Bike Your Life Green (BYLG)

First of all:
Happy Earth Day!!  Not only do I love everything that Earth Day stands for, I love what the kids get out of it.  They all get excited about cleaning up and doing their part.  It lights a fire in them, that sometimes never flickers out.  On Wednesday,  with the 5th grade, we are participating in Litter Blitz- a neighborhood clean-up day.  We’ll walk around the block picking up trash and beautifying our block.  They seem excited about it, and I’m excited they’ll get to do something nice for their school and its surroundings.
Tomorrow I’m doing the 3rd annual Book Swap in the library at school.  Kids bring gently used books from home and trade with other kids to get new books.  Bring a book- take a book.  It’s always a big hit, and the kids get new things to read.  Recycling and kids reading: does it get any better than that??  (the answer is no).

Love your mother, kids!

As for the challenge, the first week was GREAT!!  I biked 5 out of 5 days!   That’s the first time I’ve done that in months.  I feel so accomplished.   Only 4 more weeks of school, so I plan to ride every day that I’m able.

I rode to work Friday, and rode home.  Then I had to be back up at school for a function with the kids from 5:45-9:15  pm.  I rode there, and had planned on riding home after dark, but one of my co-workers refused to let me ride home.  She was very sweet about her intentions of driving me (worried it was after dark and that it was Friday and people had probably been at Happy Hour), but she wouldn’t let me ride home.  So I got a ride from her.  I did 1.5 commutes on Friday. Ha!
The silver lining of riding home with her is that I found out that she’s a liberal democrat just like I am (it’s not something you mention in our VERY red, VERY conservative, VERY judgemental state we live in).  I’ve found that if I mention my political affiliation, people see me differently.  Not so much my friends- they love me no matter what (how could they NOT, right? ), but strangers will immediately place a label on you.  It’s okay if you’re in the majority (Republican), but you don’t really say anthing if you’re not.  It’s just the way it is, sadly.  Of course, now that I know she’s “one of us” it makes me like her even more than I did before.  So I guess if I had to get a ride home, it was nice finding an even deeper connection with her.  Dems/libs unite!

This week looks promising for commuting.  I will have to drive Wednesday because I have another chiro appointment, but that’s OK.  I have a half-marathon to run on Sunday, so I’ll be glad to give my legs a little teeny rest.

Have a great week on the road everyone!

Pedal On!

So far I’ve done… OK.  I will admit that I’ve driven the car once this week when I could have ridden.  I went to Ladies Night at Backwoods, and I thought the route would involve too many busy streets and weird crossings, but I probably could have done it easily.  Drats!
Tonight I’m going to a friend’s house to help her move.  She lives 2 miles away, and I would ride, except that I need to bring her about 6 moving boxes and I can’t fit them in my front basket.

Aside from that, I’ve ridden to work every day this week.  I even rode on Monday (day 1) when I should have driven.  I thought my dr. appt was on Friday, so I rode to work, only to have to ride home at lunch and get the car since the appt was directly after work and I needed to drive the 8 miles there.  Sigh.  At least I rode, right?

So anyway- challenge going well.  It’s supposed to rain/storm in the morning (70% chance in the a.m.) and I’m really hoping it’s not raining when I leave.  I haven’t made it a full week commuting in months, I *really* would like to actually make it 5 for 5.

Pedal On!

For the next 30 days I’m going to vow to ride my bike to work every single day, and to do ALL errands within 2 miles of home by bike. No excuses.  No exceptions*.  If I need to drive, I will ONLY do it on a Saturday.
*except when I have a chiro appt. across town right after school- which I do this Friday

I will truly use my bike as transportation.  I just bought a new (to me) mixte, so I can’t wait o bring it out on the town and put it to good use!!
Want to join me in my 30 Day Challenge?  Give it a shot- you never know, maybe at the end of the 30 days you’ll be listing that car for sale in the Auto Trader.

I’m inspired by my recent trip to Boston, where cycling abounds and nobody even thinks twice about getting on their bike to get places.
Here are some of my bike photos from Bahston:

Below is Hubway- Boston’s bike sharing program.  Bikes are free for the first 30 min and there are stations all over the city.  Great idea!

love this bike rack below (it’s a bike):

I was so inspired by the thousands of bikes around the city (on the roads, locked up, outside offices and grocery stores, etc).  It was very uplifting and made me feel so proud to see all the beautiful steeds that were out  there.  Saw a Surly Big Dummy outside the Trader Joes, but didn’t get a pic.
I hope someday someone will take pictures of OKC and swoon like I did in Boston.

