It was back in 2007, working at a job in downtown Saint Paul, that I was able to start biking to work for the first time.<\/p>\n
And I loved it; for most of the next four summers, I biked every morning I was able to; in 2008, that was\u00a0every\u00a0morning from about April 23 on (because the spring of 2008 was almost as late as this one seems to want to be) into early December; 2009, less so.<\/p>\n
Back around election time in 2010, I went back to contracting – at a place that had no locker room. \u00a0I’m not one of those guys who can bike to work without a shower handy; cue Sammy Hagar, but I can not ride slow. \u00a0If I see someone on a bike half a mile ahead of me, I’ll try to catch them.<\/p>\n
From there, I went to a job in Minnetonka. \u00a0The bad news; it was 16 miles each way, which after the previous winter required a little getting in shape to do the whole thing reliably. \u00a0The good news? \u00a0I did it; in late summer of 2011, after a month or two of riding from Park and Ride lots in the western subs to work, I did the whole thing for the first time, there and back…<\/p>\n
…and as I sat at a stoplight at Prior and Marshall, after climbing the long, grueling hill up from the Marshall-Lake bridge, got a cell phone call about a family medical emergency that ended the biking season, and pretty much everything else, for the next three months.<\/p>\n
After that, I spent a year at another contract at another building without a locker room, silently gnashing my teeth at the fates that left me commuting in a car through such a gorgeous summer for riding.<\/p>\n
But now – knock wood – things may be looking up.<\/p>\n
Started a new gig last week. \u00a0It’s not too far away – ten miles, by the usual bike routes. \u00a0And they’ve got a locker room. \u00a0 The route is a beautiful one – a little dangerous in places, but it’s gonna be a fun ride.<\/p>\n
I’m chomping at the bit, here.<\/p>\n
And the weather seems to know it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It was back in 2007, working at a job in downtown Saint Paul, that I was able to start biking to work for the first time. And I loved it; for most of the next four summers, I biked every morning I was able to; in 2008, that was\u00a0every\u00a0morning from about April 23 on (because […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[75],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35839","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biking"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35839","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=35839"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35839\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35840,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35839\/revisions\/35840"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=35839"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=35839"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=35839"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}