Bicycling Part II

I finally biked all the way to work, on an exhibition trek on Sunday. It took me roughly 50min., and my bike computer said I biked 14.4mph on average, making the trip 12miles exactly. Now, there was still a bit of meandering while I found my way, and I’m a little out of shape, so hopefully in the future I will both bike at a faster rate, and slightly fewer miles because I know my way.

Since I took almost an hour to bike there, I decided to take the VTA Light Rail (now with 30% less Rail!) back. To my surprise, it took almost as long to take the Light Rail to Mountain View as it took me to bike the other way. How is this possible? I wondered?

Well, as the map above shows, the Light Rail route from Mountain View to the Tasman station is 9.75miles. On the official timetable, the train takes 30minutes to get between these two stations, making the average speed of the VTA Light Rail 19.5mph. Not so vastly different from my out-of-shape biking speed. If you add the time for me to get myself to the train station, wait for the train, and go from the end train station to work, you quickly get to at least 40minutes, not so much different from biking the whole way.

So the trade off seems to be biking: more excercise, more need for a shower, train: more sitting around, less stink. I don’t mind the stink, since my goal is still to get some excercise. I’ll probably start half-and-half and then possibly work my way up to biking both ways, especially when it stays light out later in the evening. At least my work has a shower.