One of the reasons “Beegee” is evil is that he has no environmental consciousness. Until June, I had commuted by automobile 25 miles each way, to and from my job with Oracle. I live in San Francisco, and Oracle is located down on the Peninsula, deep in the suburbs. The drive itself was mostly scenic. It began with a drive along the beach, and much of it ran along I-280, which was a beautiful highway, especially as it moved into an undeveloped area along Crystal Springs Reservoir. Crystal Springs Reservoir lay at the low ground between two ridges, actually resting upon the San Andreas fault—a comforting thought as I watched it from my car. Despite the pretty scenery, I felt guilty about polluting the air so much, especially when I had spent the prior three years taking mass transit to work. But “Beegee” just laughed at my concerns. “Ha ha ha”, he said. “Ha ha ha.”
Not that all of the drive was pleasant. Just south of San Francisco lies Daly City, which optimistically dubs itself “The Gateway to the Peninsula”. A more accurate description can be found in the classic folk song “Little Boxes”, which was actually written about Daly City:
Little boxes on the hillside,From my car, as I drove along I-280, I looked up at those ticky-tacky houses, and then proceeded to wade through two or three miles (if I was lucky) of bumper to bumper traffic, which only alleviated after I reached I-380, which took most of the cars away.
Little boxes made of ticky-tacky,
Little boxes, little boxes,
Little boxes, all the same.
There's a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one
And they're all made out of ticky-tacky
And they all look just the same.
Sure, I could have cut my commute time by moving to the suburbs. I could have lived in one of those little boxes, but do I look like a suburban kind of guy? Of course I don’t. Even “Beegee” agrees with me on that. Besides, with the housing crunch in the Bay Area, rents had skyrocketed, and to leave my rent controlled apartment for a new place in the suburbs would have cost me dearly. Furthermore, anyone who has seen “Blue Velvet” or “American Beauty” knows that the suburbs , while bland on the surface, actually contain hidden, sinister goings on.
I hated driving to work, and not only for environmental reasons. I also hated being dependent on my car. Shortly before changing jobs, the back of the driver’s seat broke. I had to take it into the shop for a week and a half. I paid to rent a car just so I could get to work. In addition, I harbored this deep fear that I would suddenly accumulate five traffic tickets in the course of a week and lose all my driving privileges. And then how would I get to work?
This all changed when I started my new job last June. I was now working in the South of Market district of San Francisco. It was only a little over seven miles away from my home near the ocean. I could take a streetcar to work, if I wished. But I had a better idea. I bought a bike.
I had already owned a bike. It was blue, and it was made of ticky-tacky. You think I’m joking, but it was really a piece of crap. Something kept breaking, maybe a chain this month, a spoke the next one. The low point was achieved when the gear shift grip broke while Cindi and I were bicycling on Angel Island. Cindi took a picture of me kicking my bike. It was not a pleasant sight, and in the interests of decorum I will not repeat the epithets I spewed at the thing. The only redeeming quality of my ticky-tacky bike was that it was a pretty blue color. It had also not cost much--a little over $300, including accessories--and most of the repairs were covered by manufacturer. But it wasn’t worth the trouble. On June 26, the day after I started my new job, I bought a used bike at a charity swap meet in San Rafael. It was red, and it was not made of ticky-tacky.
The blue bike that had given me such trouble was a bottom-of-the line Trek hybrid. At first, I wasn’t sure if the problem was that it was cheap, that it was a Trek, or that it was just a lemon. The red bike was also made by Trek, but it was actually of a much higher quality. A bicycle touring company, called “Backroads” www.backroads.com, had a fleet of them, and they sold their older bikes after four or five years of use. The bikes had been well maintained, and they were most definitely not bottom-of-the-line models. But I only paid $150 for it.
That $150 was, of course, just the initial investment. I had to buy a lock, of course. And I had to install a bike computer, so that I could find out how fast I was going when I yelled ‘Whee’ as I careened down a San Francisco hill (my personal record was 32 mph). And since I might be riding home from work in the dark, I needed a headlight and a taillight. And then it occurred to me that I should buy a pump and a patch kit, in case I got a flat tire. Of course, the fact that I had not patched a bicycle tire in 20 years, and had long since forgotten how to do it, didn’t faze me in the least. And then there were the miscellaneous expenses, like the time I had the bike shop replace the brakes, because they convinced me that the ones that came with it could damage the rim. When all was said and done, I had more or less doubled the price of the bike.
