Winter

Well, it's not exactly winter yet.  Or, I should say, it's fall by the calendar but it's winter by the weather.  Our second snow of the year was a 15" tree snapping cold spell that drove us to the car for a week of commuting.  Kind of a rude awakening to the change of seasons.  The good news is I actually got my new tires mounted and won't be repeating last year's slog through the deep stuff in semi-bald semi-slicks.  I put the knobbiest widest cross tires I could find on the old surly and now I can ride down and up the hill by the house in the snow (they are Kenda Kross Supremes).  I've taken a hit on rolling resistance and I may change the gearing out because of that but it's nice to be more sure footed.  I've missed the mountain bike tires I used to run on my old commuter since switching to the cross bike and these new ones make a nice replacement.  Unfortunately I think they have been discontinued which will pose an issue when they wear out.  I'm thinking I may need to mount up a second set of wheels because once winter is over I'm not sure I want to run these.  Only catch is I had to muck with the fenders to get them to fit but there haven't been any issues otherwise.


Oh, so a couple of comments on the front rack.  It's awesome.  I've used it 2-3 times a week since I put it on.  I don't miss the basket at all.  The cam strap holds anything on I can carry and stows fine for everyday riding.  I've been putting a 20 lb box of apples on every Saturday at the farmer's market and have not had a single problem.  No sway or flex and handling is normal for a loaded bike.  I can't imagine a commuter without a porteur rack now.  I put my pack on it this morning after dropping my son at school and was reminded how nice it is to have the weight off my back.  I usually just throw my pack on after taking it out of the trailer but this morning it was cold and having my puffy jacket still puffy across my back and shoulders was awfully nice.  It's all about staying warm this time of year!

Staying warm has actually been our new challenge.  Last winter we just didn't ride when the temps dropped but this year we're trying to push that boundary a bit.  Yesterday was 19 and this morning was 22.  Hats under the helmets have not been accepted very well.  The discomfort has been the leading complaint.  I think my daughter's helmet is actually too small now for any extra layers.  Problem is that regular hats are so bulky.  The second problem is that the fancy thin and warm skull caps that the bike world has to offer are adult sized (and cost cycling world prices).  I'm on a quest to find decent under-helmet hats for the kids.  Might have to make them ourselves in the end but I'll look for a bit first.  Sewing hats isn't high on my list right now and I don't think a knit hat will do the trick.  My wife suggested just buying adult caps and altering them for the kids.  Not a bad idea except I'm not sure we can do it elegantly and in the end with the little ones that is sometimes more important.  If it fits them well and doesn't produce the "it's uncomfortable" comment that's worth more than you can imagine.

Pressure

OK, so Occam's razor slapped me in the face this morning.  For a few days I've been feeling like I'm peddling in mud.  I wrote it off to being tired and the family cold going around.  Um, did you check your tire pressure lately?  15lbs in the trailer, 25 in the bike.  Fixed that and it feels like I just shed 20 pounds.  Arg, sometimes the obvious stuff kind of creeps up on you.  Bike maintenance has never been my strong suit.  Or, I should say, the regularity of it is not my strong suit.  I'm really pretty decent at it when I actually do it.  This spring it took my wife commenting that someone needed to bomb my bike with some tri-flow.  Today it took actually checking the tires.  You'd think I'd learn.  Guess this is a reminder to me and to others that when your car turns into a bike you really should spend a little more attention on maintaining those two wheels and a seat.

About a month and a half in...

Well, we're about a month and a half into our "new" commuting schedule.  Whew.  Overall I have to say it's going well.  It's been a little bit of a test of my resolve as the weather has started to change.  We've had some blips and I drove the car once so I could drop it at the shop for annual maintenance after dropping my daughter at school.  It wasn't the best transition and the route from the shop to school was a bit dicey.  We had to run a few blocks on the sidewalk to avoid some traffic that was too heavy for a trailer with a 2 year old in it.  The whole time my son kept asking me "why are we on the sidewalk?".  Oh well, we worked it out and my son had a fun morning taking a new route and getting to see an auto shop.  Something that was pretty much a standard for me as a kid and which will be a much smaller part of his life if we continue on this path we're going down.

