Work to ride, ride to work: Day 1

I had almost forgotten the smug self-satisfaction that energizes your whole day when you bicycle to work.

Since there's no real insulation from your environment, riding also exposes you, to rude drivers, flat tires, the smell of honeysuckle in the spring. Today's little adventure resulted from the new tires on the trailer, causing it to shimmy something fierce. When I got to work, I reseated the tires (looked like I didn't get the bead evenly seated around the rim), and I'll know in a couple of hours if that was the problem.

I pulled the computer from the commute bike, but our preflight ride yesterday put the mileage at a little under 9 miles, and it took less than 45 minutes in either direction. Hills? Sure, this is Atlanta, so there's some up-and-down.

My route on the way home will be straight up Peachtree past the Brookhaven MARTA station, right on Dresden, which is a fairly good road for cyclists: it roughly parallels I-85, so most of the drivers are local traffic. My old commute to Coke and to CNN used Howell Mill Road, which was similarly avoided in favor of Northside Drive by drivers in a hurry.

Take Dresden across Clairmont, Buford Highway, and Shallowford, then take a right on Chamblee-Tucker, and around past Mercer University to Henderson Mill to Henderson Road. I didn't think MapQuest would like my route, but they claim it's the shortest available.

I'll be leaving my shoes at work -- I forgot how much room they take up in the trailer (I used to use a cargo net to carry shoes on top of the trailer). My bike becomes the first bike I've ever seen locked to the rack at the Pinnacle Building -- I've seen one briefly locked to a railing in the parking garage.

Looks (more accurately, sounds) like I might get wet on the trip home.

Update: Thanks to traffic on Mercer U. Drive, I took a long-cut around Mercer, and used my relative slenderness (compared to a car, at least) to lane-share my way from there. Got splashed but not rained on.