The bike ride from my house to the Financial District takes about 15 minutes. 12 or 13 if I hit mostly green lights, a few minutes more otherwise or if I'm tired.
The dependability is the one thing I love above all else about biking to work or the gym in the morning, home in the afternoon. When my first bike was stolen a few months ago, I didn't immediately bemoan the money I would have to spend in order to buy another one, or feel violated that someone had run off with it so unapologetically. I mean, I did eventually, but the first thing I felt was frustration, dread that I would have to take BART or a bus to get downtown for a few days.
I still remember my boss, ever the optimist and believer in the good of humanity, said that it may help to believe that the thief needed it more. I wanted to believe her, but that proved difficult as I stood on the platform, waiting for my train, thinking of how I should be on my bike, moving instead of standing still.
I took BART for three days and, as expected, hated it. I have long hated BART, as well as all other forms of public transportation, but not for any of the obvious reasons one might suspect. Sure, I've been on trains that reeked of old urine fermenting in the cushions. I've ridden a Muni subway train where a homeless man took his socks off and vigorously mined for something between his toes. I've stood on busses so packed that it didn't matter whether I was holding on to a rail; everyone moved together, swayed to the turns and jerked at the stops as one unit, like herded sheep in an overcrowded pen.
No, not for any of those reasons. It is the waiting, or more accurately, the anticipation of the waiting that I can't stand. Because the trains, the busses, even cabs don't run on my schedule, don't exist merely to get Austin from his point A to his point B, I almost always have to wait, from a few minutes to a few minutes more.
When I used to live in Oakland and relied on BART to get home, I would rush, in a panic, to make the 5:16 train. Never mind that there would be another one within 15 minutes; I absolutely had to get on the train I planned to get on. To miss it was to waste 15 minutes of my life standing there, waiting for the next one. Someone somewhere (in some movie or something) once said that the saddest thing in life is getting to the station and having no one there to pick you up. Wrong. The saddest thing is getting to the station and realizing your train (to take you to that other station where no one would be to pick you up) just left a mere minute ago. In fact, you saw the doors close, heard the sound that warned of the closing doors, perhaps even had a chance to make it if you had shoved some elderly gentleman aside in order to run down the escalator, had pried open the doors and squeezed your body and your possessions through its jaws. But because you didn't, you are now cursed to stand at the station, watch 15 minutes of your life go by--15 minutes you could have spent at home, watching your life go by.
This was a daily battle. If I reached the station with a minute to spare, I felt like I could have spent that minute working. If I was one minute in the other direction, I regretted spending that earlier minute working. Missing a train meant adding 15 more minutes to my commute, and I just couldn't stand it-- why, God, why??
This was masochism at its cruelest.
And then I moved into the City, walking distance from downtown. Then Sam and I bought a loft in the flatter parts of town. Then in comes my bike, which gets stolen, and then in comes my second bike, my trusty folding bike I adore and am embarassed by all at the same time. I sit upright instead of leaning over the handlebars. Sam installed a little headlight for the front, and glued a flashing red one for the rear of my helmet, the one he says makes me look special. Tooling down Howard Street on my way home, I routinely get passed by "real" cyclists, the ones with real bikes, the non-folding kind, the kind they hunch over masculinely, even the women, the ones who become part of a writhing body of bikes during Critical Mass. I feel like a scooter to a skateboard, a Vespa to a Harley.
But still, I love my bike. During this spell of unseasonably temperate weather for San Francisco, I look forward to riding to the gym, am giddy at the prospect of riding home. Even the cold air this morning felt refreshing; on my ride home, the setting sun tinted the sky with sherbety hues and laced it with wispy strands of white. It was quite beautiful. And my commute was 15 minutes long and always will be, whether I start at 5:16 or not.
So my boss was wrong after all. Nobody needs my bike more than I do. Well, me and my OCD-addled psyche. Nobody could enjoy showing up to work with matted hair and a slight sweat more. And though I'm not a great rider, and I get nervous when too many other cyclists are near me, I can't imagine my life without my little Dahon. And every now and again, I find my rhythm on the road. Sometimes, I feel like I am going at the same pace as the cars I ride beside, gliding down the street like a real cyclist.
Sometimes, like today, I even manage to pass one.
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