I Have a Bike!

Well yesterday was an interesting day... Went about my morning routine and got out to the train station by 9am to wait for one of the every 7 minute regularly running trams to Darmstadt. The people standing there with me were familiar, I have seen them before, but never for so long. We stood there looking up and down the tracks waiting for a train to come. 30 minutes... no tram, either direction. People started giving up and eventually so did I. Unfortunately where I live is about 10 km away from work, and I don't have a car and there are no taxis nearby. So... I had to walk. Ironically my backpack weighed about 25 pounds with all my excercise gear, in addition to my typical heavy latop equipment. So 10 km walk with a 25 pound pack to get to work... that's dedication.

A little over an hour later I arrive to work, late of course, wondering what happened. I went around asking and it turns out that the public transportation workers decided early this morning to go on a "warning strike" to make everyone see what it is like without them. I'm not sure if they were demanding anything, but I think it was more of a whiney "we're important" message. Shortly after I set up my equipment in my office and got to my emails, the fire alarm in the building goes off... a side effect of kitchen excitement I'm sure. Once outside I met up with one of my coworkers who had offered me a bike a while back and I told him I should probably take up on his offer since I didn't really feel like walking an hour home.

The bike is a ittle old and rusty, but it works... kinda. The gear cable is broken and it permenantly stuck in 3rd gear, but we tried to rig it up with a paper clip to keep it stuck in 2nd instead...


The trip home was an adventure... I haven't ridden a bike in YEARS, and I especially hadn't ridden one in Europe ever. Luckily the trail back to Griesheim is fairly flat and uneventful. The bike goes pretty good, squeaks a little, but once I hit my first hill I think the gear cable slipped a little and put it back in 3rd, which almost killed me. I made it back eventually... cut the travel time in half and got a good workout... if only I had 1st gear... hopefully I won't ever have to do that again.