Like riding a bicycle
I bought a bicycle on Wednesday: $25 on Craigslist, which was almost too cheap not to buy. It's a bit big for me, and the seller was in east San Jose, which is like 25 minutes away from Mountain View, so it was a bit of an adventure to get there and back. But the bike's more or less in working order, and if I ever want to sell it, I could probably make back the $25 I bought it for, so all in all, I'm pretty happy with it.
Alan's been rolling his eyes all week, ever since I started sending him emails with links to Craigslist postings for bicycles and asking, "what do you think about this one?" I can't quite figure out if he's less-than-enthusiastic because he doesn't think I need a bike, or because he thinks I should figure out what I want before going out and buying anything. In any case, I've wanted a bike for a while -- one of the reasons I was excited to move to Mountain View was that we would be close enough to the light rail system so that I could take the train to work (my company pays for a pass that lets me take the VTA for free). But the closest station is still a mile away, which is kind of arduous to walk, especially in the mornings. There's free parking at the station, but to me it seems rather pointless (and doesn't help my gas mileage) to start up my car in the mornings only to drive a mile. Once I'm in my car, I might as well drive to work. But biking to the station, instead of walking, cuts that leg of my commute down to eight minutes or so.
Last night I bought a bike lock, and this morning, I finally had everything I needed to bike to the VTA station and take the train to work. From door to door the trip took me a little less than an hour, but about 2/3 of the time was spent waiting for/sitting on the train, which gave me a chance to finally browse through this month's issue of National Geographic. It was nice.
(Aside: I need to cut down on my magazine subscriptions. Currently I subscribe to National Geographic and Discover magazine. Lately I haven't been that impressed with the quality of Discover's articles, but unfortunately I'm subscribed to it until November 2007. In any case I hardly have time to read either magazine as it is. To make things worse, I recently donated to KQED, the local public radio station, and as a thank-you gift I will soon be receiving a year's subscription to The New Yorker and some local mag called Ode, so I will soon have even more magazines I will not read. Anyway, back to this morning's commute.)
Fortunately, the hardest part of the commute is having to lift up my bike, which is rather heavy, in order to hang it vertically from the racks on the train. On the train ride home today, one of the other riders saw me struggling to hang my bike on the rack, and rushed over to help me. I appreciated her random act of kindness, but it was a little embarrassing. Here's hoping it'll get easier with practice.
Here's also hoping that I can keep it up. The disadvantage is that I do have to wake up earlier, and I get home later. But I'm trying to remind myself that biking/taking the train, even just a few days a week, will cut down on my gas bill... and count as exercise.
So the other thing about this whole bicycle deal is that it's gotten me thinking about California as a place to live. Alan and I have been here for just a little more than a year, and sometimes I surprise myself by how "Californian" I've become, at least in some ways. For example, with respect to food: I shop at the local market and Trader Joe's, and even if I can't afford to consistently buy organic, I am starting to understand why organic/local/sustainable farming is important, and moreover, I'll defend it to people (like Alan) who complain how you can't taste the difference between organic and non-organic foods (taste is only a small part of why you should buy organic).
I subscribe to the print edition of the local newspaper (admittedly, mostly for the sake of the crossword). I'm a registered Democrat, and yet, I don't think I will be all that upset if Arnold Schwartzenegger remains governor after the November elections (and he probably will... the Democratic candidate, Phil Angelides, is not very impressive). And since it seriously seems like every 1 in 8 cars I see here are hybrids, lately I've been musing about how long it would take me to save enough money to buy a Prius of my own. I think the answer is "quite a while," which made buying a bike and reducing my carbon dioxide emissions even more important to me.
Most egregiously, a couple weeks ago I raved to Smitha about how awesome KQED is, and ranted about how it's 100 times better than WABE, Atlanta's one public radio station. Afterward I felt kind of bad, like, look how disloyal to Atlanta I am being!
Then again, maybe it's less about being in California and more about growing up, and being able to make these choices and form these opinions in the first place. But I do admit that it's easier just to blame California -- as if, whenever we move back to the east coast, I'll go back to being my regular, non-everything-conscious self.