Bike To Work Day 2007

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Originally uploaded by cbnystrom.

My semi-regular bike commuting season kicked off today with Bike To Work Day. My commute from Ellicott City into downtown Baltimore is about 14 miles each way.

My place of employment is not too supportive of bike commuting or anything not related to the bottom line. In the photo you can see the one and only bike rack for our 35 story building. There's probably one bike rack spot for every 200+ people in the building. Gee. Plus, we're business dress (suit & tie) Monday through Thursday most of the year. They act like they're doing you some huge favor when they announce business casual dress from Memorial Day to Labor Day...and threaten to take it away if somebody's slacks aren't pressed. Give me a fucking break.

Anyway, the ride in was awesome. I've been off the bike all week so the initial climb out of the Patapsco River valley was painful. After a bit the legs opened up and felt pretty good.

After hauling ass through the muy sketchy west side of downtown I rolled up to city hall for the bike to work day rally. Free t-shirts, tasty Caribou coffee, and pastries from Whole Foods were in full effect. We heard several speakers discuss bicycle transportation advocacy. It's really cool to see so many people committed and working hard to have an effect on our car-centric public policy. Between the speakers and the coffee I was fired up.

Paul K. (from the Wed. SS rides) and I were interviewed by channel 13. The reporter was pretty excited about the whole ride-your-bike-to-work concept and asked us why we did it. I forgot to mention the beer angle. darn.

Now I'm at work hoping that my ride home is not in the rain.

TGIF.

word.