If there’s one thing I hate when biking, it’s having to do it rushed. Such was the case yesterday when I got up at the crack o’ dawn with earnest plans to roll out at 6:30 a.m. and take my sweet old time cruising Bike To Work Day pitstops around downtown and in Culver City.

Well I didn’t end up hitting the streets until 7:45 a.m. and I groused pretty much the whole way over that extra hour-plus lost, especially since on any normal workday I leave for Westchester around 8:15 – 8:30 a.m., which meant I had basically 45 minutes to roll the additional 11 miles and make seven stops — Plus try to get to Western and Jefferson by 9 a.m. for a late-breaking meet up with a group of friends and riders coming from Hollywood.

In short, it didn’t all happen. Sure, I went the distance and landed at all the downtown stops, but it was all furtive and clock-watchy — and the last one at L.A. Trade Tech was already shuttered by the time I arrived around 9:15 a.m. At Western and Jefferson 15 minutes later I figured they’d come and gon on without me, and getting to Culver City 15 minutes after that I didn’t even bother with the stop on Washington Boulevard.

On the bike ride home, there weren’t any pitstops or group gatherings or timeframes to worry about, so instead I concentrated on a bike count. All in, I tabulated 68 cyclists (not counting the three toddlers on trikes I passed in a Mar Vista park). With every rider noted, I was thrilled at the obvious boost above the every-day, but as the number grew I realized what a paltry amount it is, and how amazingly mindblowing it would have been to have counted 200, or 340 or 680 –three, five or ten times higher. Such fictional numbers would still be monstrously insignificant in the scope of overall street usage, but just imagine how cool that would have been to see. Unfortunately that’s all I can do is imagine.