Serendipitous Hobbies

Sarah and I have often talked about picking up a new hobby. Whether it's a new money making hobby like selling pottery (of course after learning first), doing a community college class, or golfing, we never really picked up any of them.

I went down the path of just doubling down on existing hobbies — I love playing basketball and started playing in a rec league in addition to pick-up at the rec center. Also doing more calisthenics, a common afternoon walk + workout for us. I've experimented with two new thoughts at the calisthenics parks.

1. Do exercises that are uncomfortable — one armed pull-ups, things that put me upside down
2. It doesn't count until it burns — max sets and pushing myself past the limit instead of just doing 10 reps

The idea with basketball + calisthenics is these are hobbies I've had for years — at this point 10+ years. I'm good not great at both and it's a different challenge to get better at both instead of learning something new. I like to say the day to day things I do devolve into two buckets — work and work out.

Unexpectedly, Sarah and I have picked up a new hobby — cycling. Thinking back to some of our first times cycling, we started back in Chicago biking up and down the lakefront trail. There were two close calls with life and death with a truck on Cinco de Mayo nearly hitting Sarah on a right turn and biking on a narrow tight rope path with a bunch of pedestrians and cars as we were crossing the Chicago River bridge.

Since that point we've come a long way. I don't know how I didn't think about using the Lyft bikes earlier in SF, but maybe after over a year of living in SF, I thought about how I should try biking to downtown instead of taking the 15.

What became a high friction bus ride turned into a 15-20 minutes bike ride along the water in a bike route with 90% away from cars. We ended up biking the route a ton — it unlocked downtown from something annoying to get to to a fun, stress-free bike ride. We went to Chinatown, the Ferry Building, Sarah's office, and the AMC Metreon.

We became really comfortable with biking that route and would occasionally take a few street routes if we needed to cut into Mission Bay to get to Whole Foods or Trader Joe's after a day out. The streets of SF seemed way safer for biking than we thought. We paid more attention to bike infrastructure and I spent a lot of nights post-biking examining the SF bike map.

We started branching out beyond the fully protected Embarcadero bike lanes. 17th St and 22nd St to get to the Valencia bike lanes unlocked the Mission for us. Some stores and restaurants that seemed so far away became like neighborhood stops for us — Mi Tierra for extremely cheap fruits & vegetables and Alhamra for our favorite Indian food.

But we didn't stop there. The next step up for us was Golden Gate Park, a completely foreign part of the city. To this point we'd probably been to that side of the city less than a handful of times in our life and driven there a few times to go on a few trips to wine country.

A lot of inspection of the bike maps and we were ready to go. Just get to 17th and Valencia and keep going. Through the Wiggle and down the Panhandle and we were there. Of course it wasn't without struggle. The first time we had to stop at 17th and Sanchez so Sarah could swap to an electric bike. It's also a slight uphill all the way to GGP (but a slight downhill back so the ride back is much easier).

And once you reach the Panhandle, it's off-road away from the cars and car-free JFK the rest of the way. GGP became a common weekend thing — of course paired with some Chinese restaurant we've been wanting to try in the Sunset. So much of SF felt accessible to us now.

After over a year of biking, it's evolved from something we did once in awhile to get into downtown or something we needed to do to get to the office to a hobby. We took gradual steps up into growing the activity into something we did to get to downtown to go to work to something that enabled us to do things that we enjoyed like try new restaurants to something that we enjoyed doing itself.

While Sarah was in Austin taking care of Karen, I went on a bike ride to the Presidio, one of the remaining unexplored parts of the city for us. It was the most strenuous of routes that we took — the next order of magnitude in difficulty with a total of 500 feet in elevation gain but biking up a trail with the Golden Gate in sight and even on the way there going through Fort Mason and running into two workout parks along the way — words and pictures cannot describe that experience and all I wanted to do was share that experience with Sarah.

So first thing we did when Sarah came back Tuesday was go to my rec league playoff game (which we won) and then go on a 16 mile sunset bike ride through the Presidio. Each time I'd gone the Golden Gate Bridge looked different — clear but windy on the first day, hidden behind the clouds on a spontaneous ride in between meetings on Monday, and a backdrop of colors my mind couldn't comprehend at sundown.

We did the ride a fourth day in a row for me and a second day in a row for Sarah yesterday. We shared the same sentiment of not being able to stop thinking about that ride. Instead of taking the ride towards Immigrant Overlook and around the Presidio Golf Course, we took Lincoln along the coast. It was a downhill blast that took us long the coast for the first time. I'm getting goosebumps even thinking about the ride. It felt like the drives my family would take along highway 1 but with the wind in your face and knowing you climbed up the mountain with your own two legs and now you've earned this downhill bomb.

We stopped at dinner in Outer Richmond, Sichuan Tasty House on Clement St. At dinner we were talking about how this could be a new evening thing on some weekdays. Cycle through the Presidio and eat somewhere. We could even bring some food and picnic in the Presidio. That'd be easier with our own bikes so we thought about how we need to bring our bikes now from Eastbrook!

This felt like a whole new level of seriousness for us. You don't have your own road bike unless you're serious about biking. Of course there's utility for each type of travel — road bikes for picnics and Lyft bikes for exploring restaurants.

And what's cool about this new hobby is it's something Sarah and I do together. It's so rare to find a hobby with your partner but this feels like we found something.

Try something new.

Fit it into things that you enjoy doing already (e.g. eating out).

Or fit it into things that you need to do (e.g. grocery shopping).

Gradually push the boundaries.

And maybe you'll stumble into something new.