{"id":2755,"date":"2014-08-10T10:34:27","date_gmt":"2014-08-10T14:34:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mauraweb.com\/blog\/?p=2755"},"modified":"2014-08-10T10:34:27","modified_gmt":"2014-08-10T14:34:27","slug":"whales-tails","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mauraweb.com\/blog\/2014\/08\/10\/whales-tails\/","title":{"rendered":"whales tails"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s dawning on me that I&#8217;m afraid to ride my bike to work. Yeah, it&#8217;s summer, and summer is hot, maybe not the best time to start riding your bike to work. But there are so many good reasons to do it:<\/p>\n<p>1. Cheaper. I &lt;3 the subway, but that $2.50\/ride adds up.<\/p>\n<p>2. Exercise is good. I have been walking home all summer (which helps somewhat with #1, above), but biking would get me moving in the morning and the evening.<\/p>\n<p>3. The biggest reason is probably that biking is the only mode of transport that lets me bring a bunch of stuff to work (lunch, coffee, extra clothes if need be) without having to carry it on my back. I &lt;3 &lt;3 &lt;3 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tombihn.com\/backpacks\/TB0103.html\">my backpack<\/a>* but the fact is that since <strike>the slipped discs in my neck started bothering me<\/strike> starting to get old I probably shouldn&#8217;t be carrying lots of weight on my back for 45 minutes at a time each way to and from work on a regular basis.<\/p>\n<p>* Yes, pricey, but seriously a fantastic bag that&#8217;s holding up amazingly. I&#8217;ve carried it practically every workday for something like 6 years and it still looks nearly new. Plus it&#8217;s super comfortable when I do have to carry lots of weight (i.e. a laptop) which I know I shouldn&#8217;t be doing but still sometimes have to do.<\/p>\n<p>I have ridden my bike to work in the past, though inconsistently. There are somewhat annoying bits to it. I have a sturdy bike that&#8217;s pretty old-ladyish &#8212; 3 speeds only, plus coaster brakes! &#8212; so I imagine it&#8217;s not much of a theft risk, but I do still worry, especially since the bike racks at work are <em>just<\/em> out of eyesight of the security guards at the entrance to the college.** The ride itself is fine, though sometimes the street I spend the most time on (which has a bike lane) gets crowded, and I&#8217;ve occasionally experienced grumpiness from fellow bikers as they pass me. Dudes, it&#8217;s not a race! There&#8217;s room for everyone!<\/p>\n<p>** I&#8217;m almost positive that it&#8217;s technically legal to use freight elevators to bring bikes inside buildings, and there is actually a frieght elevator that goes right to the floor in the library where my office is. But it&#8217;s a little ways to go through the college getting to the elevator and I suspect that the security guards wouldn&#8217;t let me walk my bike through that area.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m willing to concede that all of these minor complaints might be concealing a bigger fear, which is the fear of being mowed down by a car while I bike to work. Of course that&#8217;s always possible &#8212; even walking in NYC can be dangerous &#8212; but in reality the streets that I&#8217;d need to bike on are pretty quiet and safe most of the time. There are lights at every corner and bike lanes the whole way.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s been a busy summer with lots going on, new stuff to adjust to, and more coming down the pike. So maybe the <em>real<\/em> real reason is that I just can&#8217;t accommodate any additional new things right now, cognitive overload and such. Tomorrow morning looks nice and cool, maybe that will be the day to begin. (Or maybe not.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s dawning on me that I&#8217;m afraid to ride my bike to work. Yeah, it&#8217;s summer, and summer is hot, maybe not the best time to start riding your bike to work. But there are so many good reasons to do it: 1. Cheaper. I &lt;3 the subway, but that $2.50\/ride adds up. 2. Exercise [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[110,48],"class_list":["post-2755","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-commute","tag-me"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mauraweb.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2755","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mauraweb.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mauraweb.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mauraweb.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mauraweb.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2755"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/mauraweb.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2755\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2763,"href":"https:\/\/mauraweb.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2755\/revisions\/2763"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mauraweb.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2755"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mauraweb.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2755"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mauraweb.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2755"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}