Today was the day my custom-built “commuter project” would “most likely be ready,” the bike shop owner told me, and so at 10:05 I showed up with my old clunker trade in. I’d pedaled the half mile to the shop with an 8-degree head freeze.

“We just have to put on the tires and adjust the brakes,” the college freshman on duty told me while the shop owner ran helter-skelter, dealing with other customers.

At 12:15 M called the shop. “Are you coming home for lunch, or what?” she asked.

“We can call you when it’s finished,” the freshman said. “It might be an hour yet.”

Now, sitting in a bike shop watching your bike slowly take shape before your eyes is fun because it’s not generally how commerce happens these days, and it’s incredibly boring because it takes so long, and it’s interesting because you get to watch other customers’ idiosyncrasies even as they look at the dude back in the corner sitting on a stool like he’s not doing anything, which he isn’t because he’s waiting for his bike, and it’s incredibly mind numbing because you’re not really doing anything except sitting there hoping to absorb bicycle wisdom from the atmosphere of the cluttered little hole-in-the-wall shop.

“Is that van outside really electric?” one customer asked the owner.

“Yes, but it lacks batteries and a motor,” he replied.

“Really, it’s a storage shed that looks like a van,” the freshman told me.

Another customer eyed a bike on a repair stand. “I want that,” he said.

“It’s the same bike model the [such-and-such] team uses in the Tour de France,” the owner said. “It’s the best aerodynamic design wind tunnel tested. All carbon fiber. The cranks cost a thousand dollars. A local doctor rides time trials with it.”

I leaned over to the freshman. “How much does the whole bike cost?”

“More than some cars,” he smirked.

Another customer, a young woman there with her dad, was getting a bike for a triathlon this summer. “Isn’t it pretty?” she kept saying, and then said that she didn’t know how to use the bike rack, since her boyfriend that she just broke up with always put it on her car when they’d go riding. So her dad and the shop owner went out to put the rack on the car, and she stood inside chatting with an older man who’d just gotten back from skiing in someplace where it was really, really cold. When the shop owner and her dad came back in, she asked, “Did you guys figure it out? It took you forever!”

I just kept sitting there, until that call came from M, and then I pedaled my old clunker back home for lunch, after which I dozed on the futon until the freshman called me back in. I again suffered tremendous brain freeze, but this time came away with the new bike.

It looks very much like my old one, but with matching tires, fenders, and more black components. It weighs about half as much, though–and is much stronger, with more gears, and other great improvements.

Commuting 78 miles by bike every week has led me to believe that I can eat just about whatever I feel like, within reason. That reason, however, seems to have flown out the window, with M and N away for the weekend. This absence of reason is only compounded by the fact that I’m having to draw on my memories of long-ago bachelorhood in order to maintain dietary sanity.

Last night, after my ride, I was hungry. The refrigerator was rather bare except for some delicious potato soup that M had left behind, and so I ate it all, two huge bowlfuls, along with a little muenster cheese. I didn’t eat anything else until my bedtime snack of Tastee Oats and banana.

This morning I woke up hungry and anxiously devoid of culinary creativity, so I finished off the cottage cheese and brewed some coffee. Then I checked email and saw that Mama JJ was going to stop by with some doughnuts. I ate four of them, the same number that New York City bike messenger “Yac” scarfs down every morning.

“Yac” also eats hot dogs every day for lunch, so just a bit ago I hopped on my bike and rode around looking at local houses for sale, and then stopped by the local grocery store for two chili dogs and a Mt. Dew. I ate, and watched an older lady take her two dogs to her car and share them with her puppy.

I’m not sure yet what I’ll do about supper.

On Friday I mustered my courage and pulled my bike from our dark shed at 6:20 a.m. to pedal the 13.2 miles to school. I’d been hoping to have my bike totally outfitted for the trial, but I’d only lucked out on a headlight and taillight, the duo for $54. The flashing taillight seemed plenty bright for me, and the headlight, I thought, was probably bright enough.

It was really dark, though. Mist shrouded the road, a four-lane with comfortably wide shoulders, and clouded my glasses. I took them off and put them in my backpack (which itself was a last-minute development, as the bike shop that was selling the panniers that I wanted had been unexpectedly closed on Thursday). The oncoming traffic, over across the median, was thick with morning commuter traffic whose bright headlights seemed to diminish the effect of my own, but nearly every last one of the few cars and trucks heading out of town with me gave me a wide berth.

I made it in 50 minutes, only 10 minutes longer than with my brother last weekend. Not bad, considering I was riding my own bike, wearing a backpack, and in low visibility.

In the afternoon, the sun was warm but not hot, and the traffic was again mostly traveling in the opposite direction or else largely considerate. The ride home took only 5-10 minutes longer even though it involves a 400-feet elevation climb. I don’t have the exact time for the return because when I was almost home I dropped in at the bike shop to finish outfitting myself, this time with an additional blinking taillight–it’s a very bright one–an emergency pump, an extra tube, a highly reflective windbreaker, and panniers. And when I got home, I stole the kickstand from M’s bike and put it on mine.

I feel set, except I may decide to go back to the store for a brighter headlight, which, if I’ll buy, will be the item that places the accessory dollar value of my bike above the value of the bike itself.

I do plan to continue riding. It’s immensely exhausting, at least at this stage, but satisfying, too–much more so than jogging ever was, for sure. Plus, I figure that if I ride three times a week (let’s say 100 minutes a day, for 300 minutes total) and drive or carpool the other two days (40 minutes a day, for 80 minutes total), my total commute time will be 380 minutes. That’s a lot, but always driving and having to jog for exercise every day comes out to about 350 minutes. If I can cut my biking time by 10 minutes a day, I will get more and better exercise as well as a gasoline-free commute at no cost to my sense of time.

I’ll also be justifying exorbitant glee, which was the case on Friday when M let me talk her into going out to a Chinese buffet.