Bike to Work Day

Friday, May 20th was bike to work day. I think I heard there were 200+ participants, which for Memphis is a success. Out of our office, 5 of 14 people biked into work, me being the furthest traveler. From my experience, I would do it again. My boss even went as far as to propose every Friday bike to work day. Let me just say I'm not a pro bike rider, but I definately enjoyed the built in work out with my commute and the gas-cost savings.

I left at 6:15AM and rode to my sister's house, getting there at 6:30AM. There was some melt down drama with my neice that delayed our departure from her house, so we ended up leaving about 6:45AM riding towards the Greenline and picking up the boss-man along the way. From there we rode down the Greenline to Tillman. From Tillman, we were supposed to take a right onto Poplar and jog over to Fenwick. Well, there was some miscommunication, or misdirection which ever you want to call it, and we took a left onto Poplar and ultimately found ourselves lost in Chickasaw Gardens - seriously, you can't get out of the place easily. Thank goodness for the iPhone, my sister was able to navigate us back onto the right track with a 10-15 minute delay. Then we ran into a little train problem.

We approached a railroad crossing just as a trrain was coming. No big deal. Five or so minutes go by and the train passes. We get ready to ride again, when all of the sudden we hear another train blowing it's horn. There were litterally two trains back to back. We probably spent a good 10-15minutes at that train crossing. We finally made it to the next "pick-up point" and met up with another co-worker in Midtown. Our final co-worker "pick-up point" was at the energizer station at the Church Health Center - super cool building btw.

Riding into the energizer station at Church Health Center -via

Picking up our goodies. -via

 We got some free goodies including a messanger bag, coupons, bike repair kit, water, fruit, and other munchies. Then we made a pretty easy ride into downtown. We arrived at the office at approx. 8:15AM.

Office Participants.

The ride home was tough; there seemed to be a lot of up-hill climbs and we were kind of in hurry. The boss-man had a dinner to be at and we were trying to beat a rainstorm. Needless to say I was beat and in bed by 9:30PM on a Friday night. Lame.

-A