Thursday, June 11, 2009

I go to work using a bike

The thing I like the most about living in Grenoble is, undoubtely, the possibility of going to work using a bike. This is something I hadn't done before: in Colombia is simply out of the question, and in Italy work is so close that there's no need for bike. Instead, since INRIA is relatively far from the city center, and taking the bus is kinda boring, going by bike is the thing to do.

These first days have been extremely demanding: I arrive at work and at home extremely tired. My physical condition is lame. And it's a lot of biking anyway: according to this Google map (in which you can see the path I follow everyday as a blue line) from my place to INRIA there are more than 7km. I generally take around 25-30 minutes of continous biking (there are only two or three traffic lights), so that means that my average speed is approximately 15km/h. This is very slow, and I suppose that it must be fun to watch me biking around: since I am not used at all, apart from going slow I take a lot of precautions. I also must add that I actually like to go slow sometimes: these days the view and the weather are so nice that there's no point in going fast and missing the scenary.

I plan to explore new ways of going/arriving home, using one of the many bicycle routes around. (In particular, there is one that instead of following the highway as in the map, follows the river, so it's very nice in the afternoon.) The main advantage is that the region is mostly flat, something really convenient for my poor physical condition.

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