7 miles across, but full of hills and cars.

and stop signs and traffic lights and people crossing the street whenever they damn well feel like it

Don't all of these objections equally apply to driving in the city? Well, except hills. The link I gave, however, does point to maps for how to avoid the hills, and a route called "The Wiggle", at http://localwiki.net/sf/The_Wiggle .

I've never lived in SF. I have bike commuted in a city with hills. Low gears, go slow, and your leg muscles quickly build up to it.

Who ever said my starship is from the past?

The bike is the starship of the past and it is still a starship. You might try riding a bike around SF. It is an amazing super power.

Update: dalke above wrote "I thought it was going to end up that the author decided to ride a bike around the city. The starship of the past is still a starship." You seemed to ask for clarification about when you talked about a starship from the past. You didn't. dalke did. I clarified what he meant. You should reread this thread, take a step back and climb out of your own head. Read.

That's exactly what I meant. The piece uses parallel construction as a device to explain the sense of freedom. Uber is the starship of the present, compared to the the car or the taxi, in the same way that a bicycle is the starship of the past, compared to walking. No, it wasn't explicitly stated, but easily inferred that to the younger version of the author, the bicycle is a starship.

In reading the piece, I thought it would break the parallel construction by joining the present back to the past. It didn't. But it didn't explain why those couldn't be connected other than "We aren’t children anymore and things cost money."

I took that line to mean that the author recognized a need to separate the worlds of childhood and adulthood. I didn't like this explanation because bicycles do cost money. Eg, in the jwz link I posted, jwz points out that bicycles will get stolen, so use cheap bikes and don't get attached to it. If the mean time between thefts is 100 trips, then that's about $5/trip, or well below the cost of a car, taxi, and Uber.

I never said that the bike is the starship. I said that Uber is today's starship. Tomorrow's starship will be a starship I hope.