Starting the New Year Right

ShorelinePark010108
Originally uploaded by leapingwoman

"The bicycle is the most civilized conveyance known to man."
— Iris Murdoch, The Red and the Green

When I first got the trike in August, KJ and I set a goal of riding together in Shoreline Park. We had a plan for achieving this: First I would slowly build up strength riding around the neighborhood until I could do a few miles and handle some uphills. Then we'd load KJ's recumbent on a bike rack, and I'd drive it over to the park while KJ rode my trike over. We've been working up to this since August, and I completed my first 5 mile ride a few days ago. So today was the day, and it was glorious!

The park was sunny with no wind. There were a lot of families out walking and biking, so it was a bit crowded. But people are curious about the trike and tend to make way for it. It was exhilarating to finally ride along the salt pond and look out over the water and all the wintering birds. Then we ditched the crowds and rode back behind the golf course. We only did about 2.5 miles, but we'll go back when it's less crowded and cruise around some more.

I like the twist of starting the new year by achieving a goal, rather than facing a list of new resolutions.

Freedom to Learn and Play

One of the great benefits of quitting my job has been time to play with more flavors of Web 2.0 technology. In addition to creating this blog I've been reading the fantastic blogs of women I met at She's Geeky, and playing with Flickr, SlideShare, Second Life, etc. In my last job I'd been working a lot with the Confluence wiki, and towards the end had linked up with 150+ connections in LinkedIn, but hadn't had a chance to play with much else.

One of the other pleasures of not having a 9-5 job is riding my Sun EZ3 USX recumbent trike around the neighborhood in the middle of a week day when there aren't a lot of cars on the road. I hadn't been on a bike for years (long story) and although I can't ride far or long yet, it's lots of fun tootling around. The EZ3 USX is almost a comfy chair with wheels. Note the under-seat steering.

Of course all this leisure is about to change as I start my service year with the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology (ABI). Today I attended my first program team meeting, and got a sense of what I'll be working on, at least initially. More on that later, however. Right now my sweetie is home and it's time for dinner.