My friend Arturo and I went for a bike ride last night. This is the first real exercise I’ve done in years. It was brutal. We were joined by his brother-in-law Manuel. The two of them met me at my house at roughly 7.30 and then we made our way to the town center. The ride downtown was 2.5 miles and it took us 20 minutes. Not exactly impressive, but it was a really fun ride and I enjoy seeing things I don’t normally take the time to see.

We waited downtown until 8:30pm to join a large group of bikers (maybe 50 or more) that do weekly rides around the city. Mexico isn’t the safest place to ride a bike on the street, but the advantage of this group is that it has a 10-15 motorcycle cop escort. That means we have the right of way at every intersection and ever intersecting road is blocked as we pass to ensure cars do not pull out. There is also a line of motorcycle cops down the side of the group to ensure no cars get near the bikes. It was awesome to discover this sort of thing exists.

From the center of town we did a loop of part of the city. The loop happened to go right by our neighborhood, which I enjoyed to be able to see our area from the perspective of a bike (versus the car which I am normally doing).

The bike group ride was only about 6 miles, but coupled with the 4 miles there and back from the house, I at least logged in a little over 10 miles. Not bad for my first time. However, the 2 mile ride home at the end of the night was pretty exhausting. But overall, I feel like I could do this again and perhaps even regularly. It’s about time I started to get some exercise.