We've found that while my daughter is a great bike rider she isn't so great when there is a bunch of traffic around.  We've had some attention span issues and so we've settled on riding on the sidewalk for a bit.  Not the easiest solution when I have the trailer as well but it works.  The funny thing is she used to refuse to ride in the trailer anymore but now she like it.  The two of them squeezed into the little buggy is endearing and really heavy!  It's kind of fun having them in one place.  I can hear both of them talk and they can play together (mostly :). 

The bike discussions are weaving back towards a box bike though.  The constant hooking-up and un-hooking wears on you after a while.  My wife was the first to bring it up and I had to concur.  I'm convinced there isn't a perfect solution short of both parents riding box bikes.  The kids and the right bike are always in different places.  In reality I don't know that spending the money on a box bike is in our future (let alone 2).  We have the money from our second vehicle stashed away but it would just barely cover a new box bike (like used ones are available anyway around here!).  It's a hard balance.  Do you save the money and just deal with what you have or do you make the jump to a family bike?  I'd say it's worth getting a family bike is the way to go if you have the money.  If not, the used trailer and tag-a-long is such an affordable option it's hard to pass up.  That said, as the kids grow the need changes.  I've been doing well with the trailer, panniers and front rack for heavy hauling with one kid in back.  There are easier solutions but it's what I'm doing now.  We'll just keep at it and look to our creativity as the situation changes.  The real need right now is bike storage.

We've never had a garage.  Never really needed or wanted one.  It always seems that our friend's garages don't store cars.  They store stuff.  No one needs to store that much stuff in my opinion.  Then again, we don't tend to have that much anyway so maybe I'm biased.  We do know one family who is the exception.  Their garage has bikes in it.  Bikes and trailers and such.  It's rather grand.  They have two big bikes at work trailers they use for their business and all the other various bike stuff.  At this point in our lives if we had a garage something tells me that is what ours would look like.  Problem is we can't build one because there isn't space.  We've thought about a shed attached to the side of the house, renovating our garden shed to be weather tight and secure enough to store bikes in and we've talked about bike lockers in the driveway.  The bike lockers are the best idea but then I looked at how much they cost!  Yikes.  I'd like to just build a bike sized shed at the end of our driveway but I need to talk to the building permit people first.  The city might not like the idea even thought they should.  I mean, it's a billboard for sustainability.  The craziest idea I've had is to get an enclosed trailer and just park it on the street or in the driveway and store the bikes in that.  Simple, cheap if you can find a used one and about as weather tight and secure as anything I can build.  That and we could use it for car trips.  Just throw in the camping gear and hey, you've got your bike along too!

Somehow we need to solve the storage issue before long.  With two commuters, two kid's bikes, a tag-a-long and a trailer the little area we have for bikes is getting crowded.  I won't mention the other bikes lying around.

A week of transportation

School is upon us!  For us this is a new deal.  Our daughter started kindergarten on Wednesday and we walked down in a big group from the neighborhood.  Friday we met three other kids/dads on the corner and rode the bikes down.  It's an unbelievably refreshing thing to ride in a pack kids.  More exhilarating and in many ways more tiring than a 8 man group ride on the racing bikes.  This was my daughter's first group ride I guess :).  She did great.  I took her backpack to make the whole thing easier but in hindsight I don't think it was necessary.  However, it gave me a chance to use my new rack (courtesy of a generous deal from Rack n Roll).  It has taken me a little time to get it on the bike but I've been using it for a couple of days now and this is the first real bulky item to have graced it.  School bag strapped on awfully nicely.  Wrap the straps around the front, cinch it down with a cam strap and away we go.  I've been contemplating mounting the old Wald basket to it but I'm not convinced as yet.  Having a narrower platform on the front is nice especially when taking the front wheel on and off.  Anyway, the rack was great, the weight was un-noticed, and the ride went great all around.  On the way home I stacked my bag under hers and it was perfect. Can't do that with a basket for sure.

So the week went by and we survived the car-light beginning to school.  This is why we moved into town and paid a premium for our house.  The ability to, as a community, walk or bike to school as a group is worth quite a bit to me.  It was an experience that I hope the kids remember as they get older.  My daughter is very adamant now that she wants to ride her bike and not the tag-a-long to school.  Now that she's been initiated into riding on the road with cars around we may be able to move my son to the tag-a-long next summer and not need the trailer.  I'm sure there will still be times when she uses the tag but most of our trips are under 2 miles so going to the park or a friend's house is all possible on bikes now in a way that wasn't with the tag or trailer because she's the one doing it.