If that sounds bad, it was actually a worthwhile investment. For one thing, I saved $200 a year in car insurance simply because I was no longer driving to work. The reduced car mileage also drastically cut down on gasoline and maintenance costs. And by biking, rather than taking a streetcar to work, I saved the $35 a month it costs to buy a San Francisco MUNI pass.
And the best part was that I lost weight. Within just a couple of weeks of commuting by bicycle, Cindi noticed that I looked thinner. Jill, my trusty masseuse, also noticed it. I looked my evil twin in the eye and said, “Ha!”
My evil twin just snorted, pointed at my head, and said “Helmet hair.”
He is so evil, isn’t he?
The cool, rainless summers of San Francisco were almost perfect for cycling. One thing you don’t hear San Franciscans say very often is, “Damn, it’s too hot to go outside.” More often, the moisture on my glasses came not from sweat rivulets, but from fog condensation. The warmest weather comes in September and early October, but even during this so-called San Francisco “Indian Summer” (somewhat of a misnomer, since it is really just the normal pattern and occurs every year), it can get chilly once the sun sets, and the sun was setting sooner every day. My original intention had been to continue riding to work as long as the weather held up. Once the rainy season began and it got cold in earnest, I was prepared to quit. But at some point, perhaps after the 700 mile mark, I realized that I had a real shot at achieving a milestone—1000 miles for the summer. Although I did ride my bike occasionally on weekends, and I did ride the 33-mile Tour de Peninsula along with Cindi this August, almost all of the miles I was accumulating on my odometer were commute miles.
Even if weather was not an obstacle, there were others. Such as hills. I soon learned which routes to take to avoid the worst of them, although it was impossible to avoid hills altogether. I lived near sea level, and my office was also near sea level, but the route in-between involved an elevation rise of maybe 300 feet or so. Of course, the hotshot twenty-something cyclists whizzed past me on the uphill climbs. This did not sit well with my ego, although I did feel morally superior to them when I saw them running red lights. The worst offenders were the ones who wore messenger bags and put their air pumps in their back pockets, like a sign that read ‘Look at me, I’m a bike geek!’ The basic rule seemed to be: air pump in back pocket, violate traffic laws with impunity.
I generally tried to obey traffic laws, if for no other reason than not to annoy drivers, who were, after all, steering massive 2000 pound death machines in my vicinity. I had certainly faced my share of hostility from motor vehicles—the man who mocked me from the driver’s side window his truck as I struggled to ride uphill one day comes to mind—but in other cases, I encountered considerable courtesy. Countless instances of people waving me on at a four-way stop, just after I had taken the trouble to brake and thereby lose all my momentum, come to mind. I knew they were being polite, and I waved my thanks at them, but the reality is, if I had known they were going to wave me on in the first place, I would have just blown through the stop sign and saved myself the trouble of having to accelerate from zero in a high gear.
And then there were the oblivious drivers. For one thing, I was nearly “doored” twice, which taught me to keep a safe distance from parked cars as I passed them. For another, I had to deal with drivers on the street just not seeing me. One of the scarier incidents involved an oncoming car that started to turn left right in front of me. I stopped as quickly as I could, and the driver finally saw me and stopped also. I glared at her as I passed her. Finally she muttered “sorry” without even looking at me, and from all appearances she seemed more annoyed that she had to stop for me than truly sorry that she nearly hit me. I got the last laugh by secretly giving her an ancient Icelandic curse, which I can’t repeat here, but let me just say that it involves lamb carcasses, dog collars, and tiny fried cheese sandwiches.
As I got closer to my milestone, none of these dangers deterred me.
On October 5, 1999, somewhere in Haight-Ashbury, on my way home from work, my odometer crossed over the 1000 mile mark. I had achieved my milestone. I had my 1000 mile summer. And I’m not done riding yet.
Take that, “Beegee”.