TurboNurse

Today was Albuquerque's annual bike to work day which is the high point, to me at least, of the Strive not to Drive week.

I didn't have to be to the hospital until 9:30 so I decided to go for it!  It's something I've always wanted to do but with working 12-13 hour days, I would be too exhausted to ride home and I'm not so motivated to get up at 5am either.  Another nice motivator is because it was a special bike to work day, a local organization http://www.bikeabq.org/ had special tables set up around town on popular commute routes and it just so happens that the route I take to work is one of them.

We biked on this day last year but it wasn't for a commute, we just went out and it happened to be a special day so we hit up the tables and got all kinds of goodies.  I really enjoyed it and wanted to do it again this year and was starting to plan a ride until I got a job.  Then I realized that today is a late start day for me and I got very excited and started planning my commute.  :)

My husband wanted me to have some backup just in case I got into a pickle and needed some bailing out so I set that up.  Turns out that my backup rode the first 5 or 6 miles with me this morning and made her daughter our backup now. 

I really enjoyed having company for the first half of my commute this morning.  Although it did slow the pace, I still enjoyed it and, not counting making a stop at the train station where bikeABQ was at, still made it to work in less than an hour.

It feels so good to know that I got my exercise in during my commute (talk about multitasking!) AND also helped the environment, not to mention, save a few bucks in gas as well.  I wish we lived just a little closer so that I could make this a daily habit.

On the way home, I caught up to a guy at a street crossing and we started to talk.  He apparently recognized me from the stop this morning so we hung out for the last 2-3 miles of the commute since we were both going to the same place.  His name is Dave and he commutes by bike about 4 days a week, 18 miles round trip. 

Speaking of which, it was amazing how differently people treated me on the way home (there were more people out on the way home than on the way in since I went in at an odd time).  I got lots of nods and "How's it going".  The feel was totally different from when I'm out for exercise on the bosque.  But then again, the bosque has a crowd all of it's own you could say.

Today I burned about 1200 calories round trip, saved 2-3 dollars (about a gallon of gas, my car gets good mileage), and had a blast doing my part of getting cars off the road and decreasing emissions.