Thursday, May 15, 2008

Commuting, Exercise, Getting Yelled At: A Three for One Morning

In the interest of my ever expanding waistline, my budget, the environment and staving off boredom, I've started riding my bike to work occasionally. Well, not really to work, more to the train station and then I ride the train to work. Now that it's more or less warm (seriously, Minnesota, it's time to step up with the weather) I hope to ride more.

The last couple times I've just ridden my crappy bike to the train station, locked it to convenient pole, fence, or tree and gone on my way.

Today, though I rode the nice bike. The one the mister bought while home sick (huh?) for more money than my car is worth. He bought it for "us." Shockingly, he's been the only one to ride it. So, this morning I pointed out that if it is "our" bike, I get to ride it.

He really couldn't argue with me.

So I rode it. I biked the three miles to the train station, hopped on the train for a couple of stops, then got off on Hiawatha and rode the rest of the way downtown. It actually went really well. I need to get a better seat because I'm suffering from a serious case of bike butt, but otherwise it was a nice way to start the morning.*

I got downtown and since I know the price of that bike (seriously, we're talking astronomical here) I was not going to just park it on the street somewhere. I was going to bring it up to my office.

I figured this would be fine since:
(1) My office building is, well, the lowest rent in a high rent neighborhood. We're surrounded by the old Pillsbury building and the Fifth Street Towers, some of the swanker buildings downtown. My building is like the ugly stepsister: utilitarian, always a little dusty/dirty, unfussy. I wasn't worried about my bike dinging up the lobby floor.
(2) My boss has done it before.
(3) Why the hell not? It didn't even occur to me that this wasn't going to go the way I had planned.

Enter bitchy security guard.

From the way she reacted to me wheeling my bike into the elevator, you'd have thought I was dragging dead puppies and babies behind my bike, or smuggling meth in my waterbottle. I was walked from the building outside, down the CAR ramp for the parking garage, which strikes me as rather unsafe, and observed as I locked my bike up at the stands right by the entrance to the ramp. I think she was onto me because I was just going to go into the parking ramp, get on the elevator in the basement and ride it up to my office.

I'm totally nervous now that the bike will be stripped when I get down there and the mister will kill me.

*Bike Butt: that feeling you get in your ass end after a bike ride, where your flesh is bruised from the seat pressing against your pelvic bones, you're a little chafed and achy and, it's painful to sit or walk. Laying down and standing still are okay.

1 comment:

Tess said...

My husband keeps threatening to start biking to work every time he fills up his gas tank. But knowing him, he would spend a cool 5 grand on a tricked-up Lance Ahmstrong model and the payback on the investment would be approximately 2348 months. If EVER.

Bike butt always deters me from starting back up at spinning. It is SO HEINOUS for those first few days. And those padded seats are so embarassing.