Week 16, Day 2/3 Bike Exercise: Voyage to Manhattan

MONDAY

Monday was sort of my off-day this week, as I had to be in Manhattan at 7 a.m., so I only biked briefly after work, but it wasn't very substantial. I will either go with six bike days this week or else make it up Sunday. However, I continued to enjoy my return to non-vegan foods by making tacos with the leftover ground beef from the burger making on Sunday. Yum. (Also, two nights of cooking dinner--duh whoa!).

TUESDAY

Today was the day that my bike exercising really began, by riding to work. Here's the map:


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Before today I'd neither ridden a bike over one of the NYC bridges nor ridden in Manhattan before, so it was some big steps for me. I also decided that since I work in Midtown, it would make the most sense to take the Queensboro/59th St Bridge rather than the Williamsburger. This was great except that my past trips to Queens had been limited and I knew I was somewhat uncertain about how to get to the entrance of the bridge--and you can see from looking at the map above that it took me a minute to figure out the best way to go.

The trip from my house to my office, according to Google Maps above, appears to be about 5.9 miles, which a good pre-work bike distance. I left the house around 8:38 and got to my desk at 9:13, which I thought was pretty solid considering that my chain went off the deraileur, I wasn't sure where to go, and I stopped to take some photos on the middle of the bridge over Roosevelt Island. When I got to the office, I was a little sweaty but not so bad and I had brought a full change of clothes so I was good and fresh as new as soon as I'd changed. Before going up the elevator, the security guard in my building (not the regular dude) asked, "Do they let you bring your bike insde?" I just shrugged and said, "Sure, of course".



The day went by slowly but I felt buoyed all day long by the energy of having accomplished my ride-to-work goal. I left work at 6:36 and stopped before beginning my journey home to take this photo of protesters picketing outside the horrible bar that Dan and C and I visited on Friday:



The trip home was slightly faster, though it felt considerably more so, if only because I was no longer scared about finding the right way or being late for anything. I got home around 7:10 and felt good to be alive.