[2003.08.30 0146h]

there's nothing quite like a good bike ride late at night.  the roads are
clear, the air is cool and crisp, and the traffic lights cycle quickly.

of course, there are safety issues to consider, so i usually try to ride
my bike when it's still light outside.  unfortunately, whenever i ride
during the day, i can't seem to remember to put on some form of sunscreen,
so i probably look rather tanned for a computer science major.

i just biked back from mountain view where i met some friends for dinner.
since most of the people that were there i had met through an online game,
this dinner may have been the first time that i have physically met people
i have met and usually interact with online.  but since they were all
basically friends of friends, i never really noticed this until afterward.

i'm not positive, but i think i was probably the youngest in the group.
everybody else had jobs, so when they were talking about their jobs, i
didn't have much to say.  i've had jobs before, but i don't think i've
ever had to deal with things like technologically challenged bosses or
company firewalls before.

while biking to dinner, i ran into a friend who was, i believe, headed to
a party that conflicted with the dinner that i was heading to.  as since i
only noticed him calling me while i was in the middle of crossing the
street, i didn't have much time to talk to him, and hope he didn't take my
rather curt response too personally.

the dinner gathering ended rather late, so i had a nice late night bike
ride back to the stanford campus to look forward to.  the ride from castro
street in mountain view to the edge of campus took me roughly 25 minutes,
which really surprised me since i wasn't even trying to bike hard.

for those of you unfamiliar with these locations, the distance between the
two is roughly 8 kilometers, or 5 miles.  for the avid biker, this time is
probably ridiculously slow, but since the first time i biked from stanford
to castro street, it took me roughly an hour or more, i was very pleased
with my time.

unfortunately, the beauty and serenity of my late night bike ride was
interrupted by the harsh grating of a car horn at one point, apparently
coming from a sport utility vehicle whose driver didn't seem to be very
happy with the idea of sharing the road.  this seemed rather strange to
me, since the roads were so empty that i saw no good reason why anyone
would try to force a biker off the road.

in fact, the streets were so empty that i was inadvertently easily keeping
pace with a bus for a while.  unfortunately, keeping pace with a bus means
that a lot of the air you breathe will be more polluted than if you
weren't keeping pace with it, so i was rather glad when the driver decided
to rev up the engine and speed away from me.