our protagonist gets inducted into the club

So today I officially joined the legions of Twin Cities area bike commuters and rode to work. A gallon of gas now costs about what I make in an hour, so I had incentive.

And you know what? It wasn't fun. In fact, it sucked. It sucked for no reason other than my bag weighing approximately 37899565 pounds, which made me go slow. Verrrrrrrrrrrrrry slow. I believe I averaged 14.3 mph over the course of my 16-mile commute. I think most of that was because I was going about 0.0000000000001 mph up all the hills, and I discovered hills that I didn't even know existed. I've always been confused when people complain about going uphill and I can't figure out what hill they're talking about, but now I know. When you weigh 37899565+127 pounds, everything is a hill. If ever I needed an incentive not to gain weight, finding out how slow it makes me would do it. It's not very fun to go 0.0000000000001 mph up hills. It's fun to go 20mph up hills in the big ring and stomp the snot out of your friends.

Going home should be better. A lot of what was heavy was my lunch, which will be gone, and my 32-ounce nalgene bottle filled to the brim with coffee and milk, which I probably shouldn't be drinking anyway since nobody actually needs 32 ounces of coffee. Oh, and the big tub of lemon-scented baby wipes will be staying here, just in case I'm off my rocker enough to keep doing this.

On the bright side, it would give me an excuse to start building up some crazy singlespeed contraption with knobby tires, fenders, lights, the works. Maybe I could paint it camouflage or something. Or pink. Pink pinstripes. If it's going to be an ugly-ass bike anyway I might as well go whole hog. Wheeeee!