First week of school!

I'd rate my first week of school an 8/10. Fairly fun week, and got to see a bunch of old friends - in fact, it was probably better than my first week in res from last year, even though I had a cool white roommate and went to an all ages AMS dance party with floormates.

I ended up staying late on campus Thursday, so I ended up scrambling to find a place to sleep. Thankfully, I had a friend living in some fancy 2 story house 5 minutes from Totem with spare beds that I could sleep in (one bed had some girl's period blood on it, gross). I woke up the next day feeling absolutely shitty, and it got worse throughout the day. When I visited my friend at Marine, my brain felt like it was about to cave in, so I took his Tylenol and slept on his bed for a good hour and a half. Skipped all classes that day. Ugh.


-BIKING!-

To bring myself back up after recovering, I decided to go for a bike ride to UBC from the south end of Richmond yesterday. No big deal, I thought, it's only 24km. Oh boy, I was in for a treat.

I recorded 6 short videos of me talking to myself (pretending to talk to an audience), so I could keep track of my location and time and eventually calculate my speed at each part of the trip. Here's one from on the Oak street bridge.
(lol at the thumbnail)

-35 minutes to get from home to Bridgeport, about the same time it takes by bus. Averaged 15km/h.
-Whopping 75 minutes to get from Bridgeport to UBC. Averaged a 12.5km/h (if I even calculated properly)

The numbers are a bit off because the distances and timing were a bit fuzzy, but the important bit is that it took 1 hour 50 minutes to complete the trip. Holy shizzles. In my defense, the hills by Pacific Spirit Park were absolutely killer.

The experience was amazing though, especially as my first long distance bike trip. Firstly, it felt like driving a car! I was pretty much cycling right beside fast moving cars,  had to follow street lights and signs (some I weren't sure about, was I supposed to stop by the red stop signs??), and give nearby cars turn signals using my left arm. Eventually, I got over my initial thoughts that the road was a dangerous place and just became a part of it.

Secondly, the sense of speed I had (when I wasn't pedalling uphill) was amazing - haven't felt that much adrenaline that since ziplining between mountains on Grouse. It was also quite dangerous, since my brakes weren't functioning perfectly and the tires were prone to skidding. I almost hit an Asian fob on the way through Aberdeen, but he looked like a douchebag and I almost with I hit him on the way.

I broke my bike's brakes as I was loading it onto the 99 later that day coming home. Great.



To do:

-Fix the damn brakes.
-Find a manageable way to bike to UBC. Probably bussing to Bridgeport and biking from there.
-If biking becomes a consistent method of transportation for me, invest in a road bike. My bike is categorized as a mountain bike, and is apparently inefficient on flat roads due to it's unnecessarily heavy mass, wide wheels, and suspension systems