Tag Archives: st. louis

Savvy [Tri]cyclist

Posted on April 16, 2013 | 4 Comments

I spent most of Saturday afternoon on my bike with a fellow CyclingSavvy instructor, ground-truthing the route for the Tour of St. Louis that I will be co-leading as part of our May workshop (details and registration here — please join us for a course that will change the way you think about riding on the roads!).*

Given the gorgeous weather, and the fact that I had the entire day to myself since Gabriel was at the garden, I thought nothing of biking to and from our meeting place (Kaldi’s Coffee on DeMun).  Well, I thought nothing of it until after we rode the route for the road tour of mid-county, by which point I had covered the six miles to our meeting point and the ten miles of the tour.

My body said, “We’re finished now, right?”

Um, not so much, given that I was six miles from home.  I went into autopilot at that point, choosing the most straightforward route and slowly pounding it out, bit by bit.

Unfortunately, I was too tired and zoned to stop and chat with the couple heading the other direction on their bikes, riding on the sidewalk and looking thoroughly distressed about the fact that the sidewalk was ending and they were about to have to ride on the road (the very low traffic four-lane road where they could operate their bicycles peacefully and happily in a lane all their own, in reality much safer than their previous location).

Apparently, my regular weight lifting, intermittent mile or two treadmill runs, and casual bike jaunts with Sir did not prepare me for a 22-miler.  I arrived home a thoroughly pooped pup.

No rest for the wicked, though, as I immediately jumped into dinner preparations (stewed tomatoes), knowing that a [garden-tired] Matthew and Sir would be arriving soon.

Turns out I was not the only one who spent a large portion of the day spinning my wheels . . . .IMG_1716

When I wrote last, I’d completely forgotten that my MIL found a tricycle at a thrift shop when she was in Florida in December.  Talk about a pimped ride: metallic pink with chrome fenders and black streamers, plus not one, but TWO bells.  Someone’s riding in style!  (Someone also received his birthday present several months early.)

*Whatever your cycling experience, this course has something for you, as summed up so well in the course announcement email:

Beginner cyclists will learn why sidewalk cycling increases risk, what Missouri & Illinois laws say about bicycles and cyclists, how to signal and communicate with motorists, practice critical bike handling skills, and proven techniques valuable for a lifetime of cycling.

Intermediate cyclists will discover the importance of intersection integration, how to best handle multi- and single-lane roads, strategies for inclement weather, taking advantage of traffic flow, emergency maneuvers, and much more.

Advanced cyclists will fill the gaps in their own understanding of how traffic works, learn how to better manage traffic on single-lane roads, discover how lane positioning actually helps motorists, and many concepts that are difficult to master through self-learning. “I wish I had taken it sooner,” say many of our advanced participants.

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Posted in Biking, Cuteness

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Truth and Techniques of Traffic Cycling

Posted on February 14, 2013 | 1 Comment

In the “better late than never” category, just a quick note for all St. Louis readers that I am co-leading Truth and Techniques of Traffic Cycling, the classroom portion of the CyclingSavvy class series, this Saturday, February 16th.

The course (a $30 value) is FREE thanks to a grant from Great Rivers Greenway, and we have a few more seats to fill.  Registration is required; click here to register now.

If you can’t make it this Saturday, mark you calendar now for the class on Saturday, March 9th.

Whether you’re an expert cyclist who would like to feel a bit more confidant riding in traffic or a newbie just testing out your wheels, CyclingSavvy has something for you.  Don’t miss these great opportunities to expand your bicycling horizons!

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Posted in Biking

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Another year, another festival

Posted on August 29, 2012 | 1 Comment

With the exception of my first summer in St. Louis (when I wasn’t in the know), I’ve been to the Festival of Nations every year.  In 2010, I wrote about the efforts to “green” the festival.

Last year, we deemed it important enough to attend with a seven-week-old.

I can hardly believe he was ever that small — he looks SO different now!  I don’t remember much of last years event, other than the  fact that using the festival “shuttles,” which were school buses, was rather tricky with a big ol’ stroller.  Biking would have been much easier, but we weren’t biking with him at that point.

Our plan this year was to leave immediately from the festival to head to the garden for the rest of the day, so we drove the car, which is probably the first (and hopefully the last) time I used that form of transportation to get there.

In the background are the Nigerian and Iranian food booths, a couple of our favorites from past years, conveniently right next to each other.  Unfortunately, the Iranian booth did not have baklava this year, but the Nigerian booth had our favorites, African honey beans and honeyed yams.

We also tried a couple of new items from the Thai booth: a curry mushroom puff and sweet, sticky rice roasted in bamboo.

We enjoyed sharing the delicious, unique flavors with Gabriel, who was quite happy to dig in to the spread.  It’s crazy how much a year (or two) can change things — from no baby, to a tiny baby, to a curious, active almost-toddler.

We compromised and used their paper plates with our utensils.

