Closed and Relocated

As you may have guessed from the extended silence for the past three weeks, I've finally decided that it's time to close up the Hyperliving shop completely and complete the relocation back to SlangEditorial.net.

I've been writing again almost every day on Slang for the past four months, and I am really just too busy now to maintain two blogs, let alone keeping up with all the specified activity required by Hyperliving. Basically, I have achieved every one of the goals I set for myself with Hyperliving back in January 2008, and now it is time to move on.

This is not, of course, to suggest that I think I finally have all of my shit figured out, because I absolutely do not; however, the primary task set forth in Hyperliving was to learn ways to re-equip myself with a better understanding of what I need to do to figure myself and my future out, and on that front I am absolutely on my way. In some ways, I feel more confused and uncertain than ever before, but now this is largely due to the burdens of promise rather than the terrifying blackness of empty unknowing silence.

I leave Hyperliving with one closing note: given that May in NYC is all about bicycling, this month was intended to be one dedicated to biking and physical activity, and while I've written nothing on the subject here (including even an opener), I'm proud to report some highly successful results.

One goal I set a few months ago was that when it finally got warm again, I would cease buying monthly Metro cards and make a full commitment to cycle transportation. Sure enough I have followed through and biked for transport almost every day since the last week of April, taking the subway only for a handful of 7 am work meetings and the occasional night out, outside of Williamsburg, where the imbibing of alcohol would make biking home unsafe. Other than that though, it's been nothing but bike, bike, bike in May. On May 17 I did the full Montauk Century, 118 miles of riding including biking to the Penn Station start and home again, and I am now up to 989 miles of biking since my first real 2009 ride on March 14. I am feeling about as good as this as I could imagine feeling, I think.

Beyond biking though, this May I finally also fulfilled a longtime goal by joining a basketball league through Greenpoint's Word Bookstore and, after a bit of a rough start, we finally won our first game yesterday after some thorough defeats in our first two games. Truly, I could care less about winning or losing, but the winning is only nice in seeing how the team is slowly beginning to learn how to play together and becoming a nice little family of friends.

And lastly on the physical activity front is rockclimbing, which I did last Tuesday for the first time since summer 1997. I climbed for a few years as a kid with my dad, an avid climber, until he broke his back that Summer '96 day. He went back to climbing again the next year (only to break his back climbing a second time two years later), but I never climbed again until Tuesday. Just climbing for two hours was enough to make me feel pretty dead, but it was so amazing and so absolutely worth it, and I very much look forward to folding this activity into my life over the coming months.

So, Hyperliving, I bid you adieu. I am a curiosity-filled, energetic, and excitable human, but also a very messy one, and I am sure I will need a re-focusing project again in the days ahead to help me figure my life out; however, when I am ready to zone in again I will need to look elsewhere. Hyperliving, you've been good to so very good to me, but now it's time for something else. Thanks for all the memories, thanks for helping to bring me back to what matters in life, and thanks for reminding me why I'm alive.

Love always,

Ben

Thursday: Eggplant & Artichoke Extraordinaire

Baked artichoke hearts and dill-mayo dip

Today I finally brought my lunch with me, happily both saving me dollars and bringing me food joy. I brought some leftover portobello-asparagus pasta and some arugula with a small amount of dressing stored in a tincture jar formerly containing stepdad's homemade Elderberry extract. A healthy and frugal 'yum'.

Far more exciting than that though was dinner tonight, which was prepared largely by Amy and shared with our colleague and joymaker Jayson Greene.



As you can see from the photo above, dinner consisted of: grilled eggplant, steamed chard with white beans and red pepper flakes, peppered cucumber slices, and grilled pitas (seasoned with olive oil and pepper).

I continually marvel at the creativity and general excellence of my sister as a cook. Mom, you did a pretty great job. A .500 average ain't the worst thing in the world, right?

It will be a curious way to wrap this week up by eating a secular Easter ham on Sunday.

Wednesday: Pesto Perfection

Last night we followed up the great meals of Monday and Tuesday with another delicious one, this time prepared by Lil Beaumont with help from our two dads:

Stepdad Rick's pesto on spaghetti, with grilled asparagus, and salad featuring Real Dad's balsamic vinaigrette/dijon mustard/agave nectar** simple dressing.



