Thursday, September 18, 2008

2 Years and counting...

Today marks my 2-year anniversary of my first-ever bicycle commute. It's also "Talk Like A Pirate Day" and in my haste to get stuff ready for work this morning, I forgot to fly the jolly roger. :(

61 Degrees and calm wind made for a beautiful return to the bike. Couldn't have asked for a nicer morning.

More San Francisco pics:


Noah's Bagels. Gotta try that next time I'm out there.


Apple Store and Virgin Records were both right next to my hotel.


This bike belongs to a guy named Dave from Seattle. He's a transient, traveling all over the place on his bike, on buses, trains, and any other way he can. He lives in hostels and campgrounds, finds odd jobs to survive, and goes wherever he feels like.


I can't even begin to describe the sheer number and diversity of bikes and cyclists in San Francisco. It's a completely different environment.


One of many fixed-gear bikes I saw as I wandered around the city.


The view from my hotel room.

9 comments:

  1. Glad you're back! I was going through withdrawals. Yours is the first bicycle blog I check every morning. LOVE the photos!

    So what bike blogs do you read first thing?

    Steven
    Indiana

    ReplyDelete
  2. *blushing* heh thanks.

    I'm an info-sec guy at heart, so the blogroll you see to the right side of my page has some geekery in it. That's the very same thing I look at (okay, plus a few more) on a daily basis. I use Google Reader to consolidate it for easy reading.

    Most of the bike blogs, I'll read every entry because there's maybe one or two per day. Some of the technical blogs, I'll skim the headlines, mark interesting articles, then go back and read the interesting stuff later. There is far too much content to keep up with on a daily basis.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Did you stay at a boutique hotel? Hotel Palomar? I think that was the view from my window last June.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Gotta say I am somewhat envious of Dave from Seattle.

    ReplyDelete
  5. The training and conference sessions were held at Marriott right off Market St, and that's where my company booked my room.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Happy Anniversary, Noah! Good to see you back.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Yeah, your hotel was a half block away from the Palomar, which is right on that funky corner across from the Virgin store in your pic. My window overlooked that intersection and I could see the commuters and how the bikes interacted with traffic. It was very interesting and my first real experience with mixed commuter-type traffic. I had to walk down Market to around 1st street every morning and it was interesting to watch pedestrians, cars, and bikes interact with BART. I was there for about four days and I didn't want to leave. I would have to earn about twice as much as I do now for my family to live there. Great pics.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Kansas City suburbs are about average as far as cost of living goes, but when you head out towards Silicon Valley, cost of living is close to double the national average, so that doesn't surprise me. $100,000/Yr is pretty good earnings around here, but it's chump change in SF.

    ReplyDelete
  9. SF is quite a town. I went with the family a couple of time while doing the national parks.

    The hills made me not miss my bike that much.

    ReplyDelete