Finally we have storage for bikes! Now we each have one. I’ve been biking with my son after work. It is really a lot of fun and great exercise.
Industrial revolution, urbanization and urban sprawl, and information age combined have made many of us living a sedentary lifestyle. I know I currently don’t have enough physical activity: like now I am sitting in front of a freaking computer typing away. 呜呼唉哉！长此下去，人将不人，成何体统？So I am seriously thinking about biking to work.
The biking distance is a little over 9 miles, one way, which makes around 30 kilometers in total both ways, very much doable, I think. I’ve been gathering information on the web, but if you have tips, site recommendations, or better yet, routes from around North Ave., Division, Ridgeland area to downtown Chicago, I’d love to hear them. Thanks!
If I have time this weekend, I plan to bike to downtown just to try it out and see how long it takes and how I feel. We’ll see what happens.
4 responses to “Biking to work”
Huzzah!
If it is convenient for you, the lake is a great route south of Hollywood. Google Maps recently started doing bike maps. The local bike shops and/or the city might have a city bike map.
I spent the past few years not riding my new bike because it was too fidgety, but after moving to New York I bought an old steel bike from a local store, and it is a great pleasure to ride. (I’m leaving my comment here from a coffee shop I bicycled to this morning.)
You might consider packing a patch kit and possibly a spare tire and a small air pump.
Did you bicycle much in China? I like the old images of massive throngs of bicycles rolling down the streets there, before everyone started buying cars.
-danny
Thanks Danny. Patch kit, spare tire, and pump are all good ideas. I also want to do some practice, playing with tires, chains, brakes, etc.
I actually didn’t bike that much when I was in China, primarily because bike was such a big item asset. I didn’t learn to bike until around 14 or so. Our family of five didn’t acquire the second bike (a used one) until when I was 15 or so, if I remember correctly.
In college I could have bought a used bike, but money was tight so I didn’t do that. Only when I started working in Beijing did I finally buy my first bike, a used one, in autumn 1994. I rode it for 6 months or so, then gave it away to a friend, when I quit Beijing and went back home to prepare my study in the US.
I had a bike in grad school while here, but didn’t ride all that much.
Well, tooting my own horn, a piece I wrote several years ago: how to get on your bike:
http://www.haidongji.com/2006/08/15/how-do-you-get-on-your-bike/
[…] after talking about it, I finally put my feet where the pedals were, and biked to work […]