As you can see on the left, a handful of the asparagus are wrapped and skewered in something pink--yep, that's some nice hot cappicola! Which I'm sure tasted great, though I wouldn't know it since I consumed only the "naked" asparagus below. Really. 



And there we are. Sprinkle a little parmesan on top and add some fresh italian bread with butter and pepper and you've got a table of "yum".

Deep Thoughts With Jack Handey...
The constant satisfaction I've experienced in eating this week sans meat serves as a reminder of the great difference (to me) between being vegan and being vegetarian. 

During last year's Hyperliving week of veganism (almost exactly one year ago, actually), I felt like every meal I consumed was some kind of grand compromise: a tactile exercise is maximizing potential flavor quotients while working on more or less "stone soup" principles... As if each meal were a mile marker on a journey toward the freedom of eventually being able to eat animal products again. 

For me, vegetarianism is nothing like that--it's simply an absence of a group of products from an otherwise normal diet. Other than occasionally going, "Oh, guess I can't eat that cappy", I feel like life is only minimally impacted. I'm sure in any kind of long haul I would miss bacon and burgers, but no where nearthe sense of loss, sadness, and emptiness I would feel over eliminating pizza, cheese, yogurt/ice cream/shakes and so forth. Or at least, so I think.

Anyway, onward march.

NOTE:
** Normally you would use maple syrup rather than agave, which would make this dressing that much better, but I killed the last of the maple at the end of my fast. 

Tuesday: Portobello-Asparagus Penne Salad

Again, as I stated for Monday's entry, I forgot to make my lunch on Tuesday and so I ate greasy pizza for lunch. Oh well.

But for dinner it was another story--I invited Cabbie M over and made a lovely Portobello-Asparagus Penne Salad consisting only of the following items:




* 2 large portobello mushrooms, stems removed
* 1 bunch fresh asparagus, tough ends removed
* 2 tomatoes, quartered
* 3 tablespoons olive oil
* 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
* 1 pound penne pasta, cooked
** Seasoning, recipe follows
** 1 teaspoon salt
** 2 teaspoons dried oregano
** 1 onion sliced
** 2 cloves garlic powder
** 1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
** 1 teaspoon dried parsley flakes

It was a great meal and we were all satisfied. I followed it up with some Espresso Chip ice cream for dessert.

Monday: Falafel

I lead off by saying that unfortunately I have forgetten to make my lunch each day this week (like i said, really annoying week) so each day I have eaten two slices of pizza for lunch. Not all that healthy, but at least obeying the rules.

And as far as dinner goes, I've stayed relatively on track. After Sunday's uber-blah and unnecessarily eaten gluten-free pasta dinner, I knew I needed some real food satiation on Monday night, and thankfully Lil Beaumont was ready to bring it with some mediterranean food.




Homemade falafel and tzadziki, cous cous, salad, and pita... wow. Amy did a great job and it tasted so amazingly good. Her falafel was very impressive and the tzadziki reminded me of how much I love the cool mix of cucumbers and yogurt.

And how about cucumbers solo for that matter! For whatever reason I hated cucumbers as a kid--despite loving dill pickles--and it was only three or four years ago before I finally started enjoying them. But now, man, sliced cukes in a bowl with a little vinaigrette and some cracked black pepper--yum! I followed up dinner with a snack of this nature (to be repeated later in the week as well).




I then topped it all off with some freshly squeezed red grapefruit juice. When Amy moved in last year, she brought along her depression-style juicer. Lately I have been buying grapefruits and just squeezing them with the juicer and then drinking the freshness. One grapefruit usually yields one 8-10 oz. glass or so of some very thick and rich juice--you could surely cut it with some water too to stretch it out a bit. It's kind of an expensive way to drink juice, but it tastes GREAT, is natural and is also just kinda fun to put a little elbowgrease into working for food.

Not missing meat yet at all actually.

No Meat / Life Wedgie

So, yes, I have continued upholding the "rules" and have gone meatless this week... and perhaps just coincidentally I'm also having a grumble-grumble week for the ages.

