Thursday love list.

I've been in a kind of negative mood this week since The Roommate has been wicked sick. Also, since it's gotten warm again, all the cyclists that were scared to get on their bikes when it was 40 degrees outside in the morning are stoked about riding, which means I have had to miss three stupid CalTrains this week because they were already full of bikes. I'm a little grumpy. 

The thing is, though? I live in San Francisco and I bought a new bike and the weather is gorgeous, so I should probably shut the fuck up. I'm really good at negativity, people, but I'm sort of sick of it. So here are the things that I have loved over the past few days:

• Dolores Park on a Sunday afternoon. I don't have a dog, but I really like watching puppies play. The Roommate's family came to visit and brought their giant mastiff along. I got to sit on a blanket and watch puppies play all afternoon, and I got to watch people react to a dog that is their size. Amazing.
• Living in the Mission. I know I've remarked on this before, but I literally don't have to leave my neighborhood. For anything. Ever. Grocery stores, bars, restaurants, bike shops. There are three bike shops visible from the bottom of my hill. Three! I don't get to ride all that much unless I'm going to work, because everything's too close to my house to justify even getting on a bike. That is incredible. (Also, no drunk driving, ever. And I don't get drunk enough to be arrested for drunk walking.)
• Cyclist unity. When you come from a town with two million people in it, and your Critical Mass has 40 cyclists in it, the unity is strong, but doesn't do much. Here? The Market/Octavia bike lane has caused a huge stir. When Caltrain is full and we can't get on, we all stand and bitch together because we get each other. Cyclists here have a shared cause, and there are enough of us to do something about it. I was bitching today about getting bumped from my train on Twitter, and a friend in Cincinnati reminded me that he'd kill to have my problem - trains and too many cyclists. It was nice to gain that perspective again.
• My Safeway has a killer wine selection. Don't get me wrong, the midwest has the occasional really great grocery store with an awesome wine selection. But I can walk across the street after I get off the train and get an incredible bottle of wine that was made less than 50 miles from my house.
• Transportation options. This week, I have ridden to 4th and King. I also needed to pick up a new bike, so on Tuesday I took the BART to Millbrae to Caltrain, and then did the same on the way back so I could stop in Daly City. 40 miles of transportation with lots of different travel options, all just using my feet.
• Local blogs. I know blogging is wicked trendy and now everybody has one, but I live in a city big enough to have its own spin-offs of the really popular ones. Eater, Curbed, -ist, Streetsblog - all with SF branches. Also, if I need to figure out where I can get brisket at two in the morning, SOMEONE out there has already asked the question and answered it in some form I can find by googling.

So, there you go. Hope you all have found things to love this week. Enjoy the sunshine! (But if you see a redhead on a tiny blue bike on the train that looks super angry, it still might be me. I'm still sick of getting booted from trains.)

Removing Market/Octavia bike lane.

I kept thinking about doing some 2008 re-cap blog post, but now it's the 8th day of the new year, and we're pretty much over talking about that transition. A friend of mine asked the other night when the last day you could wish someone a happy new year was, and I think we can all agree that we're starting to push the limits. So, I'm done. 2008 was full of a lot of great moments, but overall was a pretty terrible year. Notable: re-connected with The Roommate after four years of not seeing one another, made some amazing new friends, graduated, moved to San Francisco. Those are the good things, and they are what I hope to remember years down the line. Done. 2009, you need to be better. You should be my first full year in San Francisco, and now that I've gotten better at riding a bike again, we're going to explore the hell out of this place together.

The road to recovery after the collar bone incident has been a terrible one. The physical limitations were pretty awful for awhile, but they're mostly over. The ones that have still lingered are the mental ones. As in I had a pavlovian response every time I heard a bicycle changing gears, because when I geared up, I broke my collar bone. So I was completely unable to change gears for a solid two months after getting back on a bicycle. Yes, I am serious; yes, I know that's really pathetic. 

But lo and behold, The Roommate went out of town for most of December, and I didn't have anyone to try and show off for, so I very slowly learned how to switch gears again. That meant I could finally ride up the massive hill I live on. It was a pretty major breakthrough. And now? Well, now, the world is my fucking oyster. Riding up Guerrero to Market? Hard when you're geared high. Magnificent on a geared bike. So now new places are in my range (please note, anyone unfamiliar with the area: this is seriously an intersection that's just over a mile from me). I've been getting a lot more exposure to the upper Market area. 

It is for this reason that I'm all fired up about the impending removal of the bike lane at Market & Octavia. Let's start out by watching this video.

In that video, you can observe a few things. You can also feel free to look up the intersection of Market & Octavia at Google Maps or something so you grasp the layout, but the gist is this: the entrance ramp to the highway is on the right. Making a right turn from Market onto said highway is illegal. It is very clearly marked that you cannot make a right turn there. Market Street, at this point, is a downhill slope where it's fairly easy to build up a little bit of speed. The bike lane is separated by a small divider in-between the lanes. There is also a sign warning bicyclists to watch for cars turning illegally. You know when you have to warn someone to watch for idiots doing something illegal that you've got a somewhat large problem.

The problem is that people in cars want to get on the highway, and they can't do it there, but other than a sign telling them not to, there are absolutely no barriers. So people do it anyway. And the cyclists are in their lane, going straight, and people turn illegally without looking and hit cyclists. So the problem is people doing something illegal. Done. The city's solution to it? Remove the bike lane, which was put there with the intention of protecting cyclists.

When there are issues of cyclist safety in San Francisco, it's really easy to shake your fist and blame the damn kids. Damn kids, with their disregard for laws, not watching where they're going, riding on the sidewalk, not wearing helmets, riding fixies without brakes, etc. And, fair enough. There are a lot of incidents that CAN be attributed to cyclists breaking the law. But this is not one of those things. Sure, if someone was riding a bike wearing a helmet, and their bike had brakes, it would be easier for them to stop and not get so injured if someone turned illegally in front of them. But the fact remains that none of this would be a problem if people weren't turning illegally.

