On a bicycle built for two...(or maybe just one and some groceries)

I know that it's been a while since my last post, but between moving in, starting my new job, and more or less being without internet for my first week here, my life has been pretty crazy.

Saturday officially marked the one-week anniversary of my pedisterian/public transportation lifestyle and Sunday was the beginning of my life as an urban bicyclist.

The public transportation system in Boston is known as the T-Line, and despite construction delays, my experience on it has thus far been a good one. I live about a 15-20 minute walk from the Red Line, the most reliable and latest-running of the four Boston T-lines (red, orange, green, and blue). I can also take it straight to work without having to change trains, which is a huge plus.

My walk to the T station takes me through a couple of cute neighborhoods and includes a bit of the Minuteman Bikeway, which I look forward to exploring more in the coming weeks. Once I get a basket for my bike, I'll probably use the trail to bike to Harvard Square to do some shopping and more exploring. I also want to explore Davis Square, which is only about a 30-minute bike ride from my house. (I also just invested in a pair of commuting/biking shoes, which has made life much better so far.)

It will also be really handy to be able to use my bike for grocery shopping--the nearest store is a mile and half or two miles from my house, which isn't a bad walk right now, but I know that it will seem much longer when it starts to get cold outside. I actually had my first grocery shopping experience as a pedestrian on Friday, and it was actually much easier than I thought it would be. I used my reusable shopping bags, so I didn't have to worry about the bags ripping, and I tried my best to make sure that the bags were well balanced, so they didn't really get too heavy either. I also made sure to put all the cold items in the same bag, so they were still pretty chilly when I got home, despite the current heat wave. (It was in the mid-80s today and it's supposed to be 90 tomorrow. In a house with no air conditioning. Unpleasant.)

So far bicycling has proved to be an adventure. If I could describe Boston bicyclists in one word it would be "brave" or, perhaps, "reckless". I'm not quite sure yet. My first expedition was 6-mile round trip to Target. Let's just say that I no longer plan on frequenting Target much. However, my ride was very educational. One of the biggest things that I learned was that, although Boston's lackadaisical way of marking their roads is an annoyance to their drivers, it can be a downright hazard to their bicyclists because searching for road names both distracts us (and the drivers around us) from the road conditions and discovering a road name at the last second gives us very little reaction/planning time. When I was in the truck, I had a large advantage due to the fact that I was, well...large. This is not the case on a bicycle. I also learned that if you white-knuckle your hand-grips long enough, you can lose feeling in your left pointer finger. Who knew?

Although the bike ride to Target was definitely one of my scariest road experiences ever (ranking just ahead of getting hit by a U-Haul and driving a 10-foot truck over 800 miles, but just behind taking hairpin turns on the Blue Ridge Parkway while surrounded by trucks), the ride back home was MUCH smoother. Boston travel seems to operate on this strange rule that dictates that the return trip is always shorter than the original trip (I have no idea how/why this works, but it has held true for me thus far), so the trip back was much less tiring (despite carrying a full backpack). I even took some time to explore a bit and was pleasantly surprised by my discoveries, including a Scottish store that I am going to have to check out. I can't wait to learn more about the city. I may even try to bike downtown sometime next week.