So I just rode my bike to work for the first time in 1.5 years.

(One could argue it was the first time I rode my bike to work voluntarily. My last (terrible, no good, very bad) job started at 5am and it was the only way to get there.)

It was okay! Though I think the cycleroute planner engine and I disagree about what constitutes a 5% grade.

But I made it! And the Bike to Work Week people at the brightly-coloured tent on campus gave me:

• 1 chocolate chip Clif bar


• 2 juiceboxes


• 1 cookie


• 2 foldy cycle route maps


• 1 banana

I was already late, so I ran down to use the employee shower (things I never knew we had before last week) before bursting into the office to find LCW was the only one here yet and breathing a sigh of relief. (Tomorrow, leave earlier. It's still faster than transit.)

Lovely parts: riding through parks and cemeteries, particularly Mountain View, which is one of those delightful places where it is downhill in both directions: a path with a dip in the middle that is a shallow enough slope that you can coast down one side and your momentum carries you safely up the other.

Not-so-lovely parts: going uphill. Though at least 50% of that is me being out of shape and no longer used to powering up hills half a dozen times in a row.

Notes to self for tomorrow:

• it's probably not going to rain; the weather forecast is a tissue of lies concocted to make you wear far more layers than I need


• just wear your bike leggings, even if it means you'll have to change when you get to work; it's just a lot more comfortable than jeans


• it's not November, so you probably don't need waterproof shoes either; if you get wet, you're changing, and even if you get wet, it's May, so you're not going to freeze


• oh god biking in summer is so much nicer than biking in winter

I don't have a cycling icon so you get Kiki; in that scene she is, technically, on a bike. :)