Bike Commuting: Part Nine

Leaving for Work

Today was my first offical Bike Commute to Work! At the time of writting this portion of my blog, I have yet to ride home. We'll see how that goes, and I'll add that to the end of the blog.

My bike!

Ride to Work

The Ride was a beautiful ride! I got to ride in with the sunrise, and it was amazing! The ride was tough for sure. I packed the bike with all sorts of things, as you saw in the video.

I had my backpack (heavy) and a pannier pack filled with body wash / shampoo, clothes, lunch, and 3 water bottles, and a coffee. HEAVY. Too heavy. It was tough because I hadn't ridden with any of those things on before, but I survived. I had to get off and walk a bit of the Walking Bridge because of the gears on my bike (my fault), but other than that a nice ride.

Made it to Work

Very out of breath

Tracked Ride to Work

Nice times, imo

This is the workout to work, felt pretty good about this! The elevation is what's getting me for sure! The bridge is steep!

Shower Time

Work Shower

I made it work, congrats, now what? Time to shower, luckily there is a shower at my work. So I took advantage of it and it was delightful. Water started out cold, but warmed up and felt good to get cleaned up for a hard day's work!

Leaving for Home

Windy, but Excited!

Made it Home

I'm a speed demon

Tracked Ride Home

Like I said.. speed demon

Another Shower

Another Shower.. this time at home

Next Ride

I did it! I made it all the way to work and back home. I can't believe that I've actually done it.

Took me a month to build up this strength. And I'm so proud of myself, if I'm being honest. I am certainly enjoying riding my bike and I had only practiced riding on my lunch breaks (my previous Bike-Commute Blogs) to the walking bridge and back. That's a total of 6 miles. However, if you ride to work (6 miles) and ride home (6 more miles) - a total of 12 miles.

That's more than 6 miles... so I was a little nervous for my ride home. But I did it. I did it even faster than my ride to work.

So there it is, I did it. The full 12 miles. I have been building up to this, and now I did it again today (August 2, 2022). So, I'm going to try to ride 4 days a week (Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday). Not Wednesday as it would take too long to ride to church. Now, this first week, we'll see how I feel. I felt pretty tired once I arrived home for my first full day.

I imagine this first week, I may drive on Friday, but we'll just have to see. As for the blogs continuing, I'm having a bit of a crisis. I don't know what to do, I don't think I need to write these blogs anymore as I finally did it. I had a goal: Bike Commute to Work, and I did that. Now what?

Maybe it's time to continue to ride the bike, but start a new hobby or continue a current hobby! Maybe I'll read more, now that I have my lunches free again!

Alright, that's all folks! Thank you for following me on this little journey, I hope you all have a great day!