Of Bakfeits, Xtracycles, tag-a-longs and trailers (oh my!)

First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes baby in the baby carriage.  Then what do you do?  I'm not speaking metaphorically.  I'm talking transportation and I'm not one to drive much if I can help it.  So, does one sell a car and buy an expensive cargo bike?  Well, we wanted to.  Haven't managed that one yet.  Well, selling the car part happened but it seems like a luxury to spend thousands on a family bike.  So, I've read reviews, dreamed of bakfiets and own an xtracycle (which is still in pieces as part of a rebuilt.....) but funny thing is for a few years now the trailer and tag-a-long has been the family car.  Personally, I don't much like it.  It's heavy, unwieldy and just plain goofy.  Although it is nice to get a cheer once in a while from someone who appreciates seeing the family bike effort (at least I hope it's a cheer and not a jeer!).  Lately though my opinion has been changing.  Here's why.  Our daughter is starting Kindergarten in the fall (yikes, that's less than a month off!!!) and until now brother and sister have been going to the same school.  Now they won't for a couple of years.  So, we have a 1.6 mile commute right now and it's mostly on paths or back streets.  Very nice.  Next month we add a stop that just happens to be in the other direction.  We'll drop off at kindergarten first, then preschool.  At the end of the day it's kindergarten and then preschool again for pick up.  Seems simple right?  Well, if we were riding a bakfiets then it actually gets complicated.  The end destination (preschool) is where the family bike would be left but it's the second stop on pick up and the farthest point from my or my wife's place of work.  With the big train of tag-a-long and trailer we can leave the respective parts with the respective kids.  It actually works out better in the end.  It's still heavy and unwieldy but it's easy to organize.  Of course, as a friend of mine in CA would say, we could just buy two bakfiets!  Elegant solution for sure but at the current going price for something like a CETMA that would be roughly $6,000 all told.  Two xtracycles start to make more sense.  Anyway, enough rambling.  Based on practice and cash we'll just keep doing what we're doing.  Still, it's fun to figure other ways.

One Less Car

Sometimes it's hard to put your money where your mouth is.  We've been a two car family since before there were kids in that spare bedroom.  It started when my wife was in graduate school and started taking a class three nights a week.  We lived outside town a little bit and I got kind of tired of not having a vehicle.  Funny thing is if we'd lived in town where we do now it would have never crossed my mind since we don't drive much anyway these days.  Anyway, that second car turned into a beat up old pickup after we bought the house.  That was truly a useful choice other than the rattle and leak that was that old Chevy.  When some friends moved away and offered to sell us their big Ford that could seat 6 for a more than reasonable price we decided it would be nice to have some extra room since we kept a truck as our second car anyway.  Geez that thing got terrible gas mileage!  We drove it out of town once and used something on the order of 5 times as much fuel as our little diesel wagon.  Maybe extra room isn't so important.  Well, for all the convenience of having a truck (and we really did use it for truck type stuff) we've finally plunged back into being a single car family.  It was actually harder than I thought it would be to make that final decision.  It was also completely worth it.  We joined the local car share so we can still use a truck if we really need one or if we need two cars every once in a while.  So, here's to one less car!  If your on the edge, dive in.  It's surprising how much lighter you feel without that second car sitting there.

Sobering Morning

I've no idea the details of what happened but my morning ride was brought down a few notches.  There was an accident and a fire truck was blocking off half the intersection with cones put out to direct traffic.  It looked like they had been there a while.  I had seen an ambulance come up the street.  Normal driving, no lights, etc. so either no one was in it or they weren't hurt bad.....I don't want to think of the alternative.  As I rode by I saw the accident investigation people picking up a bike and trailer to load into the van.  I'm hoping there wasn't a kid in that trailer when the accident happened or that the child was not involved.  Either way my exuberance for my daughter starting to get the hang of riding is a bit on hold.  She's getting good but maybe not as good as I thought.  While her use of the brakes is getting more predictable she still puts both feet down before coming to a complete stop.  In surprise situations she target fixates pretty bad.  All in all she's not ready for riding outside of the protected area we create on our street.  It will be a bit before she rides downtown or to school.

