My blog, my stories...

So lately my work commute has changed up. Early January my offices moved from the south east end of town (out near the airport) to the farthest South West reaches of Austin. Nowadays I'm biking out to Southwest Parkway and William Cannon from North Austin near 183 and Burnett. It's not much longer but it's a hell of a lot harder.

Luckily there's an express bus that runs from downtown to a stop near my office, but the downside is there's only 1 bus there and 1 bus back. As long as I'm downtown at 7:30am with a dollar in my pocket I'm good to go, otherwise I have a long uphill ride ahead of me. South Lamar isn't horrible but Southwest Parkway with it's lack of shoulder at the beginning and 55mph speed limits can be harrowing.

Of course, being the always brilliant cyclist I am, I quickly realized that to do this ride without a helmet and brakeless is foolhardy. So what have I been doing for the past week? Yeah, I know. It's just so much FUN! The bottom bracket on my IRO Rob Roy (the one with brakes) has been creaking ever since I took it out with my company's road cycling group to do hill repeats and the wheels on my Karate Monkey are now officially un-trueable, so the Angus it is. Jesus has been my most trustworthy bike of late and if you're a friend of mine, you know I always put my faith in Jesus. ;)

One of the big positives of my ride is since I come down Lamar on my way home it's easy to just cut off and ride around through all the downtown parks and trails if the weather is nice or I'm feeling like some light off-roading/jogger-dodging. Since the weather has been improving the local health nuts have been out jogging the trails in full force and since they seem to love rolling in a red-rover style 5-wide line it makes biking the trails an ever adventuresome endeavor.

Otherwise my ritual has been to cut over to Congress and see how many of the lights I can make it through before either having to stop or running into the Capital building. From there it's off through campus and onwards to my home in cozy, 60s rancher-filled North Austin.

This nonsensical posting was just a little peek into what has become 3 hours a day in the life of yours truly.

Jason