View Down the Northbound Railroad Tracks at the Halethorpe MARC Station

It’s the new year and I’m back from one final vacation trip–an overnight with S. at the beach. Oh, it was just a perfect mini vacation! But today it’s time to get back to work, so I woke up early, did some reading, packed my lunch, and headed to work, taking my Brompty to the train station. Yep, the car’s still sitting at the mechanic’s in Virginia, so its the multimodal commute for me. It takes about six minutes to race down the hill to the station, and then just 14 or so minutes on the train, and then another 15 minutes on the bike to campus.

Brompty Tucked Away on the MARC Train Between West Baltimore & Penn Station

My car is in the shop–yes, I own a car–getting itself fixed from the break-in it suffered in June. After months of driving around with tape for a back window and opening the driver’s side door through the passenger side, on Monday the door wouldn’t open at all, and it was finally time to face the price tag and get the thing fixed. All of that meant no car for the commute to work, so I got to give the multi-modal commute a try.

View of the Halethorpe Train Station From the Francis Avenue Overpass

It was a crazy beautiful day today, so you can imagine how I felt about being in my office all day and into the evening with meetings, interviews, and student events instead of out pedaling around on my bicycle. I had a gap in my schedule between 5:30 and 7:00, so brainstorm! I brought my bike with me so I could sneak in a ride. I finally got out of the office closer to six, but there was still plenty of time to do a test ride from campus to the MARC train station in Halethorpe, a mere 2.2 miles, in preparation for the multi-modal commute the clown bicycle will enable. (Yes, that’s my one track mind you see running its paces.)