New job! and, bike commuting

So I started my new job at Wallop on Monday (part of why you haven’t heard from me), and I love it!  I think I’ve already had more fun than I did during all my time at Adobe put together.  I’m writing specs and designing the user interface, back end, etc. as well as project managing the feature, and I LOVE it.  I’ve written two small specs already and am working on #3 and #4.

What is not so fun are the commuting options.  There is a parking garage nearby, but parking costs $240/month AND you have to get your car out by 6pm, when the garage closes.  (6pm?  How lame is that?!?)  Individual days are only $9/day – except on Giants game days when the price goes up to $30 (or more) per day!  So driving in is both high-cost (in $$) and high-hassle.

I tried the 3rd Street Light Rail.  Door to door, it took 44 minutes to get to work (including time walking on either end), versus a 15 minute drive.  Clearly, this was not working.

I tried driving partway (to get past the scary 3rd Street corridor) and then biking the rest.  That sort of worked, but I felt really silly driving and biking to move a total of 5 miles (!).

In desperation, I finally sat down and scrutinized the bike map of San Francisco, and discovered that cycling out of Bayview isn’t that hopeless after all.  I found a route that seems workable, and am now commuting in by bike.  It’s about half an hour each way, relatively easy (I bike around the really steep hills), and although I do have to be on my toes w/r/t drivers, it’s not too bad.  So from now on, I plan to bike to work.  I figure that should burn an extra 300-400 calories a day, so maybe I will lose some weight before the Death Ride.

I’ve made hotel reservations for the Davis Double Century.  It’s still two weeks away, but the first 13 hotels I called were already booked.  B. and I will be staying at the Best Western in Dixon, from which he will drive me to the DDC’s starting point.  The earliest you can leave is 5:15am, and given my tendency to be slow, I plan to be there early.

I have no idea whether I’ll actually be able to finish the Davis Double Century (I’ve never tried anything that long before) but am curiously relaxed about it.  It’s not my target event, so if I get too tired, I can just stop and get SAG’d back to the finish line.  I’d obviously rather not – it is my intent to complete it – but it doesn’t feel as intimidating as the Death Ride.