There's a lot of debate about this subject, and I really wish the solution could just be education. Educate drivers and cyclists about how to get along. Unfortunately, that just doesn't work. There are signs on major streets around here reminding people to share the road, reminding people that bicycles are allowed to take up an entire lane. That certainly doesn't keep cars from passing too close in the same lane. Cars want to go 40 miles an hour, and most cyclists can't. So the solution is to pass them. I get that. I pass cyclists that are going too slow in front of me when I'm on a bike, so I get it. 

But every single day I have to deal with the honking, and people passing too close, and drivers generally acting like assholes because I have the nerve to be on the road. Removing this bike lane on Market means I'm now going to have to try and take up the whole lane. I don't have a problem doing that, but it certainly isn't going to keep anyone from speeding up behind me, swerving around me on the left, and cutting me off to turn there illegally. The only thing it will do is make cyclists have to watch traffic more. It is making us the problem, when we really just want to ride bikes. 

It's easy to say "well, do you have a better idea?" in these situations, and the truth is that I don't. I don't have a degree in transportation and city planning, and I certainly don't get paid to sit in an office every day and come up with solutions that cater to a host of different people. So I certainly don't understand all the challenges this task faces. All I know is that I ride a bike, and I'd really appreciate not getting hit by a car. I think it's pathetic to say "the bike lane isn't working, so let's remove the bike lane", rather than coming up with a different solution. I can't blame someone for not wanting to ride a bicycle considering how people react to cyclists in this town. It was easier in the midwest when you just knew everyone hated you and no one was looking, ever. Now you have to consider whether or not someone's looking and whether or not they hate cyclists that day. The "are you going to kill me" dance is the least pleasant thing about my daily commute.

I'm interested to see what the SFBC's official statement is going to be on this. I hope they come up with a better solution and push for it. They're much better at all of this than I am.

Oh, and even though we might be past the time where it's okay - Happy New Year, everyone. I rang in midnight at my favorite bar in the city, Inner Mission. Dave and Tom poured champagne for everyone, I got a kiss from The Roommate, and slammed a Young's Double Chocolate after they flipped the lights on. It was a good way to ring in 2009. Hope yours were equally fantastic.

Caltrain commuting.

So, I've been doing this Mountain View thing for a couple of weeks now, and I'm starting to get the hang of it. I feel like public transportation is an intimidating system for people who have never done it before, so hopefully my grand two weeks of experience can be helpful to someone else.

The first three times I took Caltrain, I was convinced it was cursed and that I was never going to get to work on time. 

Trip #1: Truck stopped on tracks, gets hit by train, fatality. Trains run 2+ hours late and the system completely shuts down.

Trip #2: Wandering pedestrian gets hit by train, system shuts down.

Trip #3 (very next day after trip #2): Computer that controls train signals goes on the fritz; trains run 75+ minutes late.

These, however, appear to have been pure coincidences, as I haven't run into a single problem since then. (If everyone could knock on wood a little bit, that would be great.)

Here's the deal with Caltrain. Buy a ticket before you get on. It may or may not actually be checked - there's nowhere to swipe, no one looks at your ticket before you get on the train, but it is required that you have one. I've never had someone check my ticket in the morning yet, but the regular conductor on my nighttime trip always checks between Millbrae and 22nd. You can buy one way tickets, day passes, books of 10 tickets (that have to be validated when you use them), or monthly passes. The fares work by "zone". So, San Francisco is in zone 1, the very first stop. Mountain View is in zone 3. So I have to buy a monthly pass that allows me unlimited travel between those three zones. It costs me $152.50 a month, a number that sent me reeling at first until I compared it to the cost of owning and driving a car 80 miles round trip every day.

And, to my major joy, Caltrain is doing what it can to be bike-friendly. Every train has at least one bike car. Now, to be honest, there is not enough room to accommodate all the cyclists. Caltrain appears to know this and I haven't seen anyone get particularly lippy when too many bikes get put on there. Technically, it's four bikes to one rack. The new cars have four racks; old cars have eight. This really, truly is not enough space. Sometimes the train ends up with two bike cars, which makes life much easier. The racks are metal and have bungee cords attached to them. Wrap them around your bike and you're set. Every bike is required to be marked with its destination so bikes going the same place can be grouped together, and if I'm going to Mountain View in the morning, I don't end up having to dig my bike out from five others on top of it going to San Jose. 

Oh, Caltrain. I had hoped to be productive on you. So far, I've done a whole lot of crossword puzzles. I had hoped that I'd finally start reading the newspapers I buy every day instead of just turning to my puzzle, but alas. I'm tired when I get on the train to come to work. I'm tired when I get on the train to come home. I get halfway through a puzzle and then I just want to stare blindly out the window for a little while. Still - enables me to ride a bike eight miles a day, and it keeps me from driving a car. You are my best $152.50 investment of the month.

Employed.

Oh, internet, we simply have so much to catch up on.

I will provide you with a lovely touristy post soon, but here are the highlights from Mom's visit: Inner Mission, Make Out Room, Ferry Building, Fisherman's Wharf, Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz, 49 mile drive, Mt. Tam, Stinson Beach, Presidio, Dolores Park, Tartine, Bi-Rite, El Faro, Sutro Baths, Ocean Beach, Mission Bar. We'll do the real re-cap of that later.

Today, we're discussing the job situation. Again.

So, I moved to San Francisco because I had no money and I really wanted a job. The midwest showed interest but didn't really love me. So here I am, California. Employ me.

Yeah, me and the rest of the assholes that recently got out of college. Then Wired laid everyone off. Then Current. Then... well, you get the idea.