Right now it feels like just about everything sucks, and I feel like I'm sucking at just about everything. Beyond feeling out of sorts, there are a great many things on my plate that I need to accomplish and I feel like I'm unable to concentrate enough to make headway on any of them. If you happen to someone I'm leading down right now, sorry bro/dude/darling--I'm working on it.

In a strange way, I realize that what it all really amounts to is a silly kind of "life wedgie"--I'm struggling to focus on the tasks at hand because I feel uncomfortable and discontented with some aspect of my life and brain is choosing to focus on the distraction rather than step back, take a deep breath, and just keep on doing what needs to be done. My brain is unfortunately frustratingly well-trained in these arts, and this is a problematic state of mind that I've encountered before (though I do not believe I've considered the wedgie analogy before now). But I know that it is ultimately up to me to re-map a new course for better success, and I'm trying.

An Overview of a Month of "Restoration"

As I reach the end of a month of supposed "restoration", I can say that right now I am feeling pretty good. I have come out of this month feeling like I did a nice job taking a look again at various aspects of my life and ways to strengthen and improve the choices I make. I am glad that I quit smoking this year, but the rest of my health needs to come too, and over the course of this month I re-established an exercise routine (including not only biking but also joining a basketball league), re-evaluated my eating habits, and reconfiguring my spending decisions--all to not just strong but manageable degrees of success.

I also tried once again to work on my sleep schedule but that one is a work in progress that will take some time to fix. I am beginning to speculate though that regular, semi-heavy exercise will help make this happen. I know that eventually something will have to give, but I am generally impressed with the resolve to live crazyily that has allowed me to continue surviving (thriving? dunno) without semi-human sleep patterns.

Everything that happened to me and which I did in the past month is all a part of the larger plan to turn Ben Scheim into a more sensible and productive human being, and I have confidence that I am both moving in the right direction and strong enough to see it all through.

Sleepin and Whatnot

This is not my home.

So last night I again went to bed **relatively** early, around 12:40. Small victories, people.

And then tonight I had another run-in with some beer and the booze won. Doorknobs, Jayson and I went to Mugs to have bar food and bro time and some wings, a burger and one higher proof stout later, we came home to get ready to go out at see Ladyhawke at Studio B. Except that within 30 minutes of being home I first passed out in an armchair and then on the nearby couch.

Of course, now it's 1:40 and I'm wide awake (after having just finished watching a wonderful albeit a little dated Sutherland-Fonda curio called Klute***), so obviously I'm not "in-need-of-rest, on-the-verge-of-collapse", but nonetheless I'm a little concerned over how quickly and absolutely sleep seemed to overtake me both tonight and on Tuesday. It's probably a testament to the general insanity in my life for this to be a concern, but I seem to be able rely on a certain type of regularity of my physical and mental functioning and any "disturbances in the force" tend to trouble me until I'm able to suss out what's going on. Still, i'm not ridiculous enough to suggest that feeling tired and a need to sleep at night time should be deemed strange enough to cause me alarm... but let's just say i'm "monitoring the situation". Or whatever.

NOTES:
***- I would strongly suggest checking out Klute if you haven't already (it's available through Netflix's Watch Instantly service, hint hint). It is yes, a little "dated", but there's also something fresh and almost anachronistic about the frankness of Jane Fonda's character and some of the feelings and attitudes she displays. Sutherland is also strange and good as he often is, and possibly of most significance is the score, which is both frightening and forward-looking. Check out for yourself.

Yeah, Umm, Sleep Or Something

So last week's attempt at going to bed early was pretty much a FAIL. I basically never adhered to the guidelines I'd attempted to follow, and worse, specially stayed up WAAY late half the nights.

The only positive developing so far has been, hilariously, the past two Friday nights, where I've gone to bed around 2--laughably early for a weekend night for me--so that I could wake up at 7:30 Saturday morning to go biking. Last Saturday I got up and biked 60 miles and today I biked about 45 and I'm feeling pretty good about both the exercise as well as the acknowledgment to myself that I really do need the rest if I'm gonna get up so early. This point may seem like an obvious one, but, for example, I did last year's 68 mile Montauk ride on about 90 minutes sleep... so really, no point is to obvious to make for me.

Maybe I just need to work backwards--start limiting myself and going to bed earlier on the weekends and THEN the week will follow.

