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To make up for my staying at home on the national bike-to-work day, I completed my first 50 km bike ride yesterday. Unlike running where you can accomplish a pretty good workout in 90 minutes, biking requires much longer times to get an endurance workout. The thought of being away for 3 hours or more on a weekend is not appealing to me especially now that Shanthala has started working. I was talking about this with Atri the other day and he was cajoling me that if I can start riding by 6 am, I can be back by 9 or 10 am and still have a day to spend with Shanthala. It struck me that thanks to Shanthala’s schedule, I do wake up by 5:30 am everyday on weekdays. I decided then that I could try my long bike ride on Fridays instead of on Saturdays. If I managed to do this, I needed to be away only on Sunday for about 90 mins for my long run.

With some trepidation, I decided to try out the route from my house to Highway 9 via Foothill Expressway, Stevens Creek Canyon Road and Mt Eden Road and from Highway 9 to get to work via Sunnyvale-Saratoga Road, Central Expressway, Scott Blvd and San Tomas Aquino Creek Trail. I was nervous whether I’d be able to complete this and still put in a full day’s work, about whether I’d be able to climb Mt. Eden on my recumbent and what I’d do if I had a puncture on Mt. Eden road and so on.

The day started off perfect for my endevour. Rain was predicted in the afternoon and so it was cloudy but without much wind and only mildly cold. I overdressed as usual and by the time I was over Mt. Eden, I was wetter than I’d have been had it rained. But it was glorious. Biking up Mt. Eden was hard, but not impossible since it is very steep but relatively short. I could only manage 8 kmph up that road, but coming down I was doing 45 kmph and all the way from Highway 9 to Central Expressway I must’ve biked at not less than 30kmph. I got into work a little less than 2 1/2 hours later, tired but not exhausted. 50 kilometres on a single ride with about 1200 feet of climbing, most of which is in 6 miles or so. Hopefully, the first of many. I’m glad that I can put in these distances without worrying about long term consequences of long rides that typically accompanies riding on a regular bike.

I may yet like Mark Knopfler’s new album, his duet with Emmylou Harris titled All the Road Running. One of the songs that leapt out at me immediately was Love and Happiness, one of the two songs penned by Emmylou Harris on the album. It’s a sweet song sung by parents to their children. There are so few songs that I know that are a song to children; Beautiful Boy by Lennon, Cannibals by Mark Knopfler were the only two that come to mind immediately. Listening to Love and Happiness a little while back, reminded me again of our loss. A few seconds later I thought again that we were lucky that we had so many close ones to whom we could sing this. So, here’s to looking at you all, Vibha, Noah, Eva, Ananki, Shruti, Antara, Neeti, Skanda, Hil, Jen, Harper, Siddhanth, Shankar, Leo, Francesco, Eashwari, Ananth, Hari, Chinnu, Pranav, Sumedh, Dhrona, Kesini and your sister and many others, known and unknown. And of course to sweet little Kitty, who has filled the vaccuum more than he’ll ever know.

here’s a wishing well
here’s a penny for
any thought it is
that makes you smile
every diamond dream
everything that brings
love and happiness
to your life

This week is the National Bike-to-Work week and today was the national Bike-to-Work day. Of course, as in the past, I worked from home today .

According to the local Mercury News, 100,000 people were supposed to be biking in the Bay Area today and some 36,000 people bike to work everyday. We’re in the minority, but the numbers are steadily climbing. If the gas prices continue to stay high, more people will start to take the idea seriously. Those of us that are close to public transport can ride a short distance and then take the public transport, if the distance to work is daunting or as a gentle easing into the regimen.

Of course, riding to work may take longer than driving, but I think the benefits are so significant that if we can get past the “speed and time” wall, more people would enjoy riding to work. Of course, we’re caught up in speed and the hurried pace of life leaves us little time to appreciate the slower route. Driving to work would take me 15 minutes at best and 30 mins at worst. Biking takes me about 40 minutes to an hour depending on the route. I met a bunch of people on the train who take the long way home. One of them works in NASA in Sunnyvale and commutes from Gilroy. He drives to the Caltrain station, rides Caltrain to Mountain View and then takes the light rail to the Crossman station. He said that driving in peak traffic everyday as far as Gilroy is too stressful. Another colleague at work takes the Caltrain from San Carlos and then the light rail to work because he wants to do his bit in reducing our dependence on oil. Gandhi said, “Be the change that you want to see in the world” and these people are doing just that.

For all my sermonizing, even I was (am) caught up in speed. I was a trifle disappointed when I realized that I had not acquired a speed demon in the SatRDay. Instead of enjoying the bike, I spent the first few weeks in contrafactual thinking, trying to work up a speed better than on my old upright bike to convince myself that my purchase had not been so bad after all. One day when I was biking, I realized how tightly I was holding myself and how hard I was struggling in holding onto my fantasy. I gave it up then and decided to just enjoy the bike, no matter how slow I may be biking that day. From then on, it’s been a lot of fun and I’ve been biking faster than on my upright I’ve been biking longer routes to work in the morning, looking for alternate paths to get from here to there and trying them all out. So far, biking down Central and onto Scott and San Tomas Aquino Creek Trail has been the nicest. I get to destress on my way back from work, listening to some good music on my iPod. However, biking back in the evenings is not easy due to the strong headwind, especially in the summer.

