So I’m working full-time again. As of January 2 of this year, I am the substitute Technical Services/Electronic Resources Librarian at a college in Brooklyn. I love my (challenging!) job and my (fantastic!) coworkers and I hope this stint will lead to a permanent position in the (awesome!) department… but what I’m really here to write about is my bike.
I love my bike. My boyfriend got me a 2012 Salsa Casseroll for the winter holidays and I’ve been riding it for a month now. I fall in love with it all over again every morning and then again every night. I miss it when I’m not riding it and I’m frustrated when I have to walk somewhere. (For 5 straight days two weeks ago, I couldn’t ride my bike — my fault, not the bike’s — so I took the subway to work and walked the 3 miles home. What do you mean it takes 3 times longer by foot to cover the same distance!? my mind kept yelling.) So now I not only look forward to work everyday but I also eagerly anticipate my commute.
…Unless it’s raining heavily or the winds are blowing at over 50 MPH. Then, yes, I’d rather be somewhere indoors but only because I hate being wet and fighting the wind to stay upright.
So when I realized this morning that my bike needed to go to the shop for some adjustments (derailleurs, brakes), I dreaded the possibility of having to leave my bike there overnight because I’d only be getting in around closing time. Instead, I spent about 15 minutes in the shop as the mechanic fiddled with some knobs and tightened some cables… after he ogled my bike and his buddy let out a wolf whistle. (The attention wasn’t expected but it was definitely appreciated.) It was a painless experience and I left with my bike, ready to tackle another day of commuting duty.
I’ve been consistently riding in to work at least 4 days out of the week. (We had a flurry of three-day weekends that I’ll miss going into a strictly-five-day-workweek March. I also had off-campus meetings that didn’t lend themselves to being bike friendly, as I stuck around afterwards to grab lunch with colleagues and/or travel back to campus with coworkers.) This would have been another one of those weeks — what with an off-campus meeting first thing tomorrow — but I think I’ll suck it up and bike there. It’s under 8 miles of mostly bike lanes. The weather is supposed to be nice tomorrow, too. (High of 46°F! As much as it worries me that this winter can barely be classified as winter, I love that the mild weather keeps me on my bike.)
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