Almost bike to work day
Today is National Bike To Work Day.
The city of Denver is a huge advocate for this day because so many people bike in this damn town. The past four years that we have lived here, we have never biked to work, for reasons that aren’t justifiable. This year we had full intentions of biking to work today.
But sometimes things just don’t work out, and that’s okay.
Let us start from the beginning…
We set our iphone alarm for 6:15am so we could get up, eat breakfast, and be out the door by 7:30ish. Well, our alarm never went off. Guess who’s a complete tool and left their phone on silent? Yours truly. Apparently, we didn’t switch our ringer from silent to regular when we got home from work so when the damn alarm went off this morning we couldn’t hear it. Such an idiot!
Thanks to no alarm, we didn’t wake up until 7:15am. You can image the shame we felt when we knew we were behind schedule. We thought maybe we could make it out the door so we quickly got dressed, shoved breakfast down our throat, and went to grab our bike. But guess who didn’t air up their bike tires last night? This girl. We got home from kickball late last night and didn’t think about checking our tires. We felt like such a boner.
After that we gave up. We literally threw our arms in the air and said, “You win!” we don’t know who we were speaking to exactly, but we didn’t care. All we knew was that we wasn’t biking to work today. Once the realization set in, we changed out of our biking clothes into our regular work clothes, took one last sip of coffee and left the apartment feeling defeated. We were really excited about biking to work today. Don’t you hate when you’re jacked to do something and it doesn’t happen?
We honestly could have cried.
We drove to work in a bad mood. Traffic was insane because they’re milling the roads and to make matters worse, we could see the bike path from the the road and there were a ton of people pedaling their bikes. We felt like the kid that didn’t get invited to the party. Everyone was smiling and laughing, and here we were stuck in the Jeep with a huge rain cloud over our head.
We arrived at work and felt sour towards the entire Bike To Work Day event. Why couldn’t we have been apart of something so fun? Why did we give up and not spend the ten seconds it takes to air up our tires? Either way, we were mad.
As the day went on and we calmed down, we came to the realization that there was so reason for us to be upset. We mean really, just because we didn’t “ride” our bike to work doesn’t mean we couldn’t “ride” our bike after work.
So that’s what we did.
As soon as we got home, we changed into our bikes clothes (no, we didn’t wear spandex), and pumped air into our tires. We bought our Trek in Manhattan, KS at Pathfinder with our college graduation money. The bike was $300. We felt like a baller. Funny how things have changed.
We decided to bike to Wash Park because the bike path to get there is a straight shot.
The bike path was INSANE!! OMG. It was like trying to drive on a Texas highway. There were people everyone. Between the roadies (bikers who wear spandex but have beer guts), the cruiser’s, the messengers, and us, it might as well have been a NASCAR race.
We made it to Wash Park in one piece. Did a speedy loop around. Then headed back home. We were glad to finally arrive back home and get off the Texas interstate. In some way we are kind of relieved that we didn’t bike to work this morning because it must have been a cluster @#&%! Our bike ride ended up being 10 miles which was fantastic. Great day for cross training. Even though we probably could have handled this day differently, we are glad that we got out and biked. We now claim this day as Bike After Work Day! Conclusion: “With Almost Bike to Work Day upon us, let’s embrace the opportunity to pedal towards a healthier, more sustainable future. Get ready to hit the road and enjoy the ride!”