Hyperliving in the Rest of March

So I made it through a rather challenging week one and I feel absolutely great. I’m very much a man of slingshot euphoria but nonetheless my whole being feels in tune with the world right now.

I’m utilizing this good feeling to begin making some plans for the now and soon-down-the-road, including getting geared up for some rad bikes: Montauk Century most importantly--and its weekly pre-race training rides--the 5 Boro Ride and anything else I can do (though honestly, i am interested in doing group rides that don't cost money--the Montauk ride is fun and all, but $70 is a bummer just for the privilege of riding my bike).

But also though, I'm making plans this week to streamline and improve the efficiency and quality of my life, beginning with physical health. Making plans for biking is just part of an overall desire to get fitter, happier and more productive. I have decided that once it gets warm I am going to forgo the monthly MetroCard and bike to work all summer, as well as--much much bigger stretches--begin incorporating some other activity like more walking and maybe even some weight lifting or running. Additionally, next week's activity is going to focus specifically on trying to address my inhuman sleep patterns, which is to say that there are none other than "sleep as little as I can allow myself".

My last goal for the month, which will come into play again down the road, is an evaluation of my (often questionable) financial decision-making. At the recommendation of Ben D, I opened an account on Mint.com to help put my finances in perspective and already it's become crystal clear to me that I need to redress my old habit patterns with new and improved ones. Starting Monday I began making my lunch every day and have devised a number of other simple and immediate ways to slowly maximize my geld-possibilities and increase my opportunities for unexpected excitement or financial-lifeprotection at a future turn down the road.

So....it's on, as they say. The competition against myself to keep making my life better and not accept the status quo (even if it is a more favorable status quo than say, a year ago). Last year I stopped treading water and started swimming toward shore, and now that I've decided which land to swim toward it's time to make some real plans and put them in motion. There are many new possibilities swimming in my head but I feel like I finally am getting a sense now how I might be able to see them to fruition.

Day 7: Completed

And fin. I made it through the week without consuming anything other
than
-water,
-maple syrup,
-lemon juice,
-cayenne pepper,
-Yogi brand "Fasting" and "Get Regular tea

Day 2: So Far, So Good

I got a little hungry last night before going to sleep thanks to
wonderful smelling Chinese takeout in my living room-I can't fault dudes
for wanting to eat while they watch basketball games-but halfway through
Monday and still feeling pretty good.

I woke up this morning and neither felt hungry nor tired, which I think
is a good sign, so we'll see how things go from here.

Cheers
JB

Week 22, NYT Crosswords Day 1: Monday

This is a week of wordsmithery and braincrunching. I've always sort of had an affinity for crosswords but yet I've also never been all that great at them. I am a wizard at Scrabble, perhaps because it's more math and puzzle-y, but I think the linguistic conventions, shorthands and secrets of crosswords have always befuddled me enough to put them down without finishing.

For sure at least I can say that, prior to tonight, I had never before finished an NYTimes crossword puzzle. Now of course anyone who knows about the NYT crosswords knows that they begin with an easy one on Monday and get progressively more difficult as the week goes on. As far as me never before completing on goes, a funny thought occurred to me tonight that the vast majority of NYT crosswords I've ever tried to do have been on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, the three hardest days of the week (significantly more so than Monday), as the time when I'm most apt to pick one up is when beginning a trip somewhere.

Anyway, I set out today with the goal that I would do it and try not to get help if possible, to "get over the hump". Here was the puzzle:

Monday Puzzle, 2 June 2008

Begun: 9:28


Finished: 11:02


And voila, done! It took about 90 minutes, but sure enough, I did it, and all on my own except the last few clues in the upper-right hand corner:
10 Across - Evil Organization in "Get Smart" (Kaos, should have gotten that one)
12 Down - City near Provo (Orem... umm...)
13 Down - "Oh yeah? ___ who?" (Sez -- these are the kinds my brain has trouble with)


EmJo, The Texas Crossword Queen--if you can't tell, don't fuck with her

I got help from these last three clues from the amazing EmJo, queen of all words crossed. She did her puzzle today in about 10-15 minutes, the time it took her to get from the Lorimer stop on the L train to Union Square. EmJo does them everyday though, so getting through a Monday in no time at all is really no big thing for her.

