Bike to work, work to eat, eat to bike

The weather this week was absolutely GORGEOUS, so I decided to ride my bike to work on Wednesday. To save a little time, I took BART in the morning with my bike in hand, apologized to my co-workers all day about my "natural" look (the hair and body sprays did NOT help much at ALL), and then planned for the right time to leave so that I could get home by dark.

I ended up leaving a little later than I had hoped, but I was fairly confident I could make it... so off I went! Everything was fine until I took a few wrong turns in the twisting streets of residential Oakland (I was admiring the beautiful homes and landscaping and got lost), but a nice neighbor walking her dog pointed me in the right direction.

Shepherd Canyon was my route of choice, looking like the quickest way up and over the Oakland Hills. "Quick" in this case meant "lots of climbing" so I found myself tapping my Irish pigheadedness all the way up the hill (1,084 feet to be exact). Once I reached Skyline, it was a fast drop into the cold and rapidly dimming town on Canyon, so I rode like a "bat outa hell" to beat the sunset. I made it home just in time to immediately hop in the car (still wearing my cycling clothes) and pick up my daughter from her drama class =)

I'm not sure if I was that successful with reducing my carbon footprint that day, as I am certain my carbon dioxide output still contributed to global warming (with apologies to Al Gore), so some day I will figure out the math...