Accidents with or without cars are of course an always present danger.  That doesn't mean I like seeing them.  I'd like seeing them even less if I am involved.  Like any rider I've had my share of accidents and a couple involved cars.  As for car related ones, one was OK but could have been really bad (broadsided by someone rolling through a red light while turning right) and the other was a non-issue (someone pulled out in front of me at a path crossing and I t-boned their back door at slow enough speed I didn't go over the bars).  The others were solo accidents so to speak.  That said, other then the normal crashes kids end up in when doing anything physical we've been very fortunate.  We stick to the side roads and paths where possible.  I'm far more careful when pulling the trailer than when I ride solo.  Well, maybe not more careful but we ride slower and take more time at stop signs.

What does it all mean?  I'm not sure.  Accidents happen.  Should that stop me riding or my kids riding?  No.  Should it reinforce careful habits?  For sure.  I hope everyone in the accident this morning is OK and I hope it was truly and accident and not some bonehead move on someone's part.  I still hope they are OK if that's the case.

Why Ride?

I was able to combine the free time (lunch hour) and the motivation (70 degrees and sunny) together today to get out for a "real" ride.  Haven't been on the road bike for a few months and it's been grating on me.  I've been itching to get out and today I realized why.  There is no real substitute for the head space found 10 miles down the road.  Any road.  Being an early season ride there was the normal discomfort and pain.  It felt like there is lead in my wheels.  Overall it was a perfect ride.  As the season wears on it won't feel any different but that doesn't matter either.  If I can get out once a week I'm pretty happy.

So, part of what I garnered from today was a reminder of why I ride a bike.  The other was perspective on something that has bugged me for some time.  Not like it's a big deal but it's one of those niggling things like why people put handlebars barely wide enough to fit their hands on their fixie.....but never on any other bike.  Anyway, I realized there are two broad categories of cyclists.  Those that love to ride and those that love to compete.  In my town with the high concentration of cyclists, and a good part of them professional, I've met a few that have hung up the cleats so to speak and sold everything and walked away from riding.  I've never understood that.  I kind of thought that if you were a competitive cyclist then you loved to ride and the competition was secondary.  From my perspective this makes complete sense......warped though my perspective may be.  I have an easier time relating to those that simply love to ride and can't do without it.  I don't get the competitive angle anyway so I'm at a disadvantage there to start with.

And then it clicked

Sometimes the biggest lesson we can learn from our kids is to step back.  When it comes to skiing and cycling I've been a bit ahead of the curve with the kids.  At least with my first one.  I put her on skis earlier than I was on them.  Point of pride?  Probably.  We bought a run bike for her.  It was a big moment for me.  Her legs were a bit too short but withing a few months she grew into it.  And then took off on it.  She rode it until she was so scrunched up I couldn't figure out how she could be comfortable.  She had a pedal bike; she just didn't get into it like the run bike.  She actually grew out of that bike before she stopped riding the run bike.  Testament to their popularity.  She never had training wheels and never needed them.  She's on a 16" wheel bike now.  Classic kids bike.  It's 1/4 the size of my daily ride and weighs twice a much (OK, maybe an exaggeration).  She's been into the "razor" scooter thing since last fall when a neighbor passed one down to us.  I'm relatively terrified by them.  I've seen far too many close misses and full crashes on those things.  Kids do love them.  My youngest is big on it now.  He's been trying the run bike for a couple of months but his legs a just a bit short.  Just like big sis :)

I've been wondering when and if the bike bug would bite the kids but it seems like it's either a long time coming or has passed us by.  Then three or four evenings ago the strangest thing happened.  My daughter out of the blue looked at me and said "I want to ride my bike".  I paused and asked her if she meant her scooter or run bike but no, she reiterated "BIKE".  Great news for me.  We got on shoes and helmet and dragged the bike out of it's spot, aired up the tires and went out front.  She kind of looked at me as if to say "How do you do this again?" and asked for help starting up and then something magical happened.  She went from wobble to spin and for the last few evenings riding is all she wants to do.  She's getting pretty good.  She's working on the brakes right now.  She still uses her feet like it's a run bike but that's more than OK.  The only important thing is she gets back up when she falls and she is having fun.  The later is probably the single most important thing.  Last fall I pushed the bike and she lost interest.  This spring I never said a word and she initiated it herself and is loving it.

