or playing games. Sure there are times when I'd like to be part of a group, but for the most part I'd rather just rely on myself instead of others. I don't know what to expect when there will be a ton of other cyclists out there with me.