Why I've Been Biking
Oct. 30th, 2008 11:31 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shannon_aSo, I've been writing a lot in this journal about biking, something I hadn't really been doing before. Here's why.
It's all about being sick. As I've written here since the summer, I was consistently sick from July 12 ... well, to now. I'm still having headaches and some swollen glands, but they've been slowly letting up (I hope). I think I still have some of whatever infection lay me low, but I also suspect that I'm quarreling with some anxiety-driven side effects, which resulted from being sick for so long.
In any case, sickness drove me to biking for several reasons:
1.) I got out and biked some during the worst of the sickness, heading to some doctor appointments that were in north Oakland. Given that my only other biking in recent time had been to our computer co-lo facility and back--which is usually a frustrating experience because it tends to mean that a machine isn't working--this was a chance to do some biking somewhere other than my regular trips--and biking that perhaps wasn't as annoying.
(Doctor visit less frustrating than co-lo visit? Maybe.)
2.) It's been my way of fighting back against the illness. Biking has been my way of saying that I'm not an invalid, that I can get out and do something physical, even when I've regularly been hurting.
3.) It's something I'm doing now to improve my health long term. I think I was in the best shape of my life when I worked at Chaosium. I was in my mid-20s at the time, and had just come off a year working at Sun Microsystems with a long commute on either side. Working for Sun was thus eating up about 11-12 hours a day, and I had no energy for anything else, and so was getting no exercise. Jump from there to working at Chaosium, which required a 5-mile a day round trip commute on bike--the first bike I'd had since I moved to Berkeley. I shed 20 or 30 pounds and felt much more athletic. I'd like to be able to do the same again now, after life has once again become more sedentary, these last several years, since I started working entirely from my home office.
Biking has also had one other advantage--it's made me feel much more empowered, as I increasingly realize the number of places I can get to on my own power, without having a car. I was quite surprised to discover how close Endgame really is, for example, and even more surprised to discover that I can bike there about as fast as I can BART there.
It's all about being sick. As I've written here since the summer, I was consistently sick from July 12 ... well, to now. I'm still having headaches and some swollen glands, but they've been slowly letting up (I hope). I think I still have some of whatever infection lay me low, but I also suspect that I'm quarreling with some anxiety-driven side effects, which resulted from being sick for so long.
In any case, sickness drove me to biking for several reasons:
1.) I got out and biked some during the worst of the sickness, heading to some doctor appointments that were in north Oakland. Given that my only other biking in recent time had been to our computer co-lo facility and back--which is usually a frustrating experience because it tends to mean that a machine isn't working--this was a chance to do some biking somewhere other than my regular trips--and biking that perhaps wasn't as annoying.
(Doctor visit less frustrating than co-lo visit? Maybe.)
2.) It's been my way of fighting back against the illness. Biking has been my way of saying that I'm not an invalid, that I can get out and do something physical, even when I've regularly been hurting.
3.) It's something I'm doing now to improve my health long term. I think I was in the best shape of my life when I worked at Chaosium. I was in my mid-20s at the time, and had just come off a year working at Sun Microsystems with a long commute on either side. Working for Sun was thus eating up about 11-12 hours a day, and I had no energy for anything else, and so was getting no exercise. Jump from there to working at Chaosium, which required a 5-mile a day round trip commute on bike--the first bike I'd had since I moved to Berkeley. I shed 20 or 30 pounds and felt much more athletic. I'd like to be able to do the same again now, after life has once again become more sedentary, these last several years, since I started working entirely from my home office.
Biking has also had one other advantage--it's made me feel much more empowered, as I increasingly realize the number of places I can get to on my own power, without having a car. I was quite surprised to discover how close Endgame really is, for example, and even more surprised to discover that I can bike there about as fast as I can BART there.