Getting my legs back

I'm back!

After about 10 months working 50 miles away, I'm back working in Springfield. Woohoo!

I thought I could do it, make the transition from bike commuting to car commuting. After getting laid off from the newspaper, I really wanted to get back to work right away so I took an early job offer in marketing. In Kirbyville, Mo. That's an hour-long drive. Each. Way.

OMG, you guys, I thought that drive would kill me. I was getting up so early, and leaving for work before the kid even woke up. Plus, I had to drive all that way on the highway with elderly tourists and road ragers. Everything that was awful about driving to work happened during that drive to work. And then I'd have to leave early so I could rush back to town in time to pick up the little guy before his school closed for the day. And then there was hardly time to make dinner and hang out with my dudes before bed. And then I'd have to do it all over again.

Fortunately I was allowed to work from home two days every week, but it turned out I didn't like working from home very much. I wore a lot of stretchy pants and didn't bother fixing my hair on those days. It's also worth mentioning that that we had already downsized to one car so the dudes were left to bike to town through the winter.

I was sitting down all the time, I didn't feel good about myself and was so anxious I was breaking out in hives a lot of the time.

And so it happened that an entrepreneur Cody recently met needed to make an addition to her marketing staff, and I landed that gig!

The people in Kirbyville were so, so nice. I'll never forget them. But the lifestyle just wasn't what I wanted for myself, or for my family.

Now Cody and I work across the street from each other. I bike our boy to school in the morning. Cody and I bike home together for lunch. The hills are a little more challenging than I remember them being last summer, but that's okay. It feels like I get to fall in love with urban cycling all over again.