Back From Work on Two Wheels

Thursday, March 31, 2005, at 02:19PM

By Eric Richardson

I was proud of myself today for riding my bike in to work. I didn't even feel all that winded afterward.

And so, tonight, I thought "why not?" and proceeded to ride from JPL to Downtown. bikemetro gives a route that's 14.43 miles long for that trek, so I'm sure that's about what my ride was. I made it in about 70 minutes, which sounds a lot more impressive before you hear that I had 837 feet of elevation loss to push me onward. Still, though, it was a good workout.

The first five miles or so are along the Arroyo Seco, which makes that by far the best part of the trip. After that I sort of meandered through South Pasadena, Highland Park, and finally Chinatown. I generally picked whichever route looked like it was heading downhill.

bikemetro says the average cyclist would have burned 566 calories on my trip, which really doesn't seem like that much, but I guess every little bit counts.