My first client was amazing - a banner ad for one of the city propositions. (The campaign was ultimately successful, and they sent me an email later thanking me for my work on it. Score.) My second client was the one that paid all my bills for November, but we had to split ways because we were honestly not suited for one another. His process and mine just did not line up. He paid me as soon as I had completed a day's worth of work, he paid me incredibly well. I'd paypal him an invoice and he would have money to my account within 10 minutes. I was grateful for him, but our differences were just too much and we had to end it. Haven't heard from him since one mixup where I didn't reply to his email within a day of him sending it and he flipped out. Probably for the best.

Then there was the little animation that I took about a month to do and could have finished in a week. I am a bad person. He was an amazing client and loved the work I did for him. He also didn't seem to mind that I took way, way too long to do his very small job.

Then came the biggest success yet: on-site freelancing with a really amazing little firm. This company showed me what my life could be if I could really sustain this lifestyle. They loved me and I loved them, and that's all I have to say about that. I am invited to their Christmas party despite not being salaried with them. They're Net-30, so I have yet to prove that they pay their freelancers, but they are an amazing little company and I sincerely hope to maintain a relationship with them.

They are all wrapped up by one of my favorite people I've gotten to meet in San Francisco. I talked to this gentleman in August before I ever moved here. He gave me hope that I'd be employed. Then I bought a plane ticket. Then I wasn't employed. But he kept in touch with me, by god, brought me in for a coffee chat in October, then randomly emailed me out of the blue a month and a half later to ask me if I could do some freelance for them. I was - and still am - ecsatic. We had our first meeting this morning after over three months of email tag, and now my foot's in the door and I actually have files to work on.

Leaving the meeting, I got the phone call with my full-time job offer from the company I thought had given up on me. 

Allow me to show you a timeline:

September 26th: Apply to job from craigslist.

October 1st: Get email asking salary requirements.

October 1st, 12 minutes later: Reply with salary requirements.

October 24th: Get email at 4:18 on a Friday asking if I can come interview on the following Thursday.

October 24th: Reply at 4:29 that oh my god I absolutely can.

October 30th: Trek to Mountain View, learn how to operate CalTrain, have amazing interview and get really excited that they're going to hire me.

November 11th: Send email, nervous that they hired someone else and that I'm not going to be able to pay my student loans ever.

November 12th: Receive email saying they have three more interviews but hope to make a decision soon. Cry.

November 27th: Tell mother that job will not be mine, pretend it's for the best, get excited about continuing to freelance.

December 2nd: Receive phone call while in 30 minute meeting with newest freelance client, offering job. Make three very important phone calls to closest family and friends. Take job.

It is not enough money and it is in Mountain View. But I am employed, after six months of being out of college and financing my life mostly on credit.

So I'm a commuter now. I think I've decided to try and be a pseudo-bike commuter. Riding from 21st & Guerrero to 3rd & Bryant every day? Not an issue. But now we've got Caltrain to contend with. I think biking to 4th & King is honestly my best way to go. I could BART it to Millbrae - I live close to the 24th St. station. But it takes me 10 minutes to walk there, I don't get any exercise, and I don't save enough money losing that one zone off my monthly Caltrain pass to justify the daily BART expense. Plus it's one more method of public transportation I can't control. I can basically control the time it takes me to ride to 4th & King. I can take my bike on Caltrain, though I've heard the horror stories about not having adequate room for bikes. At least I'll be getting on it at the very first stop, so as long as there are less than 32 of us trying to get bikes on there every morning, we should be okay.

I never really wanted to be a commuter. But we don't always have control over the way things go. Here's to commuting - and to getting a paycheck, by God, perhaps even before 2008 ends.

Bicycle commuting.

I am a bicycle commuter.

Sort of.

I don't have a "real job", you see. I'm a freelancer. Lately, I've been freelancing with a super fun, very small company around 3rd & Bryant. I live around 21st & Guerrero, which means this commute is about 3.5 miles. Since I am a giant scaredy-cat about getting back on a bike ever since I went over its handlebars like an idiot, I rode the bus one or two mornings. It's a fairly easy bus commute. Walk from my place to 20th & Folsom, grab the 12, get off at 4th & Folsom, walk down 4th to Bryant, hang a left. Simple.

When I did this, it took me 40 minutes. It's .5 miles to the bus stop and .3 miles from the bus stop to the office. Let's just say I have a history of never catching the 12 in a timely manner - waiting 15 minutes is not unusual. I don't know if it's the bus or me, but this happens pretty regularly. All of that means I have to leave my house at 8:15 if I have any hopes of getting to the office by 9:00. 3.5 miles away from my house. 

So I sucked it up and got back on the bike and took a nice, not terribly scary route to work. And you know what? It wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. I ride down 20th to Folsom and take it all the way down to 4th, where I jump on 4th for a couple of blocks and then head down a back alley so I can ride into their parking lot. I feel fantastic when I get there. I want to fill my body with water rather than over-sugared coffee. Riding seven casual miles every day makes me feel better, more healthy, stronger. 

But let's talk about why bike commuting is a bitch. Folsom has a bike lane once you pass 14th. Great. Except Folsom is lined with businesses, and businesses get deliveries, and delivery vehicles park in my bike lane. So now I have to check out what traffic is doing and whip around the vehicle taking up my lane, and cars get pissed, and I get pissed. (The other day, a Bud Light truck around 11th & Folsom was parked entirely blocking the car lane so that the bike lane was completely clear. I yelled out a thank you to him as I rode past, because I legitimately appreciated that.)

