Missing my Ride

I was laid off from my job in January.

Aside from all of the stress of not having a steady paycheck, trying to put together a freelance subsistence, and missing my old job (which was the best job I've ever had) I've discovered something else.

I miss my commute. I've been working from home, alternately job hunting and working short gigs as a marketing/social media consultant, and that means I get up in the morning, skim the paper, pour my coffee, and commute all of ten feet to my computer desk. Where once I got up and rode about 40 minutes from Ottawa South to Vanier, and that 40 minutes again back home, now I'm lucky if I get out for a mile or so to run errands in the afternoon, or out to an event downtown in the evening: and it's winter, which means that recreational rides are just that much harder to do. Bike paths uncleared, roads gritty and soggy and icy and generally not that pleasant.

How accustomed you get to that morning ride to wake you up, and that afternoon ride to wind back down and switch gears. If anything has proven to me that cycling has become part of my life, it's how sluggish and restless I feel without it. And I'm not a recreational cyclist, really. The reason I called this blog "The Incidental Cyclist" was that I felt that was how cycling got itself insinuated into my life: as an incidental thing, just how I happened to get around but not something I did as, I suppose, an enthusiast. I don't really go out just to go for a ride. But I'm feeling so lazy and sedentary these days. And I don't like it. Not one bit.

Which means that as I type this, and the sun is beginning to wipe out my screen (giving me my excuse to get out of the house) I'm thinking of getting out there on Mike and going to a grocery store several miles away, just for the trip. This - this - is how much a part of my life that morning commute had become. I miss my ride.