Riding a bicycle to work in old-time Phoenix

Something that I was fortunate to do, from 1989 to 1991, was to ride a bicycle to work in Phoenix. It sounds a lot more impressive than it was, as I wasn't one of those daredevils who bikes for miles and miles dodging traffic. I was lucky enough to have a job that was just a few blocks away from my apartment.

I've always been an athletic man, but I like my comforts, so when people heard that I rode a bike to work, most of them thought that I was some kind of "Iron Man". And since most of the people I know had never done this, they really couldn't imagine it.

By the way, I learned how to gently roll my dress clothes up and put them in a bag, and the place where I worked had a gym, which included a locker room. I wasn't drenched in sweat, I had merely pedaled leisurely for a few blocks, so I put on my dress clothes and rode the elevator to work. The place was called "Corporate Center", by the way, which was (and presumably still is) just north of Peoria Avenue, east of the I-17 freeway. If you want to see my commute, look for the Greens Apartments (where that pic at the top of this post was taken).

Since it was in Phoenix, people would often ask me if it ever got too hot for me to ride (it didn't), but no one ever, ever, asked me if it got too cold (it did). The desert can get to freezing, and even below freezing in December and January, and since I hate being cold, on those days I'd drive my car.

And the lesson I've learned from this is that people in modern Phoenix can't possibly imagine what it felt like to live in old-time Phoenix. Their memories as children are blurred, but most people immediately get into a climate bubble once they're old enough to drive. At least the corporate people that I knew did. Theirs was a world with heat and air conditioning in their homes, cars, and workplaces. The only extremes of temperature that they would feel would be if the sun had made the chrome on their car so hot that it burned. Getting into a car in the morning, especially if it had been in a garage, never felt cold.

But I hated cold, and that's the main reason I left Minneapolis when I was 19. And it was only last winter that I decided to see how it felt to get all bundled up first thing in the morning and do some pedaling around. I've discovered things that I'd never thought about, like ear muffs (the cold wind is painful on your ears!).

And it's the same now as it was thirty years ago, people are impressed, thinking that I'm some kind of super-dooper athlete. But I'm not, I'm just enjoying the beautiful Phoenix weather!

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