A Very Belated Bike To Work Day Post

Holy shit have I become a slacker. Part of it is my laptop is getting a bit aged, so I never open it. And the iPad interface for blogging is....less than ideal. I have my excuses but what it boils down to is I've been doing a lot of biking, a decent amount of taking pictures, and absolutely no writing about them. Dang.

So, Bike to Work day! May 16! That's like, 2 months ago! Hilariously or ironically, as it fell on a Friday I was actually off work and thus had no reason to bike to work. But there was a bunch of stuff happening around town , so I secured myself a gentleman escort and decided to pub-crawl the free beer available around town. First stop, Ozone bikes. There was free beer, pizza, and schwag - that's about all I needed to hear.

We grabbed multiple beers, some pizza, a shitload of stickers, a bike-shaped bottle opener, a sweet canvas book-bag, and everything else they had available for free. Like I said, I love free stuff.

One of the brilliant things about Austin is we have an awesomely tight-knit community of cycling activists - I can't go to a bike event without running into a few folks I know. Even if not by name, at least by their face or their bike. It means that everywhere feels like home.

We chilled at Ozone for a bit and with the sun at our backs rode south down Guadalupe towards Bicycle Sport Shop. Why, might you ask? The answer should be obvious - more free beer.

Several of our fabulous local bike groups were our in force - BikeAustin (pictured above) and BikeTexas (pictured below).

A few friends showed up out of nowhere and together we had....you guessed it. More beer. 

My Bike to Work Day.....did not include a hell of a lot of work. It was also 2 months ago and I should have posted about it way before now. But it sure as hell was a good time.

Old Habits Die Hard

It's good to be back in the saddle, for all that I haven't had overmuch to say on the topic. But cycling has re-entered my life as an all-the-time thing, especially with regard to how I get to work. The flip came for me when I realized that I have to go to work anyways. And either way I have to wake up at "Insanely Early" o'clock. So if all that is true anyways, I may as well get my ass out of bed and get there by bike.

It's funny, that simple, basic admission is exactly what gets me out of bed. And now that I've been back at it for a while, it's just reflex. I barely remember the "equipment difference," so to speak involved in driving my car to work. Which has the huge benefit that my tank of gas lasts 3 or 4 weeks instead of 2. I can almost justify owning an SUV!

As we move into high summer (holy shit, it's already July) it's time to make the adjustments for the real hot weather. But I've got a good thing going here and I don't intend to stop any time soon.