Taxis are the worst. They have absolutely no regard for other vehicles on the road, and that might be fine if you're in a car, but I'm not. Drivers in San Francisco think they're used to cyclists, so they know how close they can comfortably drive to me. Here's a hint - your comfort zone from the inside of your SUV is significantly different from mine, on top of my 35 pound bicycle (it's a late 70's mixte, leave it alone). I may be a cyclist, but I am not a terribly good or adaptable one. It is me versus a car for twenty minutes every morning. 

And nighttime is worse. Coming down Harrison is terrible. No bike lane. Despite the fact that it's something like a six lane road, cars get pissed off that I'm there. And fair enough - at my fastest, I'm probably clipping along at 20 miles an hour. If someone was doing that in front of me, I'd get angry too. 

The worst is when I can't figure out what a car is doing. When we're both trying to anticipate the other's actions, it gets dicey and awkward. Someone needing to turn right across my bike lane when I'm approaching an intersection is like running into a brand-new co-worker at a sex shop. And not in the tame "I just dropped in to grab condoms" section, either. Neither one of us knows what to do and so we're both going to dance around awkwardly until someone figures out how to duck out of the situation. 

There are signs all over this city reminding cars that bicycles have the right to take up an entire lane, but no one really gives a shit. If I take up an entire lane, I've got cars on my ass waiting for me to speed up. If I ride to the side, cars are going to nearly side-swipe me trying to pass in a lane that they don't really have room to pass me in. And that's saying nothing of someone opening a car door without looking, allowing me to run head-first into it. 

But I love it. I do. I don't mind walking in to work all sweaty with my pants rolled up. I've learned to not mind the honking. I'm a considerate cyclist - I'm not diving in and out of traffic unless I have to because something in front of me is blocking my path. I don't run red lights - I have a tendency to stop at yellows because I know I'm not actually fast enough to get through an intersection. I panic when the walk lights don't count down their seconds, because I don't know when the light is going to change, so I speed the hell up. I only become an asshole the second time you honk at me when there is clearly nothing I can do to change our situation. 

Cyclists and drivers hate one another. Hate. And we are all self-righteous. I am better than you because I am on a bike. I am getting exercise, I am seeing the city block by block rather than setting my car to auto-pilot and ignoring my surroundings. I roll up next to people in the morning and we occasionally have conversations, while you are caged up and will never interact with another human being between the time you lock your door and the time you arrive at your destination. You've got the morning radio show, I've got nature. You pay $50 a month to push metal plates around, I get my exercise twice a day as a side effect of how I get to and from work, and the city is my gym.

But we act like assholes. We are all better than one another. I get that cars are irritated with cyclists. If I was in a car and someone in front of me was going twenty miles under the speed limit, I'd honk my horn and act like a jerk too. If I've got somewhere to be, never mind the fact that they're propelling themselves with their feet and I know they can't go 45 miles an hour. And cyclists weave around unpredictably, and who knows if they're going to run a light... Look. I get it.

I get angry when drivers seem to do things out of spite. The other day, coming toward the mission on Folsom passing under the bridge, a giant F-350 who had been honking at me flew by me really, really close. I would have been fine, but it made me really nervous, so I swerved a little. Could have fallen. And sure, that's because I'm skittish and not very good at what I do - but all I'm saying is that you're not proving a point. The way you "win", with your two-ton+ vehicle, is by hurting me. The bicycle and I barely break 200 pounds. We are tiny and slow. You are not winning by proving a point to me. 

Through all the rage and indignity, I simply can't get enough. I had a slight mental breakdown to The Roommate on Saturday when it occurred to me that I'm still really, really scared on a bicycle. The slightest thing goes wrong and I am completely powerless to recover from it. But it turns out all I can do is just keep riding the damn thing, and eventually it'll get easier. The other option is being caged up. That doesn't even sound like me. 

I've read two stories today about cyclists getting hit and injured at busy intersections. How about we all try to be safe and not act like assholes? And this is directed at you too, cyclists. You know we're jerks. I get the indignity and that we're trying to take our streets back - but whether we're proving the point or the car is, we're the ones at risk for getting hurt. Let's keep this shit fun.

(P.S., a side note to The Roommate. It appears I am doing this for myself, after all. Sorry I had forgotten about that.)

Vote.

I am so busy I don't have time to breathe, thanks to an on-site freelance position that I really enjoy. We'll speak more of that later. Right now, though, here's what's important.

Today, commuting to work on my bicycle, someone pulled up to me in the bike lane and asked if I knew where a bank was. I didn't. But it opened a line of communication between myself and another person. We talked the rest of the way to work. He gave me advice on my bike, I told him about my broken collar bone. We didn't exchange names. There were lots of people parked in the bike lane today, so we called back and forth to one another to let the other person know it was safe to go around. I made a human connection today as I flew in and out of traffic. This is what riding a bike affords me: there is a sense of community, a sense of belonging. I am a part of something.

This story could not have happened to me at a better time. I am 23 years old and have participated in two presidential elections. I left my grandmother's funeral early in 2004 so I could fly back to Ohio and vote. My candidate was already chosen, and I wanted him to win, but I was in the "lesser of two evils" crowd that you hear so much about come voting time. I didn't feel like I belonged to a movement. I was simply making a choice. I voted for Kerry, who ultimately lost. It would be easy to say my vote didn't count, but it would also be painful and pointless. It would imply that I regret voting; that it didn't matter.

But this time? This time, I am in it. I have invested for over a year in my candidate, from the steps where he gave his first speech declaring his intention to run, to the convention where he accepted the nomination to be this year's candidate. I was the first on my street with a yard sign. I attended every function I could. I participated. I became a part of something bigger. I didn't let the fact that my vote "didn't matter" in 2004 deter me from committing to this as hard as possible.

I cannot say this enough: Your vote matters. I very strongly believe in my candidate and my political views, but this is not the day for me to push them on you. I hope your mind is already made up. I hope you believe as strongly in your candidate as I do in mine, no matter who you're voting for. You can debate all day whether or not your vote matters, you can spout facts about the electoral college, but this is the one thing you can do.

