My legs are complaining but not as much as last week. I'm generally taking the Canada route to work and the Alameda route home. Alameda is shorter (11.5 miles versus 12.8 miles), not as hilly, but has much more street traffic -- making certain streets a little scary to ride on.
Here is a typical ride, complete with route map and elevation change. Gotta love the free iPhone app (available from MapMyRide.com) which tracks the rides (though I'm told there are better paid versions, which I'll investigate later).
Interesting things I've seen on my commute, partly because I'm now on a bike and partly because I'm just seeing more since it's a much longer ride:
- A zebra crossing painted on Canada that has horseshoe symbols in it
- Quite a lot of, um, evidence of horses along Canada, but no actual horses on the road -- though I have seen a half dozen horses in corrals along the side of the road
- Two Tesla Roadsters, my electric motor-powered brethren (alas, still have not convinced any of my wealthy coworkers to buy one)
- Two small vineyards (one on Canada and one on Alameda)
- A sign offering tractor-related services
On the way home, I find myself wishing I lived 2-3 miles closer to work. But the workout is good, and I must say it's a complete different "feel" arriving at my destination on either end. I'm much more alert and I feel like I've achieved something just by getting where I'm going.
One last thought in reflecting on Week 2: there is a sense (read the biking boards, for instance) that the electric motor is "cheating". While I understand why True Bikers believe that. If the bicycle is meant to augment human power, then adding electric power certainly spoils the purity of muscle + mechanical advantage = motion.
But I'm not in it for the Purity of Biking or glory or training so I can race. I'm in it primarily for the exercise (and the long-term health benefits thereof) and the sense of accomplishment. So I feel like my electronic steed helps me decide to bike more often than not. So the bike doesn't feel like cheating to me: it feels like the enzyme which lowers the activation energy so that the reaction can actually complete.
Besides, my flavor of electric bike doesn't have a throttle that just hauls me along: it's still quite a bit of work, as I'm guessing somewhere between a quarter and half of the power the system generates is consumed hauling itself around. After all, a good road bike weighs 15 pounds, and my bike weighs over 60 so something's got to move the 45 extra pounds.
As Insik suggests, I'll have to try the hills on a road bike a few weeks down the line. Stay tuned for the experiment, maybe in October.
1 comment:
Hi
Couldn't pass up the horse reference.
While driving from Hermosa Beach to Studio City one evening, stuck in the '90's LA traffic scrum, I calculated that at the cavalry's preferred long trot pace of 10 mph, it would have been a faster commute on my horse.
Limiting factor: livery stables. LA's last one closed in the 20's.
Last LA public figure to reach work by horse & buggy: until the 1920's, John Forthman, founder of the Los Angeles Soap Company (predecessor to the first mass marketed detergent, "White King.") Since he owned his factory, he could hitch his horse where he worked.
Jane
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