Pedal On!

that when the gas pumps look like this:

photo courtesy of: cdn2-b.examiner.com

I look like this: photo courtesy of: cupofjoepowell.blogspot.com

Is that bad????  Mwwwaaaaa haaaa haaaaa

I just LOVE having my bike as an option for transportation. I realize not everyone has that option, but you CAN make changes/sacrifices if it’s that important to you.  If it doesn’t bother you to drive (it doesn’t bother my hubs), then this is all a moot issue, but if it does there are things you can do to lessen your impact.  Here are some ways you can lessen your dependence on gas:

1. Find a job closer to home.  Ex: I quit a job 30 miles away to take one 3 miles from home so I could ride to work.  It was a pay cut, but it was a good move for me (also because the job was much more appealing, but that was just an extra bonus).
2. You can change residences, although if you rent it might be easier than selling in the current housing market.
3. You can choose to drive less than you currently do by combining errands
4. You can make a decision to bike to anything within a one or two mile radius of your home
5.  You can vow to not get in your car one day a week and spend the day at home reading, journaling, painting, gardening, etc.  Or you can spend the day walking to your close errands
6. find a buddy to carpool with.  Maybe you still have to drive to their house, but if it saves 10-20 miles of total daily driving, it could be worth it long-term

Of course, we still have two cars,  and my hubs drives 16 miles to work round-trip, but gas really doesn’t bother me.  It really doesn’t matter what the gas does.  If it gets bad enough, we can BOTH ride that now summer is here.  Have no fear: two wheels are here!!
Bwwaaa haaaa haaaa…

 photo courtesy of: bigpicture.typepad.com

Ok, so maybe it’s not infinity.  Maybe when you figure the cost of chains every few thousand miles, lube, tires, tubes, etc… it doesn’t equal nothing.  But I know it’s FAR less than driving a car.
Even if it’s near $.05 per mile, it’s still better than $4.00 per gallon for gas, plus all that pesky insurance, oil changes, tires, etc.

But let’s break it down just for kicks and giggle, shall we?

• oil change:  car around $35, bike around $7 for a year’s supply worth of lube
• new tires:  car $600, bike $80-100.  Replace the car every 4-5 years, bike every 2-4 years (depending on how many thorns I run over on the bike)
• insurance: 11 year old car  $600/yr, bike $0/yr
• gas: car is $3.50/gal, bike is cost of food ??? (about $400/mo)
• new timing belt:  car $900 (I just had it done 30K miles ago), bike  $40 for the chain
• seats/saddle:  car $0, bike $110 every 3-5 years (except my Brooks  saddle which will last for at least 20 years- that was a one-time $150 investment)

My money is still on the bike being much cheaper AND healthier for you!

Pedal On!

I volunteered to work yesterday.  We held an academic competition at school and I volunteered to help out.  It was great to have the students competing in contests of the mind instead of trying to kill themselves over sports.
I haven’t commuted on a Saturday before, so I was looking forward to the quiet streets that I knew would be out there.

The sun was shining and it was a beautiful morning!  I love spring mornings like this- shining sun, little wind and pretty cloud-dotted skies.  I knew it was supposed to be raining by the time I got off work, so I had all the rain gear packed just in case.The competition at school was outstanding!  I loved watching the kids excel in academic ways- trying things they hadn’t done before- and succeeding.  There were monologues, storytelling, spelling, math, calculator skills, and others.  I loved to watch them doing mind exercises and feeling so proud of themselves!
When I left work- it was dark and cloudy.  I knew the storms were on their way, so I pedaled home as quickly as I could, hoping to miss it.  The sky was a little ominous.
I decided to take a different route home.  You know, try new roads and see something new and all.  There aren’t a lot of new streets to me on my commute since it’s only 3 miles from home.  I pretty much know them all, but there are still a few I haven’t ridden down.  I found a school with a neat little paved track around it, a cute (old) little park, and a dead end road.  I was trying to beat the storm, but what’s life if you don’t try to have a little adventure along the way?

I rode past the former school in my neighborhood.  They’ve been busy there lately.  Apparently they sold the lot to a builder, and leveled the school.  They are making a little neighborhood inside our big neighborhood.  I’m glad the school is down (it was old and was probably a health hazard), but I really hate to see that big green lot disappear into a mass of new homes.
Sure, it’s probably good for the neighborhood, but that lot was home to lots of baseball, soccer and neighborhood kid’s games.  I’ll miss it.  For now, they’ve made some progress with the help of the land movers.
Sigh… I guess undeveloped land can’t stay that way forever… although I wish it could. 
I pulled into the driveway just in time (you can see my house in the background through the bike frame).  Whew!!  About 5 minutes after I came inside it started raining.  Good timing!    We REALLY need the rain, so you’ll hear no complaints from me.  Let the skies open up!!

Pedal On!

but you probably can’t tell he’s a commuter.  He looks more like Bigfoot in the picture below.he’s the little black blob. On the right kinda in the middle. Apparently my camera is dying.  Every picture I took today was fuzzy and terrible.

I was pretty excited to see him.  He pedaled past me as I was leaving the driveway.  He was a little Hispanic man wearing a backpack kicking ass against a strong headwind.

I wish my camera would have worked.  I was stoked to see another human on a bike heading to work.  What a great way to start my day!

Pedal On!