The second evening of riding my son asked to try the run bike.  Knowing his legs are too short I went and got it but didn't say much else.  It seems he went through a growth spurt because last month he could barely tiptoe on it.  Now he's zooming around the street with his sister.  Still a bit tip-toe but he's figured it out and like his sister something clicked for him.  My personal moment of reflection and the one I take out and polish off a couple times a day is when he said "Ride Papa's bike with me?".

Faster than you can imagine I was helmeted up and on the road with both my kids riding down the street.  Next stop.....time will tell.  I do know I'll let them lead the way.

New Bike!

So we bought some new bikes this week.  I added somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 bikes to the stable.  Parking is a problem so I leave them locked up all around town :)  Seriously.  Boulder Bcycle is here.   Now what is a guy like me with as many bikes as I have doing buying membership into a community bike system?  Well, I really believe in it even if I'm rarely without a bike.  I'm impressed with the system.  It's easy.  It's pretty foolproof.  It's neat to have bikes all around that you can use on the spur of the moment.  Today at lunch I was out for a walk/hike and 45 minutes in I walked past a station and figured it was a heck of  a nice day for a ride so out came the card and away I went for a nice spin.  I dropped the bike at another station and walked back through downtown to the office and heck if I didn't have a good time.  Interestingly enough I've had a chance to test out a new porteur rack as part of the deal.  Every Bcycle has a sturdy basket/rack on the front rated to 20lbs.  I throw 20 lbs into my Wald wire basket (not quite a stable as I'd like but I do it) so I'm sure you could put quite a bit more in these but I doubt most people would be used to that weight up front.  I carried a can of paint home yesterday in one.  The first day I used on I threw the backpack in like I do on my bike.  Besides being more stable it rode about the same which I find interesting.  At lunch today I threw in my shirt and phone which is probably more like they intend.
Lessons learned?  My Wald needs some stabilizers.  The paint can would have thrown it for a loop like the flat of cat food did.  The problem with the Wald is that 1) it's wire and inherently flexy and 2) the connection to the bike is really in three independent places.  The two stays that go to the front fork just hold it up and the handlebar straps keep it somewhat in place.  I think a simple U shaped brace that attaches to the brake/fender bolt that then attached to the front underside corners of the basket would make it far more stable.  I'll have to try it sometime.  For now I'm having fun leaving the bike at home and snagging a Bcycle as needed.  There is a station three blocks from my house and one from my office.  Pretty darn convenient.  On days I need to grab the bus at the end of the day I ride a Bcycle to work and then don't have to worry about space on the bus rack!  Nice.  Join up and enjoy the bikes!  Boulder B-Cycle

Poor Cyclist's Porteur

I've wanted to get a porteur rack for my daily commuter for some time now.  Yikes are they expensive.  Some for good reason (e.g. Pass and Stow) and some for unknown reasons (e.g. Velo Orange).  Either way they are out of my price range unless I happen to make a good sale of some used bike parts I have hanging around that are hovering between vintage and old.  Yea, not likely.  So, enter Wald baskets.  I found a good deal on a Wald 139 and figured I'd give it a go.  For under $20 I have a porteured cross check.  I axed the rear rack for vanity reasons of which I'm remiss to even mention.  The end result has been a pleasingly functional commuter that isn't half as wobbly as I thought it might be.  I put my normal daily pack in it this morning and I think it's a pretty decent solution.  I carry a nylon shopping bag with me and now I can shoulder the pack and deposit groceries in the basket on the way home.  It's kind of like having panniers with you all the time without having panniers with you.

I've no love of panniers really.  Functionally speaking they are a simple way to carry a bunch of weight (more than this basket could) but I'm forever wishing I had my backpack when I have my panniers and the reverse when I have my pack and extra to carry.  Time will tell how functional this basket is but the price is right.  In the end I'd love to have a nice stable front rack.  I notice the wire nature of the basket mostly when starting and stopping.  Normal cornering and riding I almost don't know it's there.  Track stands and hard sprints aren't going to please you when fully laden though.