This is your vote. Belong to something.

(Oh, side note, if you would like me to push my views on you - YES on Prop 1A, a really gigantic FUCK NO on Prop 8, and YES to Obama/Biden '08. But honestly, just get out there.)

Public Transportation.

I really wish I could convince every person that lives in a city with public transportation to take it. Having lived now in four cities of various sizes with public transportation systems, it's always fascinating to see the way people feel about no-car life. It only occurred to me after I started riding a bike that I could get by without a car in the last city I lived in. You have to understand - midwest cities are car-based. (The exception might be Chicago, but if you've ever had to deal with rush hour there, you'll realize that there are still a ridiculous amount of automobiles.)

I lived in Midwest city #1 until I was 18, then shifted to Midwest city #2 for college, with a break for awhile in there to live in New York, and now I've ended up in San Francisco. City #1 has a public transportation system, but honestly? I don't know a thing about it. I lived in a suburb, you see, and I'm confident that city buses didn't run out there. Or if they did, I surely didn't know about it. I had the parental taxi until I was 14 or so, then started dating a boy who was old enough to drive, then was the proud owner of a 1990 Mercury Sable when I was old enough to drive. (Her name was Mabel and I cried the day she ended up in a junkyard. For the curious, she was followed by her 1995 edition, Boris the Taurus.) Also, at this point, my parents could give me $10 and I could drive on it for a week, so I wasn't freaking out about gas prices, and at 16, I hadn't quite realized that I was hurting the environment.

Midwest city #2 has, actually, a really fabulous public transportation system. As mentioned before, I didn't know that until I got on a bike. It's a very hilly city, you see, and I think I've stated in the past that I'm not a particularly good cyclist. (Reference: five wrecks in two months; broken collar bone.) Bike racks on the front of buses are the second best thing to ever happen to me. 

The first best thing? About a year and a half or so into college, a bunch of people reached an agreement that let every student at my major public university ride the bus for free. A flash of my student ID and I didn't have to pay a cent to get wherever I wanted to go. The bus system was kind of confusing and hard to get used to, and it wasn't terribly fast or consistent, but if you learned how to make it work for you, it was a godsend. And it was, again, free.

New York, I cannot say enough about your public transportation. I miss it so much, regardless of the time I spent bitching about it when I was there. A combination of subways and buses could get me anywhere I needed to go. I lived pretty far uptown and wasn't yet on a bike, so the subway and I made good friends pretty regularly. For $76 a month, I could get off at all the wrong stops I wanted. And I firmly believe that every 21-year-old girl needs a couple of good stories in her repertoire about what she saw on the Manhattan-bound E train at 4 a.m.

San Francisco public transportation is weird. Really, really weird. There are buses. There are cable cars. Some lines have numbers and I think some have letters and then there's a subway system that appears to be run by a completely different company. I remember visiting my then-boyfriend in 2003 and he took me all over the city on this method of transportation or that, but I had no idea what the hell was going on. The Washington D.C. Metro that I mastered at the age of 8, as well as the Paris Metro at the age of 17 when I was mostly pretending to speak French  made more sense to me. (My problem with BART, for locals, is that I can't grasp the idea of anything other than flat fares. NYC: $2, wherever you're going, ever. $7.80 to go to Oakland? Weird.)

I really encourage people to take whatever public transportation they can, if for no other reason than to prove to them that it's probably way easier than they think it is. Midwest city #2 recently held a day where people could come downtown and learn how to ride the bus. There were buses set up so you could get on them and take seminars learning how everything worked. I'm not kidding. And while I think that's kind of stupid - it's a bus, people, seriously - it isn't a foreign concept to me. There's all this anxiety with people who have never been on a city bus before, and it certainly surrounds the fact that everyone but you totally looks like they know what they're doing. An incredibly brilliant friend of mine told me a story once about how she wanted to ride her bike around, but the bus pulled up and she couldn't figure out how to pull down the bike rack so she totally didn't do it. It makes me really, really sad. 

I was a part of the issue, though. I lived less than three miles from my college, and I spent most of my time driving there. Ridiculous. $228 per quarter, plus gas, plus the ridiculous toll I was taking on my car by only driving it in the city for super short distances, etc. 

The PT issue here is getting slightly easier thanks to the recent injury. Getting on a bike simply isn't happening for me, so I've got to get around somehow. It's also encouraging me to get out and walk neighborhoods more, as I have very little desire to take two buses to get somewhere, especially if the first bus is only going to take me less than a mile. Of course, in the case of getting to the hospital for my follow-up appointment, I decided it was really stupid to take one bus .8 miles to take another .8, so I just walked it. I will continue to get exercise even without a bicycle, I swear it. 

If your city is smart enough to have some form of public transportation, take a Saturday or something and check it out. Don't do it when you have somewhere to be ASAP, because you'll just panic and get all anxious about the fact that you're not in control of how fast you get there. Ride somewhere just for fun. You'll be surprised at how awesome it is, and how much you totally didn't spend in gas that day.

Accidental delay.

It's been a couple of days, folks, and I apologize for that. Let's go ahead and get it out of the way: I snapped my collar bone falling off of my bike. 

It is incredibly difficult to refer to myself as a cyclist sometimes. We should also get it out of the way that I've fallen off of my bike five times in the past two and a half months. 

Test ride: Ripped up left foot. Still scarred.

Rounding a corner too fast: Convinced my pedal was going to scrape and I was going to land in traffic, I chose to give in to it and slammed my bike directly into a curb, flinging myself into a pile of dirt. Still scarred on inside of left ankle from pedal scrape.

Totalled bicycle: A really, really not pretty incident involving a lot of injury. Scarred on elbow.