I spent some time picking her brain tonight on pointers, strategies and thought processes facing both the maker and doer of crosswords. I am filing these away now and will prepare some thoughts to share on them tomorrow when I do not have to wake up at 6am the next day. She also recently gave a presentation on crosswords, including a slideshow, some of which I will share with you over the course of this week.

I am incredibly curious about the types of folks who become obsessed with crosswords and hope to learn some insights about them this week. For now, I'm happy at least that I can go to sleep having completed my simple goal.

cheers,
Jeffrey

Week 21 No. 73 Home Improvement: Painting

Home Improvement week went well, though admittedly most of it was centered around my efforts to paint three rooms of the apartment: the kitchen, my bedroom and the living room. However, I did a great job going through the house and ridding myself of junk and detritus of past lives, including two full garbage bags of recyclable e-waste. I also cleaned the bathroom (twice), replaced some new furniture including bedside tables, and emptied off the stairwell in my apartment that goes into the upstairs of the building (I have two other separate entrances).

But certainly painting was the focus, and I'd have to say that the results were exciting, as you can see below. A general challenge for me is that the apartment is a half-basement with low light levels much of the time, and so I needed to choose light colors that would maximize what I get. I ended up going with a semi-gloss yellow for the kitchen, an eggshell light pastel blue ("Ionic Sky") for the living room and an eggshell light pastel green ("Cabbage Green"). I used Behr paints, and needed one liter for the kitchen, one for the living and two for the bedroom (my bedroom is pretty huge).

I'd never in my life done a home improvement project of this sort, so I just sort of learned as I went along. Thankfully, Miss Sweeetheart, E-Bad and Ben D all pitched in at various points to help me out. The total process took parts of four days, including buying paint and doing each of the three rooms, with me wrapping up finishing touches on Saturday about an hour before guests began arriving for a party we were having.

Below are photos from over these few days--thanks again to Ben D for taking many of them.


The nearly cleaned off stairway, once home to much junk (and suitcases)

Kitchen, getting ready to be painted


Blue tape in action


Bedroom, getting ready to be painted and wayyy messy.


The walls are closing in on me...


Stretching out a bit before getting started.


1, 2, 3... and they're off.




Getting those hard-to-reach spots near the kitchen ceiling.


The bedroom is almost done...


Post-painting, post-footwashing.


And then, the finished rooms:

The Living Room


The Bedroom


And lastly,

The Kitchen




The week was concluded with the ridiculous celebration of the "Barkmitzvah", which included the creation and destruction of a pinata in the shape of a dachsund.


I can't convey enough the awesomeness of this moment or this photo

Week 21 No. 2, Home Improvement: Cleaning and a Visit to Home Depot

Monday was lots of cleaning, including cleaning the bathroom spotlessly--difficult when the tiles have permanent marks all over them and the bathtub caulk is old and stained--washing all the dishes and beginning the more exhausting overhaul of straightening up and rearranging things, including specifically cleaning off the mystery stairwell-to-nowhere that has served as a storage space since I moved in.





After cleaning for awhile, I took a break. I knew that there was no way I'd do all the cleaning necessary because there was still a lot of stuff that needed to be done before I'd reach the finishing stages.

Chief among these, and the main subproject of this Hyperliving week, is to paint my apartment. I had been wanting to paint my room for a long time, but this week of home improvement gave me the idea that I could actually paint my whole apartment. I cleaned until around 5 and then headed to Home Depot to buy paint.


I didn't choose any of these, actually.

Your first question might be: where is there a Home Depot near me in Williamsburg? Oddly enough, there's a huge Home Depot tucked away in Bed Stuy, not to far from my home (by bike).






After browsing through a number of paint chips, I settled on three colors for my bedroom, the kitchen, and the living room. I gave my order to the guy above to get everything ready for me and was surprised at how expensive paint in. Argh.






I loaded up the cart with necessary supplies, including rollers, bluetape, paint trays, and energy-efficient light bulbs.

Once we had everything we needed, we paid and went outside to head home. Our original plan called for biking over and then dragging our bags and bikes on to the G train subway to get home, but I decided that we could probably just attach the paint cans to our bikes and not bother with the subway. And it worked.


