Late night dinners on Caltrain
As many of you probably already know, I take the Caltrain to and from San Francisco during the week, which is a pretty decent commute from where we live in Palo Alto. In the mornings it’s not too bad - I’ll usually catch the train at some point between 7:05am and 7:36am, which gets me up to San Francisco no later than a little after 8am.
But, the way home is a little different. Normally I’ll work until about 5pm or so, jet to work out a few blocks away at 24 Hour Fitness until 6:30pm, haul ass back to the office so that I can get my stuff together and take off on my bike to catch the train that leaves by 6:56pm. Of course, that’s if all works out perfectly and I don’t need to stay at the office a little later than usual.
Tonight is one of the nights that I actually did end up sticking around a little later - well, actually a lot later. I stayed until the only 2 trains heading back to Palo Alto were at 10:30pm and midnight. As I jetted off into the night of San Francisco toward the train station my goal was to make it to the 10:30 train, which seemed easy enough since it was only right around 10. I made it to the station with about 15 minutes to spare so I decided to head to a nearby Safeway so that I could grab some grub for the ride home. After I quickly picked up some hummus, carrots, pita bread and turkey I headed for the register with over 10 minutes to spare and only 3 people in line.
Of course, the 2nd person in line decided to pay all in small change, which led me to asking the 3rd person if I could cut in front of her so that I wouldn’t miss the train which was going to leave in about 5 minutes whether I was on it or not. She let me jump in front of her and I ended up making it to the train with at least 20 seconds to spare, which in my book isn’t all that bad. 
At that point there was really only one thing to do now that I was on the train at 10:30pm with an hour ride ahead of me.
It was time to eat me some dinner…doesn’t it look tasty?
a smorgasbord of late night awesomeness
Adventures In Bicycling: The crazy, honking, old man
Each weekday morning I ride my bike to the CalTrain station here in Palo Alto, then I take my bike on the train up to San Francisco(there’s a bike car) and finally I ride my bike from the CalTrain station to my office up in San Francisco. It’s not a ton of riding, but for the short amount of ride time there always seems to be plenty of action. I figured that some of this action would be good to document, so I’m going to start posting the random and usually funny stories that happen to me as I continue to brave the bike rides up to San Francisco and back.
Today was pretty funny due to a white-haired old man that was driving a Subaru Outback down the road today as I was hauling ass to the CalTrain station(I’m always cutting it close, of course). When I’m cruising at ‘Damn, I might be late’ speed in the morning I can practically keep up with the cars on the one-way that I speed down, due mainly to the fact that I don’t stop at any 4-way stops. This method is neither safe nor legal as far as I know, but it gets me there on time so I go with it.
Well, as I was speeding along and creeping up on a Subaru Outback on the right side of the road, the white-haired driver must have found a parking spot that he wanted to squeeze into, so he slammed on his brakes without giving me any type of turn signal or anything that would have let me know his intentions. This is no big deal to me and my superior bike skills, even if I was half-asleep and riding like I stole something. I simply swerved into the left lane of the one-way, passed the old-man-turned-parallel-parking-expert and kept peddling towards the train, which was set to arrive at any second.
For some reason this must have really pissed this old guy off and instead of pulling into the spot he decided to step on the gas, lay on his horn and try to catch up to me as I continued towards my nearly unattainable goal at this point of actually making the 7:14am train. As he kept on inching closer to me while honking and looking really mad I just kept on peddling, even though I really, really wanted to see what he wanted to say to me once he caught up. But, instead of stopping I just looked back at him a few times with a ‘What the hell, dude!??!’ as he followed me for over 2 blocks while he honking got became even more mad at the fact that I was an out-of-control bicyclist in Palo Alto. I was getting a real kick out if it at the time, but obviously he wasn’t.
If I didn’t want to catch that particular train, I would have so stopped so that he could lecture me on whatever was on his mind this morning while trying to literally hunt me down in his SUV. I started wondering what he would have said if I actually would have stopped. Maybe he was scared for my safety? Maybe he had been hit on a bike before and wanted to warn me that my unsafe ways are a surefire way to get hit, too? Maybe he just needed some coffee and was pissed off at the world and wanted to vent. Unless I somehow get to see him again, I guess that I’ll never know. But, one thing that I do know is that I’ll have another Adventure In Bicycling - there’s no doubt about that.