The Gamble

Each day when I wake up, I have to decide whether to ride my bike into work. I love riding in, but when it's raining, or I'm really tired, it's an extremely bad idea. Two weeks ago I rode in in foggy weather and it rained all afternoon - I was shamed into begging a ride home off somebody. Not cool.

Compounding the problem is that the weather changes every ten feet. It could be raining sheep in San Francisco and 80 degrees and sunny in Marin (where I work). So, my morning evaluation is usually a mix of intuition, a look out the window, and a trip to the weather section on sfgate.com. Bear in mind that this is all done by a 7:40 departure, when I am less than on top of my game.

This morning was all pea soup but no rain on the forecast. The hell with it, I thought, it's just fog, it'll lighten up. By the time I got to Golden Gate Park (about .4 miles away), my face was covered in mist, and the hills up ahead looked like they were raining. Rather than get drenched for ten miles, I turned around and drove instead. Turned out, of course, that it wasn't really raining - we've just got this really thick, wet haze everywhere. Not exactly your typical summer weather.

Long story short, now I'm feeling really antsy and regretting driving, especially because I have to buy gas. On the plus side, if this is the worst problem I have all day (and it probably will be, at least of the variety that I'd post on the Internet), life is amazingly good.