E-bad looks disapprovingly on the idea to carry paint cans on bikes


The paint cans, attached to bicycles (up close)

We made it home just fine and immediately began thinking about the fun process of painting the house (a task I haven't actually ever had to do before).

The mind is percolating...

More to come: cleanliness continues / furniture replaced and / painting is begun on the kitchen and bedroom.

cheers,
JB

Week 16, Day 6 Bike Exercise: Bridging New York

I will update in greater detail when I get a chance, but here's the brief on yesterday:

- Left the house for work around 7:52, biking there via Queensboro/59 St Bridge
- Arrived at work at 8:26

- Left work at 6:49 to meet coworkers for a departing colleague's good-bye drinks at Trailer Park on 23 St
- Headed to Union Square North for Critical Mass bike event at 7:28
- Took photos and left Critical Mass at 8:03

- Biked home via trip over Brooklyn Bridge--last of four main bridges to travel by bike. Traveled at leisurely pace, stopping for photos/views along the way.
- Arrived home at 9:11

Total trip: 17.3 miles

Below is the tripmap and ridiculous in a not-very-interesting way video of half my trip biking over the Brooklyn Bridge. My legs are getting tired.


View Larger Map


An incredibly bumpy ride over the Brooklyn Bridge from Jeffrey Beaumont on Vimeo.

Week 16, Day 5 Bike Exercise: Slowly conquering

On Thursday I biked to work via the Queensboro and then biked home down 5th Ave to the Williamsburg Bridge, stopping at Ave C btw 5th & 6th to check out Recycle-A-Bicycle to maybe buy a bike (no luck).


View Larger Map

Another great day of biking, in BEAUTIFUL weather.

Week 16, Day 4 Bike Exercise: A 3 Boro Tour

View of Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridge from the Manhattan Bridge

I had to be at the office at 8 am for an event this morning--also meaning that I would need to be wearing a suit, so I decided that I would put off my bike-riding as a post-work activity.

I decided that the parameters for my evening ride should include a trip at least as long as the two 5.9 mile legs to my office and back. As I began thinking about possible routes, I was reminded by a friend that I still needed to sign up for the 5 Boro Bike Ride, which I've been saying for the past six weeks that I really want to do.

Unfortunately, when I went to go sign up I discovered that the Bike Ride in fact sold out on April 4. However, this immediate disappointment gave me inspiration for tonight's ride: a 3 boro tour, which included:
- beginning at my house in Williamsburg,
- running through Queens to the 59th St bridge,
- over that to 2nd Ave
- down 2nd Ave>Christie all way to the Manhattan Bridge
- over that and around lower Brooklyn and make my way home.


View Larger Map


On the Pulaski Bridge from Greenpoint to Queens

Overall the ride was about 13.9 miles and I had a great time. We left around 7:05 pm and got home around 8:35. The weather was absolutely gorgeous, we rode for long enough and at the right time to experience late hour sunlight, and then transitioning into dusk, sundown, and then night time. Everything about the ride was fun and only left me thirsting for more.


Me attempting to liveblog on Manhattan Bridge (didn't work)

A few thoughts I had durng the ride
- I really need to buy myself a decent used roadbike--the one I have works but it's really old and out of shape and I think a better one would make this experience even more fun that its already been
- Riding in Manhattan is WAYYY different than riding in Brooklyn--wayyyy more serious. I've had lots of experience driving cars all across New York, I think way more than most, and I can attest at how crazy and bad most drivers are here--but holy shit, cruising down 2nd Ave today was like a whole other level. No one uses turn signals, people swerve and weave in and out of lanes constantly and, of course, drivers seem to have no regard whatsoever for bicyclists on the road--basically it's a dangerous shitshow, and I'm very glad I was wearing my helmet.
- Next time there's a transit strike, I'll be ready (praying that it's not in Winter again, of course).
- I think a huge reason I like biking more than running is the simple fact that you get to alternate between work/coast as you're going along, which I think is crucial to someone who's still pretty much uncommitted to exercise (let alone the "total body punishment"of serious running).

The best part about the whole trip is that as we began to near home, I felt like I could have kept going for another hour. Maybe next time I will.

Week 16 Liveblog Biking: Dusk on Manhattan Bridge

enjoying a beautiful evening going over the manhattan bridge.

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:


View Larger Map

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.