Bicycling

Today is Friday, and I've been cycling to work for a week now (I'd have done it before, except I didn't have a bike). There's a path along the beach bike path, which is quite cool. Except that you get sand in your chain, and there are sometimes really dim people in the way. (Sometimes cycling, sometimes not, despite the fact that it says "bikes only" very clearly in lots of places. There was a bit of debate on the area cycling yahoo group about what to do about that. My personal solution is to ring my bell (great bell that Holly bought me - so thanks) and then cycle past them as close and fast as I dare. This morning there was a big group of old people standing on the path taking photos of something. (I couldn't tell what was so exciting that they all should photograph it). I rode past them very slowly and carefully.

It takes slightly longer than driving (if I drive outside the rush hour; between 8 and 10 it's quicker to cycle), but it's not very far - about three and a half miles, which is enough to get a bit sweaty. Corporation of Current Employment has a locker room, with showers (like where Warrick and Stokes have their little heart to hearts on CSI sometimes), so I have a shower there.

I've got obsessive about trying to save time on my ride. I don't like riding with stuff in my shorts pockets (in case it falls out) so I keep it all in my pannier, and then leave it there all day - that saves a bit of time, so I don't spend time transferring it. (You can pay for food with your identity card, which you need to have all the time, so I don't need money). There are two hairdryers, so I use them both at the same time, and I don't dry my legs with my towel, because they can evaporate while I dry my hair. I don't tie my shoelaces after the shower, I do that while my computer is turning on. If I can do 10 things that save 30 seconds each, that will save 5 minutes twice a day, which means I get home 10 minutes earlier, and have 10 more minutes hanging out.

Trouble with showering fast is that you don't feel like you've had a proper shower, so you have to have another when you get home, which obviously doesn't save time. So I do have to dawdle in the shower a tiny bit, and get thoroughly abluted.

There is a bicycle storage room - you have to register before you are allowed to use it, and put a sticker on your bike to show it is registered too. (My bike is number 1024). If you ride 15 times per month, you get an extra 30 dollars pay. The bicycle storage room has a really good pump in it, screwed to the floor, which was very handy when I had a puncture on Wednesday (the seal around the valve failed, I wonder if it was the stress of the flight for my poor bike). The bicycle storage room also has a shelf for surfboards, and about 8 surfboards on it.

Drying my towel is another slightly tricky issue I've encountered. The first couple of times I hung it on the back of my office door, but then it's not quite dry at going home time, and I didn't want to stuff it in my locker damp, so I hung it on an empty locker door. A lot of people hang their towels on empty locker doors though, and because my towel was pinched borrowed from the apartment, it was white. Like every other towel there. So I'm not 100% sure that I've got the right towel. (When I was much younger, I was discussing the need to wash towels with my mother. "Somebody might have dried their bottom on it" she said. "Yes, but it would have been a clean bottom" I thought of saying, about 10 minutes later, when it was too late. So I've been waiting to use that. And I use it now, as I think about the bottom that might have been dried on the towel that might not be mine.) Ominously, the main other contender for the position of "actually my towel" doesn't seem to have moved. The lesson is to bring a strange colored towel for the office (notice the US spelling there?)

JD suggested taking a series of photos of my ride to work, which is a good idea, when I get my camera-computer link sorted out. (And when I work out the rules of taking cameras into CoCC - I think you have to declare them or hand them in or something.)