After eating, we wrapped up our trip with a visit to the main stage, and Gabriel made friends with the man sitting next to us and jammed out on his “drum.”

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Posted in Food, My Life

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The housing hunt comes to an end — Part 2

Posted on June 1, 2012 | 3 Comments

And now, for the rest of the story . . .

The first part of this saga ended with finding a good apartment prospect.  After not so much deliberation, I wanted to submit the rental application, along with a deposit to hold the place while they processed our application, and be done with this agonizingly long and drawn out apartment/house hunt.

Matthew felt we’d put the time and energy into looking at houses for sale and wanted to make an offer on a FSBO house we’d looked at a couple of times.  I wasn’t excited about the place, but I agreed to make a low offer.

So last Friday morning, I biked over to drop off our rental application and earnest money and Matthew made some phone calls that ended with making a verbal offer on the house.  Because why have just one place to live when you could have a house AND an apartment?

Anyway, the FSBO was an estate house, and since our offer was lower than their asking price, they had to take it to probate.

Having done all we could, we headed out to a local winery for a relaxing stressful afternoon.  In the middle of our wine tasting, the trustee of the estate called back and engaged Matthew in an exceedingly long conversation, the bottom line of which was, he would take our offer before the probate judge but would not argue for it, but if we increased our offer by $5k (still $15k below their asking price), he would argue for it.

Hot, tired, annoyed that Matthew was spending most of our winery trip on the phone, and frustrated with (and physically uncomfortable because of) a fussy, refusing-to-nurse baby, I had no desire to enter into negotiations or increase our offer on a house that I wasn’t all that excited about.  So we said they could take or leave our initial offer, and they later called back to say, “no deal.”

With our new lease start-date still a few weeks away, we went ahead and pulled out the boxes and packing tape over the weekend, making an impressive amount of progress in little spurts here and there.  We started to discuss how we would arrange things in the new apartment.

And then on Tuesday afternoon, the FSBO guy calls Matthew and says they’ve reversed course and will take our offer, if we’re still offering.  For some reason, I’d kind-of expected this and was not terribly surprised.

After a bit of discussion that evening, we ultimately decided that this was not the house for us, even at our original offer price, and Matthew informed the owners of our final decision.

So.  Packing continues and we’ve scheduled movers.  In a few weeks, our almost-year-long experiment in living as a family of three in a one-bedroom apartment will come to an end, and I am ready!

Related posts:
T minus two months
Moving day
Two’s company
We ain’t goin’ nowhere
Am I asking too much?

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Posted in My Life

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The housing hunt comes to an end

Posted on May 31, 2012 | 1 Comment

I had the opportunity to write a “green living in St. Louis” guest post for Stacy at Every Little Thing this week.  Check it out here.  Now, on to the housing saga!

Last Wednesday, Matthew and I took some time off work in the afternoon to see another round of houses.  We only had a few on the schedule, so we tacked a recently listed apartment on to the itinerary as well.

Back in April, after over twelve months of apartment hunting, we decided to be a little crazy and throw the option of buying a house back into the mix.  We located a house and made a [very low] offer within a couple of weeks.  Despite offering $40k less than the asking price, we had decent reason to believe that they may accept the offer or counter with something closer to what we were willing to pay.

The house, which was part of an estate and had nothing owed on it, had been on the market for over 250 days this round, and vacant (and probably previously listed) for much longer than that.  While vacant, the pipes burst, and repairing that and the resulting water damage resulted in a $50k insurance claim.  You’d think this would be good reason for the estate’s trustee to consider any that came along.

We sure did, and we were wrong.  The guy didn’t even bother to counter (and apparently he was so “disgusted and depressed” by our offer that he pulled it off the market — at peak home-buying season, no less!).

Within a day or two of having our offer rejected, we spotted a realty sign on an intriguing property — a big, sunny fenced lot with two tiny houses on one edge.  I pass by it regularly and always wonder to which of the two houses the yard belongs.

A bit of research revealed that the property was a foreclosure and included the lot and both houses (each about 500 square feet — like I said, tiny).  We were immediately off and running with ideas of buying it on the cheap and doing a major renovation (which I alluded to here), combining the two tiny houses to make one nice space plus an awesome yard for gardening.  Matthew even drew up some designs.

And then we faced the reality of how much it would cost, both in dollars and in our energy making decisions and dealing with bumps along the way, and the fact that we would probably not be able to get anywhere near what we put into it back out of it if/when the time came to sell.  We decided, sadly, but probably wisely, to walk away.

A few weeks passed, with more houses, a couple more apartments, and nothing that really excited us.  One of the houses that we viewed didn’t have the double lot included as we’d hoped.  Another was somewhat interesting, but seemed overpriced, and while we were considering if and what to offer, it went under contract.

So on Wednesday afternoon, when we saw the apartment that had almost everything we were looking for, I was more than ready to be finished.

To be continued . . .

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Posted in My Life

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