Motivation

It's easy to drive the car.  I've always known that.  I've just recently come to realize that.  You see, when I was in high school back in the dark ages I was the last of my circle of friends to be eligible for a driver's license.  I put that one off for a while.  I didn't want to drive really.  It's not that I had anything against it but I had this great bike at the time.  At age 14 I started working weekends at a neighbor's veterinary clinic cleaning out the dog kennels before the place opened up.  I can't say it was the nicest first job but you got used to the smell after a few days.  It was a simple job.  You moved all the dogs into one side and hosed/scrubbed/squeegeed it down and then did the other side.  I started it with my sister and then the next summer I did it by myself.  I saved up enough money to buy my first bike on my own.  It was this bike that I rode to high school and had every intention of riding thru my three years there.  My parents had a different idea.  They (my Mom really) were tired of driving me around and they knew that I'd need to drive some time so thus my lessons started.  It was the death of my riding as transportation for a while.  I got my license and then saved up for my first truck and the rest as they say is history.

I had a similar moment this morning.  The wind was rising all evening and I had run outside to get the laundry off the line after dark lest it blow away over night.  By morning it was windy enough that my daughter took one look at the swings in the tree hanging at 45 degree angles to the ground and said "it doesn't look like a day for the bikes".  I have no idea why but I quickly agreed and put my bike on top of the car.  I feel kind of silly now.  It's windy.  There's no doubt about that but I feel like I missed an opportunity to teach and for the kids to learn.  I fee like it would have been a good thing to ride and see that it was OK if a bit wobbly at times.  It would have been a good confidence booster.  For me, not them :)

I guess I got to learn another lesson today....again.  Staying motivated to leave the car at home is at times difficult.

Happy Spring

Happy almost spring!  We're back on the bike to school today.  After such a nice entry into March we had a cold snap like is oft to happen in March in Colorado.  Beautiful weather in my opinion but too cold for the kids to be on the bike.

In Like a Lamb

March's lion has yet to rear it's head this beautiful sunny March 1st.  I'll look to the end of the month for it's golden mane in the form of a spring break snow storm.  We haven't had one in a while and I believe we're due.

We rode to school today!  All of us!  March 1st seemed like a good day to leave the car parked in the driveway.  It was a bit cold but it was warming up fast.  No hats under the helmets (in retrospect I could have used a head band but my daughter didn't comment on being cold so it all worked out :).  It all went quite well really.  Even considering I haven't had the big train (AKA: bike, tag-a-log, trailer) out since the fall.  We even made it to school on time, had time to play together and for me to get to the office by 9!  Not too bad.  Oh, and I had a big smile on my face too.  Fringe benefit!

On thing of note is that I made the "permanent" switch on the trailer for my son to ride in the center.  The two of them in the trailer together just doesn't work anymore.  He's 2 and she's 4 1/2.  It is too narrow and my daughter is too tall.  They are both normal to slighter sized kids.  We wouldn't have made it this far if they were big kids.  Something to think about if you are in the process of gearing up for family style bike transport.  It's a tough world really.  The best solution in my opinion is a bakfeits style box bike.  Second on the list would be an xtracycle.  If you just have one child and they are at least 3 or so then the xtracycle is actually a fantastic and affordable solution.  They get to sit on the back and there is plenty of room for cargo.  Having two kids really pushes you to a box style cargo bike.  I'm a big fan of CETMA cargo bikes and some day I hope to have one.  They are really a cargo solution for families and non-families.  Box bikes haul pretty much anything under 300 lbs or so.  The nice thing about a box bike is you can still put a tag-a-long bike on the back.  You can't do that with an xtracycle.  heck, you can put the trailer on the back of a box bike but I can't for the life of me think why.  If I ever get a box bike the first thing I'll do is sell the trailer and the xtracycle!  Won't need either of them again!

Anyway, happy March 1! 

Making it through the winter

Just before the snow melted off the paths

This winter has been a challenge for me in terms of living car lite.  I haven't been able to ride the kids to school as often as I want.  Last winter it was just my daughter that I took and her school at the time was on the way home from work for my wife so it was easy for her to grab the bus if it was snowy.  I was free to either bring my daughter in the trailer or not depending on my whim.  True, I was stuck with the trailer for the rest of the day but that's a small price to pay really.