Further good news for us is that Palo Alto, Mountain View and Sunnyvale have been rated among the best places in the country to be able to bike. There are lots of bike paths and many roads have separate bike lanes making it safe for bikers to share the road with faster vehicles. Sunnyvale has 79 miles of bike lanes and 8 miles of off-road bike paths.

Recumbents may make riding the bike easy for a lot of people, if the prices could come down a bit. Right now, they cost a bit too much and the used market does not offer many choices. I was lucky to get the bike that I did, at the price that I did. The main advantages in riding a recumbent are the comfortable seating and the reduced air resistance due to the lowered seat. I haven’t tried a trike (a recumbent with three wheels), but that is supposed to be even faster. There I go again, getting on the speed treadmill. Quoting Gandhi again, “There’s more to life than increasing its speed”.

I skimmed through a book called “In Praise of Slowness” which talks of how a growing minority of people are beginning to slow down the pace of life, to, to drink in the sights, to live with clarity and vividness instead of a blur. Carl Honore, the author, writes that boredom is a modern invention. We’ve become passive consumers, seeing the world as one giant tit. Sucking instead of giving, with no sense of satiety.

So, may this day of bike-to-work be also a celebration of slowness, of enjoying life, of living it instead of merely skimming it. As Simon and Garfunkel sang:

Slow down, you move too fast, you’ve got to make the morning last
Just kickin’ down the cobble-stones, lookin’ for fun and feelin’ groovy

Feeling groovy

Hello lamp-post, what’s cha knowing, I’ve come to watch your flowers growin’
Ain’t cha got no rhymes for me, do-it-do-do, feelin’ groovy

Feeling groovy

I’ve got no deeds to do, no promises to keep
I’m dappled and drowsy and ready to sleep
Let the morning time drop all its petals on me

Life I love you, all is groovy

The major event of the week was Shanthala starting work. She’s enjoyed her first week. Here are three pictures of her hospital:

We went there yesterday to take these pictures and enjoy a leisurely stroll through Edgewood County Park. The park was quite nice. We did the Serpentine Loop, continuing on Edgewood Trail for a while before turning back and returning to the car park via Sylvan Loop. Here are some pictures of the park:


The trail is nicely covered with trees and so was a nice stroll in the heat of the afternoon. The Sylvan Loop is a 2.5 mile loop with half-mile markings and a decent climb and so would be a good place to run. But it is a bit far to travel from our place and if we’re going that far, I could always go to Sawyer Camp Trail which is longer and nicer. Talking of running, I didn’t do my long run this week.

We had dinner with Santosh and Ranjani who have bought their first house. We wish them happiness in their new home. Here are some pics of the place:

We had dinner at Thai Pepper on Benton Street which was a favorite haunt of ours when we lived near there when we first came to the US. Going there brought back happy memories of those times, especially hanging out with Suds and Ashish.

I didn’t run today partly because we were unpacking our boxes from India. Robert helped us fix the CD storage onto the wall and was rewarded with lunch . I promptly played a few CDs that fit our mood as we unpacked. Playing Kannada folk songs acutely pressed home how much we miss Bangalore. I visited the places again when I unpacked Eicher’s Bangalore city map.

We’ve started talking about buying a scooter or so much vehicle that Shanthala can use to make her commute more environmentally friendly. Ashish thinks it might be more tiring than we think to travel 16 miles each way on a scooter. Bajaj’s Chetak retrofitted to pass California’s stringent emission standards is available for purchase at San Francisco ! Let’s see what we end up doing.

Finally, here are two pictures of my recumbent bike, SatR’Day. Recumbent bikes are described in the Wikipedia as:

a variety of bicycle which places the rider in a seated or supine position (rarely, in a prone position). Recumbents hold the world speed record for a bicycle and were banned from international racing in 1934.

The main advantage of a recumbent is a more comfortable riding position. The uncomfortable seating of most upright bikes was causing problems and was my chief motivation to get an upright bike. With the recumbent, this problem goes away due to the riding position. A friend at work had bought a recumbent and allowed me to use it for a week to get used to the riding and test it out. After the initial awkwardness, riding it became a lot of fun and I decided to get myself one. I found the SatR’Day on sale on the local Craig’s List and after testing it a bit, bought it about three months back.

The recumbent uses a different set of muscles compared to a regular bike. I found that different recumbents seem to use different muscles as well. With SatR’Day, the hamstrings and butt muscles were used a lot more than the quadriceps. This took a little getting used to and now I can ride the recumbent at the same speed over the same distance (to work and back) as my old upright bike. In fact, I ride a lot more now with the recumbent than I did with my upright, maybe also partly because of being in a better shape physically than before. I ride to and from work most days which is about 20-24 miles depending on the route that I take. I’m also exploring a lot of different ways of getting to work, avoiding busy streets and highway overpasses as much as possible.

The main advantages of this bike are its comfortable riding position including the handles being under the seat and its ability to be dismantled and folded up very quickly and easily into even a small car trunk. The main disadvantage is that it is not a speed demon. I could ride much more faster on my friend’s recumbent compared to the SatR’Day, but his was a big bike that could not be dismantled easily. Also, his bike was not as steady as this bike is especially on slow climbs. Like all recumbents, climbing hills is slow and takes a little getting used to.

But the bike has a lot of cute appeal it appears since I get pointed at in the street quite often and have many people comment about how comfortable it looks.

Another interesting part of this bike is that I bought it used from Alan Cooper, the inventor of Visual Basic. It’s an expensive bike to purchase new but was quite affordable used.

Here is a picture of me on it.