Upon further consideration...

I had a post up here for a day, maybe two. It went into my bike commuting stats and how, despite the personal accomplishment they represent for me, they might be negatively affecting my ability and desire to ride on weekends. I also hypothesized that my feelings about my job may be part of the problem, too. The post was fairly negative and I ultimately deleted it. The take home message, however, was that I need to ride more often for the fun of it, even if that means I lose my status as the office's most-militant bike commuter (I work with a bunch of other tree-hugging dirt-worshipers, so the loss of cred could be considerable).

To that end, I met Veelz at Sweetwater this morning. We went around several of the loops. I rode better than I thought I would have considering how infrequently I've been mountain biking this year. We ran into a coworker of mine and also saw a desert tortoise. I flatted by stupidly backing into a barrel cactus, but the weather was nice, the desert was alive, and I had a pretty damned good time. I came home, cleaned up, threw in load of laundry, and, despite chugging the coffee I'd foregone prior to the ride, promptly fell asleep on the couch, Dagwood Bumstead style.

I woke up with a slight, all-over ache; the satisfying, low-level soreness that comes from having had too much fun on a bike. It was then that I realized something else, too. Between the morning at Sweetwater and yesterday's road ride, I'd reached the point where I would probably be too tired to ride my bike to work tomorrow. And that is the revelation I needed to have. I should be too tired from the weekend to commute, not too tired from commuting to ride on the weekend.

It seems like such a simple thing, but I've pedaled to and from the office so many hundreds of times - riding like a zombie and focused only on bettering my bike vs. car statistics - that I forgot I used to actually enjoy riding a bicycle.

I won't give up on the bike commuting entirely, as BeanSS and I still have to share one car. Also, the rides back and forth from home will get steadily more tolerable as autumn arrives. Lastly, I have my base to consider - no miles are bad miles, right? Nevertheless, I'm just going to have to back off on my dedication to the One less car ethos, replacing it with the another sticker-based piece of wisdom: Work sucks, I'm going mountain biking.