Biker Babes

Indie is one of my best friends. She and I used to work together here in downtown ATL. I basically took over her job since she was going back to school at the end of the summer the year I started working there. She and I had gone to school at the same time and place for our undergrad degrees but had never met, which is very strange because the groups we ran with overlapped. The place where Indie and I worked was very small, there were only 7 of us in the office (not counting SuperBoss, who was in and out all the time). One of the guys there (Justin Timberlake) always rode his bike in to work. He kept some snazzy shoes and clothes at the office and every morning he would roll his bike in the office and put it in our storage closet and take some clothes to the bathroom to change into after sort of splashing himself off.

I thought it was pretty cool that JT rode to work. I loved to ride my bike, and I wanted to ride to work, too. However, space was a precious commodity over at SuperBoss', and JT had a monopoly on the storage closet. I figured that even if by some miracle I did find space in the office for my bike, I'd probably sweat too much on the ride there for a sink splash to undo the damage. Excuses, excuses, blah blah blah.

Fast forward 2 years. Indie and I are neighbors, and neither of us work at Superboss' anymore. JT is still there, and he still bikes in. My new job is three blocks from Superboss'. Indie finished grad school and got a job (her dream job) two blocks away from where I work. Yesterday, Indie tells me that she rode her bike from our neighborhood in to work! My first thought was "Indie is SO COOL!" I wanted to be that cool. [Being as cool as Indie really isn't possible, but I do try to get as close to her level of cool as I can.] And then my next thought was, "oh.... BIKE ENVY." I had wanted to ride my bike to work forever, and this was my signal to just get off my hiney and DO IT.

That afternoon, I got a membership to the athletic club in my office building. The club has showers, so that solved my sweat problem. I emailed a slew of HR folks and asked about where the bike racks were and whether we had any policies on bikes in the building, etc. HEAVEN FORBID I just go and do something here in Corporate America, there had to be a procedure and a set of rules I'd surely be breaking. I wanted to ride to work, but I didn't want to endanger my career by getting any black marks on my HR records.

Well, no one from HR got back to me, so I started asking around. My friend The Bean and I met for lunch yesterday, and he told me that he had seen some guy riding to the building once. But The Bean didn't know the guy's name, and he really only saw the guy every other month or so. So we started talking about other stuff, and I kid you not, about five minutes into our new conversation, The Bean's Bike Guy walked in!

It was a quick intro, but I got Bike Guy's name. I said I'd email him about bike commuting to our building, which I did as soon as I got back to my desk. He gave me all sorts of info about where to put my bike, what to wear, and where to ride. He was very helpful. He also told me that HR had been useless back when he was trying to get info, too.

So this morning, I RODE MY BIKE TO WORK. Bike Guy was very surprised. He said that a lot of people ask a him about it and say they're gonna ride, but never do it. Actually, that is exaclty what JT back at SuperBoss' must think of me. Indie was thrilled, she drove in today but we decided that on Monday morning, we will be Biker Babes and ride our bikes in together. I'm gonna try to convince The Bean to ride, too. (He might even appreciate being a Biker Babe.) It was the most fun commute I've ever had, and I can't wait for the ride home!