Meeting train tracks: Like an idiot, threw bike into BART tracks on Market St. on a Saturday night. Convinced I broke a small bone in right foot.

And then there's this one. I've considered coming up with a really cool story, but there isn't one. What I can come up with is this: I was in my highest gear and my chain slipped off. I was pedaling really, really hard. When my chain slipped, my feet flew off the pedals, and I simply lost control of the bike. I went over the handlebars, directly onto my elbow and shoulder, causing a stress fracture in my right clavicle.

If you see a red-headed girl walking around the mission (uh, let's say from 16th to 22nd between Mission & Dolores), with her arm in a white sling, probably wincing a little, possibly walking with a tall boy with brown hair and a red beard, it's probably me and The Roommate. Stop and say hello to us. I look really, really pathetic, and I promise you my hair is usually a lot cuter than this.

Special thanks: There were four people who stopped to help me, called an ambulance, and called The Roommate. If you helped out a cyclist on a little blue bicycle around 7th & Townsend on Thursday, thank you so much. I don't remember any of your names. I was really scared and in a blinding amount of pain, and you were all really great. I wish I knew who you were, but thanks for staying with me and making sure I was taken care of. I'm sure you had better things to do with your day.

Additional thanks go to the paramedics that said it was okay to curse and told me that when someone offers you morphine, you should take it. I'd also like to thank every single person I came into contact with at San Francisco General Hospital, especially the male nurse who helped me fasten my bra when I was crying and couldn't do it myself, who reassured me that he had one just like it.

I'm not going to lie: It hurts. Really, really, really hurts. It's getting a little better by the day, but "better" from "worst pain I've ever experienced, literally" is not much of a step up. I took a successful shower yesterday, and managed to BART it over Potrero Hill to go to a job interview this morning, so these are all steps in the right direction. I have learned that morphine makes me sick, vicodin doesn't affect me, and that I really like Bayer with caffeine added to it. I have also learned that Farmacia on 20th & Mission has Mexican coke for $1.29. That doesn't have anything to do with the rest of that information or my health, but it's pretty important to me. 

Plus, I'm wicked angry that I can't ride a bike. It was the one thing keeping me happy and entertained around here, and now I've lost it for 6-8 weeks. There have been much happier girls than myself in the past.

How are you doing, San Francisco? It's hot out today. Hope you're staying remotely cool. Get a Mexican coke. Totally worth it.

Grocery roundup, frustration.

Spirits are a little low around the old apartment, kids. 

No job leads are coming through. The "be here tomorrow" emails I was getting from a certain creative recruiting company when I was still living in the midwest are, somewhat as predicted, no longer rolling in since I packed my bags and moved 2500 miles. I spend eight hours a day staring at my computer, sending email after email, unable to enjoy the fact that I live in one of the greatest cities this country has to offer. 

Still? Trying to remain happy about some things. Went on a great bike ride on Saturday, as I did the Saturday before (with the exception of the wreck, which we are no longer talking about). The Roommate and I have figured out a fun little loop that goes up 16th street, cuts in a zig-zaggy way over to the Embarcadero, and ends up at Pier 39, where I pretend I need a break, but really just want to watch the seals. Then it's back down a little to Market, which we take all the way to Valencia back to our neck of the woods. Attempted hitting up The Phoenix again (despite the fact that I was there after last Saturday's bike ride, and okay, I was there on Friday too but give me a break because where the hell else can I watch the WSOP, get fries with mayonnaise and drink a Hoegaarden?), but it was overrun by some weird mission bar crawl. 

The same mission bar crawl, I might add, that made me leave Kilowatt after a girl sat half on my lap and pretended I didn't exist while I was watching the Ohio State/USC game, then when I elbowed her in an attempt to move, told me to stop being such a bitch. At 5:30 in the afternoon. When only one of us had been drinking. Seriously, I know I've only been here two weeks so I have no right to bitch yet, but please stop invading my bar. And get a smaller purse.

So today was email upon email, pleading with very good firms to give me a job. The financial situation is a little desperate, folks, I'm not going to lie. In two weeks I have to pay rent for another month, and then there's going to have to be some very serious decision-making about my future in this city. I know jobs don't just pop out at you, I know the good ones take time. That's why I'm being semi-patient. But at the end of the day, I am an unemployed girl sitting in her apartment for eight hours a day refreshing craigslist. No one likes that girl.

Today, though, I decided I had to get out of the house for an hour or so, which led me to a very small market tour of the mission. No bicycle, because I was too lazy to carry it down, but everywhere was very close to my apartment anyway, so it didn't matter. 

Number one was Bi-Rite on 18th between Guerrero and Dolores. The type of place that could easily be my only grocery store choice, ever - great food, two blocks from my apartment. Reminds me so much of the little grocery stores I loved so much in NYC. Also, though? Expensive, which is why it isn't currently my grocery store of choice. Wicked expensive. I know food is more costly here than it is in the midwest, but christ. I am not prepared to shell out that kind of cash right now. Fabulous wine selection, additionally.

Number two was the Guerrero Market on 19th & Guerrero. I went there yesterday to pick up a giant piece of lasagna (just slightly cold in the center, like my home microwave makes it!) and a Chronicle. The Roommate went with me and tried a homemade chicken empanada. We didn't discuss it, but based on how quickly he faced it, I'm fairly sure it was okay. In news of the classy, we also bought a half-gallon of milk, walked to Dolores Park (so many pugs! so cute!), and drank the whole damn thing. I have always thought I could be a major contender for the milk challenge, but I've never actually tried it.

