It was a nice day out today so I decided to stop procrastinating and finally start making consecutive commutes to work with my bike.  It was a nice morning today with a temperature of around 45 degrees and the only thing that got cold were my knees (I know weird right?) and my fingertips.  Its only about an 8 mile commute but its along busy roads the whole way.  Luckily I have a shoulder to ride on most of the way except for the last mile in which I have to ride uphill in the grass.  This morning’s commute took roughly 35 minutes but I know I can do it a lot faster once I can start beasting it up these two large hills I run into.  I hope on the weekends once I get my touring bike, I can start doing 35-50 mile trips to help condition myself for my transcontinental journey.

I’m back home now and I must say I really miss Europe.  Everything about it was so much fun, from the Swiss Alps, to the London Eye, it was all an experience of a lifetime.  It’s really hard coming home after going on an adventure like that and come back to my windowless office, but I guess thats just life.

Reflecting on this trip I really didn’t want this to be my last big adventure for years with just little short drives to different states every few months or so, because if you can’t go around and travel and do crazy stuff all the time at 23, when can you do it?  I’m in my prime right now and I have to start doing something about it.  So after some thought and planning, I have decided I will attempt to bike across the United States, starting in Virginia, and riding all the way to California.

After a long flight, which seemed like an hour because I slept the whole way, we finally made it to London. Being my usual self I lost the directions to my sister’s flat and we had to rely on the iphone and its 10% battery life to make it there. London today was really quite stunning, I was expecting dreary and overcast weather with a 90% chance of rain. However it was only mildly cold and fairly sunny.

I still can’t get over how clean the city is, everywhere you go is just clean, and everyone seems to be wearing designer clothes. I feel really under dressed for this city with my gap long sleeve waffle shirt, and blue jeans. Since the weather was so nice we decided to ride on the London Eye which was really quite amazing. I particularly liked the random James Bond wax figure they had in the line for the Eye. Once we got in and started gaining altitude the view was amazing and the sky had these hues of pink and orange strewn across it. We also had a very nice and spectacular view of Big Ben and the Parliament building. I’m starting to feel pretty tired and will probably take a nap in preparation for our travel over to Switzerland tomorrow.

Shortly after starting my current job I soon found out why so many Americans are overweight or fat, or whatever they are calling it these days. They work way too much sitting down and then just go home and sit on the couch and gobble up a big mac or some other type of fast food because its more convenient than cooking a healthy meal (like my one roommate). I think I gained about 5-10lbs (which is a lot for me) in the course of about a month and decided I have had enough of the stereotypical office life. So I went out and purchased a shiny new bike, the ‘08 Gary Fisher Cobia to be exact, and started riding anywhere between 6 and 8 miles in the morning on a nice single track around here. I get up around 5:30 a.m. and get there around 6:30 and ride for about an hour, come back to my house, take a shower, then go to work. I have found it to be productive in that I’m not so groggy and tired in the morning, and I feel a lot healthier. My goal is to soon be able to ride it to work every morning and not only get in great shape, but save a ton of money on gas. With my new found stamina, climbing those Swiss Alps this week should be a breeze.