Riding a bike

So I got my bicycle from the shop and used it to return home!

That first trip was definitely an experience. I had never rode a bicycle on the road alongside other moving vehicles. When I was a child I had a rather big patio, and even though I went through the streets a few times, there were not a lot of cars—I didn’t live in a busy place.

Going from there to riding in the middle of downtown traffic afte almost ten years was definitely a change of pace.

Not to worry though. I live in a pretty small city, which is alos quite used to motorcycles and bikes as part of traffic.

The one who wasn’t used to such things was me of course, so when I tried to get ahead of a car by going on the sidewalk and realized there was no ramp ahead to return to the street, I ended up braking rather carelessly, the momentum carried me forward and well, that hurt.

Alas, the traffic was slow so there was no real danger, I got back on track and pedaled away. The rest of the trip was painless! although my saddle was misaligned and I didn’t bother to correct it until I got home. I avoided big streets for the most part and everything was fine.

For a couple of days I resigned myself to cycling around the patio and the neighborhood, just like I did as a child, nothing much happened, although I was interested on maybe commuting to work by bike, but I wasn’t sure I would be able to do it.

On Friday I had the day off, and thought it would be a good time to go for an early morning ride! My original plan was to do the whole trip to work and then return, without the time pressure. But I ended up just roaming around downtown without any real direction, just embracing the freedom of commuting by bike. The initial route was the reverse to what I did to get home.

One of the things I focused on was looking for other people commuting on a bike. It wasn’t hard to find someone. As soon as I got to the main street I had to ride through, a commuter was a few dozen meters ahead. I decided to stay behind him for most of the main road, it was cool to follow someone with a path defined already. He turned towards a quieter street parallel to the main one, but I kept following the guy. He was older than me and we didn’t exchange any words, I stayed behind until I decided to go past him, his bike was rather old, and ugly.

That’s something I noticed, most bikes I saw were for commuting, they are barely maintained and often look rusty, with the paint peeling off and dust all over them. I didn’t stop to ask anyone about it, but my assumption is that they either don’t care about the looks, or they simply do it on purpose to discourage bike theft.

My bike was the only one I came across that had mechanical disc brakes. Everyone else had v-brakes, which are the most common especially on older bikes and budget-friendly models.

I made it downtown and started to see more of that traffic. Nothing to worry about, streets are still compact and cars go slow. I end up arriving to the riverside—yes my city has a river—and I realize that there’s actually a little bike lane there! They are one-way and on opposite directions of the street. This is a very touristy area so it makes sense, I have no idea why I had never noticed it before… oh, I know why.

The only bike lane in my city is like, a meter wide.

One might think that’s just sad but I honestly found it hilarious. Why did they even bother? Well, I can’t complain that much, because I tried it for a bit and kind of enjoyed it! Going at my own pace without worrying about cars behind or in front of me, I was able to pick up some speed, although I had to be mindful of intersections.

Having made such a discovery, I decided to head back home, going uphill on a lot of areas. I ended up riding for about 13 kilometers in an hour of time, not bad for a first try!

Next day on Saturday, I went cycling again and decided to ride towards a nearby neighborhood. This one felt a bit more dangerous at first, because I would have to ride through a main road. Not a highway per se, but still big. Once again I avoided most of it by using parallel streets and ended up making it there in one piece!

The reason I wanted to ride around this neighborhood is because my own only has dirt roads. This was nearby and had proper paviment, so I wanted to bike around the place without much pressure. I didn’t stumble upon any cars, and there was one super long straight downhill that was very fun to take, although I still was not great at using my brakes, it wasn’t super difficult to go back up either.

From there, I went towards a nearby high school, because I wanted to see if they had bike parking! The school was closed—it was a weekend after all–but I could see some infrastructure in place. The building itself was built recently, so the surroundings are pretty much just mountainous terrain…

So of course I had to give that a go.

I rode behind the high school and ended up going downhill between some dirt and rocks! I went rather slowly—It’s a hybrid, not a proper mountain bike—but it was cool to feel the suspension at work, as well as manouvering through the big rocks and trying to stay in balance. I tried to find an exit to go back to civilization, but it was a dead end and had to walk along my bike all the way up. It was worth it nonetheless.

On my way back I took the big street again all the way, and felt cool to do so without taking a side street this time. I went once again downtown, through the same route until I got to the riverside again.

I wanted to go in the opposite direction of the bike lane I took yesterday. I ended up in a small park. Just a social spot with lots of trees and walking paths, with a slightly wider path all around the park for bikes to ride around. I saw another person riding on one, and a few older men parked with theirs as well. The one cycling was the first bike with disc brakes I’ve seen on my rides so far. He also had a very wide saddle, I guess for comfort due to age.

Trying to ride into one of the smaller pathways, I ended up almost crashing with the root of a tree, so I had my second suddent stop that ended up with some… pain…

Alas, I cycled back downtown following a different road than before. There was a bit of a scary moment when one of the public transport buses was right behind me, but I managed to pedal away just fine. I had another encounter with another bike that I thought looked awesome, I followed it for a bit, the brand was Green Plus, and although I didn’t ask they seem to be at least double the price of mine! The shape looked a lot more unique than everything I had seen so far.

As I made it to the main road downtown, there was once again a bit of slow traffic. I was feeling bold and decided to ride in between the cars (it’s a single line, so it was between moving and parked cars, not between two moving vehicles). This is apparently legal in my city, from what I read online, but I was still careful about it to avoid opened doors in front of me.

Eventually I made it back to the usual quiet route home. I rode about 20 kilometers this time, for about 1 hour 40 minutes. I even stopped at little shop in the neighborhood (a tiendita de la esquina in Mexico) and bought myself some juice. I was feeling pretty cool.

During these trips I kept looking for bikes and what people used them for. Actually most of the people were older adults which didn’t seem to have a lot of income. I wondered where they were going, what their work was, what was the reason for them to bike, how long have they done it. How often do they do maintenance to them, and lots of other things.

Honestly given the state of some of those bikes I was amused by it all. How would those bikes feel to ride? Maybe I spend way more money than I needed to? I think my bike was worth the money, it’s not that expensive after all, but it still felt weird to see the difference between the people in my small city and the cycling and bike commuting community online.

I will keep going on my weekly rides, and I am still thinking about trying a proper commute to work. I need to ask how to access the bike parking space in my work (yes, there are some spots available!) and to buy a proper rack and locks. But well, that’s a blog post for another day.

This is day 69 of #100DaysToOffload