It should be noted that the whole reason the Guerrero Market and I made friends the first time is because yelp claimed it had macaroni and cheese. Since I no longer have a kitchen, I have started to crave all the things that I make really, really well. Yesterday was mac and cheese day. Except it wasn't. Because I think they either have mac and cheese or mac and beef, depending on the day, and they have now only had mac and beef for two days in a row. It is making me sad. I need a giant bowl of real mac and cheese soon, or I'm going to lose it.

Number three was the place we refer to as yuppie food market on 21st & Valencia. I think it's called Valencia Whole Foods. I have never actually purchased anything there, despite walking through a couple of times to see if there's anything that suits my fancy. They do sell the New York Times, and they are just a few feet away from the coffee shop I like so much, so you'd think they held a higher place in my heart. I did see today that they sell one of my favorite cheeses in the whole world, but I felt weird only buying a block of cheese, so I declined. I have yet to be super impressed by them. And it's so, so expensive. The markup does not make any damn sense. 

Number four? Lucca's. Oh, god. Now, here's the problem, and here's why I walked out without buying anything. I have heard only good reviews. But I wanted to eat pasta. They are a ravioli place. It's in their name. But I don't have a stove. So I don't give a damn that their fresh ravioli has been reviewed super well, or that it could not have looked more tasty, or that the people behind the counter made me want to buy every single thing they have... no, what matters is that I can't cook anything they sell. I really wish they had more of a deli-style thing where they could throw some cooked ravioli in sauce for me or something, but that's not what they're going for. It would simply be a solution to make me happy. I would have dropped a ton of money there today if I had a kitchen.

After all the walking-in-not-buying-anything, I ended up at my favorite bodega. Thanks, Mike's at 21st & Mission. You have a huge variety of Milano cookies, you have gallons of milk that aren't overpriced, and you sell individual bags of microwave popcorn for when I decide it's movie night. You have never treated me badly and I continue to walk all the way down there when I know there are closer bodegas to my apartment. Thanks.

Jobs, bikes, movies.

Step one: The Roommate kindly reminded me that he didn't quite "get his ass handed to him" at Kilowatt the other night, and that's fair. He did win one game. He put up a very strong showing in the rest of them. It's just that people there are very, very good. Also worth noting that I'm actually the one who got my ass handed to me.

Step two: Still unemployed, with very few leads. I have applied at four companies that I would really, really like to work for. I won't be mentioning any of them, but two of them are companies that probably everyone has heard of, and the other two are companies you've definitely heard of if you're a designer. This means they are major jobs, and I'm really nervous about my chances at them, but I'd really like it if one of them worked out for me.

So here's where I begin to plead, in a very strange way: If any of you are looking for designers with about two years of experience, particularly 2D/3D animators with a background in all sorts of visual design, feel free to give me a shout. I've got a portfolio and the whole bit, but I'll refrain from posting it here since I'm still trying to hang on to that faux-anonymity. Also, anyone looking to pay me for anything, ever, should probably hit me up. :)

Step three: It was a day for idiot bicycling yesterday. My gorgeous, perfect bicycle is not dealing particularly well with the shifts in temperature. Anywhere between 50 and 80 degrees in the same day? My brakes, both front and back, have started to rebel in a very big way. Screaming, echoing as I approach any moment where I remotely have to use them. So if you've seen a girl on Mission, Valencia or Market riding like an idiot with brakes squealing louder than you've ever heard in your life, it's probably me. 

So yesterday, I blow through an intersection. I realize that this is an asshole move on my part. Not only is it an asshole move, it's an illegal move. But I legitimately did not have the option of stopping by the time I realized the light was turning, and I certainly didn't have the option before I realized just how giant that intersection on 4th Street was. However, Person in Porsche SUV that started to barrel through the intersection - I know you saw me. I know you saw me, because you got about a foot and a half from my bicycle and almost t-boned me. Now, I get that I was doing something illegal, and so this would have completely been my fault, but I doubt you would have actually felt much better if you had hit me, as was clearly your intention. There is no reason to make a statement. I am riding as fast and as hard as I can, and I know you didn't realize my brakes are no longer working, but you still didn't need to deliberately drive like a dick.

It would have totally been my fault, though.

Things that wouldn't have been my fault? If I had run straight into a pedestrian at 14th & Valencia. For anyone who isn't familiar, there is a bike lane on Valencia. On Friday nights, this doesn't really matter, because everyone's too busy pulling their cars into it and throwing on their hazards so they can drop their friends off at trendy but-not-too-trendy bar of the moment and then go look for a parking space. But in this instance, cars were backed up, and I'm flying down the bike lane. A pedestrian jaywalks in front of a taxi, I can't see him, and he steps into my lane about fifteen feet ahead of me. No brakes. A combination of me screaming and my brakes screaming seemed to fix the situation, as I didn't plow directly into him. Perhaps we all need to watch out for everyone doing illegal, stupid things a little more. The Porsche for me, me for the jaywalking pedestrian.

Step four: Go see Burn After Reading. I saw it last night at the Century theater on Market St., and it's phenomenal. It hasn't gotten the best reviews, but I think it's phenomenal. As a piece of cinema, it's lacking a little, but as something to spend $10 on for an hour and a half of pure entertainment, it is what you should be doing with your Saturday night. (Also, the Century theater is really, really nice. And I don't have to bike all the way up Van Ness for it, which is a major plus. Metreon isn't showing it, for whatever reason, so we ended up here. Seats are wicked comfortable.)

Pool players, Bar roundup, Yelp.

In the city I just moved from, I was a fairly decent pool player. Owned a pool cue, shot about three days a week, could occasionally manage to run a table for a few rounds. I used to be a god-awful pool player, but seriously stepped my game up over the summer and became comfortable enough with where I was, skill-wise. There, I was a pool player. Here? I'm just a confused-looking girl holding a pool cue.