I've kind of struggled with how to reduce my car use ever since the cold and snow came.  I was convinced this fall that selling our second vehicle and buying a Bakfeits was not only the smartest thing to do but the only sensible solution to family bike travel.  Now I'm not so sure.  Would I be riding the kids to school more if we had one?  No.  Would we ride more in the summer?  Probably.  Kind of a hard sell for $3k in bike.  Is this all about bikes or is it about riding?  Hard for me to tease those two apart sometimes.  Is it so bad to use the car to get the kids to school and ride from there?  Not really.  Is it possible to live without a car?  Of course.  Will we ever do it?  Probably not anytime soon.

We lived one summer car free.  It wasn't intentional.  My wife had gone back to school in preparation for a graduate program and we sold our "good" car because it wasn't paid for.  The other one was.  Unfortunately the other one dies a week or so after the sale.  I bought a used bike trailer on the cheap and we used it to lug our laundry and groceries back and forth.  We borrowed a car to go camping for a week and that was that.  When fall came and graduate school started we found a cheap corolla and things worked out fine.  I don't know that we would have done things that way if we had had kids at the time.  It was summer which made it easier.  So, driving the kids to school isn't such a bad thing I guess.  In my heart of hearts I'd love to figure out a way to make living car free work but as a collaborative unit (i.e. a family of 4) my vote is only 25% of the equation. When it's -15 I'm grateful for the car to take the kids to school.  When the winds gust 75mph, ditto.  When it's 70 and sunny on a spring day with the trees a budding and the tulips shining in dewy brilliance I'm happy we live on the bike when we can. Winter is a big part of our climate here but the truly un-bike-commutable days are few compared to the whole

In the end I'm grateful for every minute I get on the bike.  On the bike life's dramas play themselves out.  There is struggle and elation. Moments where the tears in your eyes aren't just from the wind.  Times when the moment stretches into eternity and you hold on to that feeling and bring it out and dust it off for motivation  when times off the bike get hard.  Flashes of brilliance occur within the steady beat of the pedals.  Flashes that pass on once the bike is parked but you know they happened and that sustains me.

Hesitation

Whew.  It's been a bit since the last bit of writing.  Been busy on vacation and then getting back to life after vacation.  We spent the better part of the first month of the year in Australia.  First time I've been there.  Wonderful country.  Hope to go back some day.  So many places to visit!  Anyway, that's not what this post is about.

This morning dawned snowing and cold (5 degrees cold).  Beautiful day really.   Thick snow coming down in torrents.  Cold squeaky snow under foot.  Had to clear 3 inches off the bike rack to get the bike on the car.  Great day for a ride.  In a younger life I wouldn't have thought twice about leaving the bike at home on a day like this because I'd have been going skiing.  It's what I should have done.  Dropped the kids at school.  Gone to the local area and skied until I was numb with cold and my legs were jelly.  Damn, now why didn't I think about that this morning?  Instead I was pondering (hesitating) the bike. 

Normally I wouldn't have given it a second thought.  Heck yea, I'm riding.  There is a certain challenge in slogging through 3 or 4 inches of powder on the roads.  If you can stay out of where the cars have driven it's a breeze.  If the cars have packed it out nicely it's nice.  Once the plows and their magnesium chloride get to it all bets are off.  Salty sludge isn't the best riding material!  But I digress.....I was hesitating because I was feeling a bit punky and thinking the family cold was coming my way.  I was looking at the thermometer and the snow and thinking it would be nice for my wife if I parked the car at my office instead of at school.  Both weak excuses to not get on the bike.  In the end I rode.  It was great.  It was hard.  It was sketchy.  My helmet gave it up when I mashed it over my hat.  Guess that plastic has seen too many sub-freezing mornings.  I'm glad I rode.  It's hard when I hesitate.  It's pretty easy to come up with reasons not to ride.  Today was no exception.  To make things more complicated I would have been riding to a friend's house after work for dinner and meeting everybody there.  Instead I'll be driving.  My wife's bus never came.  In fact three of them never came.  She was left in the lurch with 5 minutes to pick the kids up from school.  I bolted out the door and rode there as quickly as one can in slushy/snow packed/wheel rutted roads.  Wasn't too bad and in the end it was pretty fun riding up there.  I dropped the kids at the house (yes, my wife made it home finally) and drove to the office to clean things up and then it'll be time to go pick everyone up for dinner.  A fine day indeed.  Tomorrow will be even better.  24 and sunny is the guess.  Should make for some nice riding!