Where do you people come from? I have taken a liking to Kilowatt, a bar not too terribly far from me. I'm also a darts thrower. (I cannot bring myself to ever use the word darter because it is stupid.) This is what brought me to Kilowatt in the first place. Two steel-tip dart boards. None of this wussy electronic bullshit. Kilowatt is ridiculous. Two pool tables that people rotate in and out of. The one closest to the door appears to be more competitive and certainly goes faster, but by the end of the night last night people were rotating on both. 

The Roommate is better at pool than I am, and he got his ass handed to him. I put on a fairly embarrassing showing last night. Seriously, people are GOOD. 

I'm a bar person. It's not so much a drinking thing as the fact that I really just like sitting at a bar. Also, the pool playing and dart throwing sort of means that bars are where I'm going to spend my time. So far, I've sampled a couple in the area, and luckily I have yet to run into anything I really hate. I like Kilowatt. I've done happy hour at Elbo Room, shuffleboard/happy hour/later than happy hour at Doc's Clock, shot pool at Lexington Club (which I didn't realize was a lesbian establishment until The Roommate and I had been there for entirely too long, but the drinks are cheap and the pool table was fabulous), and ate french fries at some Irish-y place on Valencia after I mutilated my foot on Saturday. Don't remember the name. Only remember getting hit on hardcore twice, drinking Hoegaarden, whining about my foot, and waiting too long to get in the bathroom with some girls that were trying too hard. Thanks, Saturday night.

Favorite tool? Yelp. And it's taken with about nine thousand grains of salt, but proves to be at least entertaining, if nothing else. Yelp, for people not in a major metropolitan area, or people who already know where the hell they should go to shoot pool, is a fabulous website where you can review restaurants, bars, stores, etc. If you live in my area of town, it's also a way to see which bars within a mile radius of you are way too hipstered out. 

Oh, wait, that's all of them.

Seriously, there has never been such mud-slinging as the hipster hatred on the internet. Good lord, San Francisco. Be polite. The thing is, after reading so many reviews, I'm starting to be able to paint actual pictures of how I think I might respond to certain places. There's a lot of hipster that I'm willing to put up with. I'd rather roll up to a bar with twenty fixies sitting outside of it than have to fight through a crowd of girls with giant purses. These are my own personal prejudices. I'm also willing to overlook just about anything if I can get in on a pool table on a Saturday night without having to constantly hit people with a cue.

Cycling around town is getting easier. Google maps claims it's 3.3 miles from here to The Roommate's office, a feat that takes me no time, is completely flat and feels fantastic. Took the slightly longer way home from there, so I got about 7 miles in today. Working on gearing higher and higher, getting stronger, etc. Since destroying my foot, I hadn't been doing much riding. Felt nice to get back out there today.

Cycling woes.

The second thing I spent money on in San Francisco was a bicycle. (The first thing, if anyone's curious, was the $7.80 required to get out to Oakland and pick up the bicycle.) It was easier and smarter to get a bike here rather than getting mine out here. I owned a late 70's Raleigh that I had recently totaled, but was working on rebuilding - let's just say I have a history of not being particularly coordinated, and when you combine that with my history of doing really, really stupid things... you probably get the picture.

Living here is shaping me into a better cyclist very, very quickly. I'm from a city with a lot of hills, but it's a very different experience riding there. It isn't a bike-friendly town by any means. It's pretty awful. Here? There are bike lanes! Cars are used to the idea that there might be cyclists around! No one has honked at me! It's been absolutely fantastic. I've read the stories, I know there's a lot of controversy and the city should be doing a little better - but from someone who may have lived in the most unfriendly city to cyclists ever, I'm pretty pleased with how my life is turning out so far. 

Saturday night, The Roommate and I decided that we didn't really want to do the bar thing. We're also not huge "let's try too hard" people, and it was a Saturday night. We decided the weather was too beautiful to ignore, and it was bike riding time. We left the mission and rode toward downtown, where eventually we ended at the Giants stadium to sit by the bay and watch the scoreboard change for the last two innings. (They had the common courtesy to win after we had ridden all the way down there.) Then we rode down the Embarcadero until I decided it was tourist time, otherwise known as time to go to Pier 39 and watch some sea lions. In true touristy fashion, I called my mother at pushing midnight her time so she could listen to them via cell phone. Left there and went to catch Market and go back to our area of town. 

Just as we're crossing over a set of train tracks, he asks me if I know how to deal with train tracks. I tell him no, as I've only crossed them, not ridden parallel to them. He warns me of the dangers of getting stuck in the tracks because you can't get back out. I note this, then promptly get on Market St. and throw my bike into the tracks 20 seconds later. Crash, bang, get foot stuck in the back spokes.

I'd like to note, however, that instead of taking The Roommate's advice and taking the BART home, I continued to ride. I rode all the way down Market to Valencia, and took Valencia straight to a bar, where I proceeded to drink a Hoegaarden and watch the 2008 WSOP on ESPN and give continued updates on the status of my foot. 

I've had my first San Francisco fall. When I crashed my old Raleigh for the first time, The Roommate assured me that I had gotten all the fall out of it - older bikes like that only come with so much fall in them, you see. I proceeded to wreck it two more times. Considering how mangled my stupid foot is, let's all just assume that there's no fall left in this one either. (Oh, and the bike is fine. After some incredibly kind passers-by helped me out of the street, that was the only thing I wanted to know. The front wheel is a little out of round now, but luckily I live in an area of town with bike shops every four blocks, so I can probably get that fixed.)

In other news, for the first time since moving here, it's cold! I woke up and didn't instantly want to throw all my windows open. It's cold and overcast, but I think I see the sun starting to poke out. Today is all about looking for jobs. It most certainly isn't about heating up the leftovers of last week's burrito at 10 a.m. and eating them off the microwave plate since I don't own any dishes... that would be disgusting. (I cleaned the microwave plate first.)