Biking – Page 13 – Her Green Life

She’s heeeeeeeere!

After over a year of planning and research (I clearly need to go back and add the Edgerunner to that comparison chart!), and many months of waiting, we have our new bike!

We picked her up from the bike shop last night (shout out to the guys and gals at The Hub, especially Greg, who helped us price, order, and build our bike — there are a number of local bike shop (LBS) options in St. Louis, but we’re partial to these guys, for their knowledgeable staff and great customer service!).

My first thought upon seeing the bike was that none of the online images accurately captured the frame color. Based on what I’d seen, I expected a bright light blue. My best description of the real-life color? Aquamarine.*

My second thought was, “Those are some big-a** tires (and fenders)!”

We’d driven our car, complete with trunk bike rack, to The Hub, and we briefly considered trying to wrangle the thing onto the rack. I decided that we’d waste so much time in the [perhaps impossible] attempt, that it’d be better to cut our losses and ride it home.

But first, food! After Matthew and I each took the bike for a quick spin, sans passenger, to make sure there weren’t any glaring issues for the bicycle mechanics to address, we loaded Sir in his new ride for the three block trip to Dewey’s Pizza.

Post pizza, I geared up for the four mile ride home, while Matthew helped Gabriel into the car. We already had Matthew’s bike on the rack, since I had picked him up from work to go to the bike shop, and he commented, “If not for this darn car, we could all bike home together.” Indeed!

I was quite happy with how the bike handled on the way home. The 11-gear internal hub seemed to have plenty of range, and for a big bike, she’s pretty zippy. Matthew only beat me home by seven minutes!

While I was the first one to get to ride the bike any distance, Matthew had the honor of the first “real” trip with Sir on board.

This is Sir’s second week at preschool, and he went in style this morning! He’s very excited about our “new blue bike.” There was a slight delay in departure, as we fussed with the seat and bag combination (more on that in a later post, but using the Yepp seat with full-sized longtail cargo bags is a bit tricky), but soon enough they were ready to roll!

We still need to add light mounts, and we’re planning to swap the old-school pedals with clips for SPD pedals that have a regular platform on one side. I’ll write another post with full specs/build details for any of you gear-heads (specs/build post here).

All-in-all, I think we made a good purchase and are going to be very happy with this bike (and wishing we had one for each of us!). While I’ll miss having Sir in front of me, I know we’ll have a lot of great adventures on our new ride (name still TBD).

*Neither of these pictures accurately captures the color of the bike, either, at least not the way the photos display on my computer.

On the bike: Trying a new route

It’s always good to mix things up a little, and there’s rarely only one way to get from Point A to Point B. My plan for last Saturday involved joining Matthew and Gabriel at the garden during the morning hours, then biking home after lunch.

As I’ve mentioned before, trips to my in-laws’ in the suburbs are probably the primary use for our car. My MIL’s (where we garden), is about 11 miles away, which translates to about 25 minutes by car vs. an hour (or more) by bike. We’ve biked there a few times, but the time differential (between car and bicycle) makes it pretty impractical, a lot of the time.

Our previous bike route involved mostly small streets, and a couple of big hills. I was curious about an alternate route using larger arterial streets, for a more direct and faster ride (fewer stop signs). Lo and behold, my planning led me to . . .

. . . a bike trail! And not just any bike trail, but Grant’s trail, probably St. Louis’ most well-known multi-use trail.

In my nine (!) years of cycling in St. Louis, I had never set foot (or bicycle wheel) on Grant’s Trail until Saturday. With it’s mostly south-county location, and my biking for transportation, rather than recreation, it’s never been particularly useful to me (ditto for other local-ish bike trails), but there it was, offering a nice option for connecting my route home from the garden.

Here’s a snapshot of Saturday’s route. Connecting to Grant’s Trail was easy. I rode on Big Bend (arterial) for a relatively short stretch to connect to the trail, just after mile marker 3 on the map. I was on the trail for about a mile (between Big Bend and Watson Road), and I must say, it was rather lovely. I’ve heard other cyclists complain that the trail is packed to the point of being difficult to ride on weekends, but that was not the case, even on a lovely Saturday afternoon at the end of April.

Then came Watson Road, a major suburban arterial. In general, I use arterials for short distances (1/2 mile or less?) to connect other parts of my routes. But, thanks to the lack of street grids that is the suburbs, my route on Saturday involved 3.5 miles on Watson.

It was fast, compared to smaller streets. I rode in the middle of the right lane, where I was nice and visible, the whole way. The relatively narrow lanes made it easy to control my space, and motorists had the entire left lane in which to pass. Traffic was rather heavy, but, in general, followed the expected pattern, with a big platoon, followed by just me on an almost empty road.

It was on the almost empty road sections that I observed the strangest motorist behavior. Multiple times, a motorist approached in the right lane, and, with no other cars with us on that stretch, had all the time and space in the world to move into the left lane and pass me without ever taking his/her foot off of the gas pedal.

Instead, many got relatively close and slowed down before finally changing lanes. I’m not sure what these motorists were thinking. It felt like they thought maybe, if they didn’t react to my presence I would just, I don’t know, vaporize? Suddenly swerve onto the narrow (or nonexistent) shoulder so they could pass without changing lanes? I really wonder what was going through their heads.

None of these puzzling passers displayed any incivility, and they all made full lane changes and passed safely in the end, but it was odd. After a few such instances, I started proactively waving overtaking motorists into the left lane before they had to slow down to make the lane change.

The only instance of incivility I had in those 3.5 miles (or in the entire 10.6 miles, for that matter), was a honker (AKA “barking dog”) who wanted to beat me to a red light. His prize? Getting to sit at the red light longer!

I was hoping to make the trip in under an hour. Of course, I forgot to look at the clock at either the very beginning or very end of my ride, but I think I made it in 45-50 minutes.

When I got home, I did some mapping, and was surprised to see that my more “direct” route was actually a tenth of a mile longer (10.6 miles vs. 10.5 miles) than my previous, lower-key streets route. Also, both of the bike routes are shorter, distance-wise, than our driving route, which is 11.2 miles. On the other hand, Google map’s suggested “bike” route, which winds through some of those horribly convoluted small streets in the ‘burbs, was 12.2 miles, over a mile-and-a-half longer than either of my bike routes!

All-in-all, it was a good ride. I pushed myself fairly hard, given my current conditioning level, and the fact that it was rather warm. I would certainly not always choose the route with 3.5 continuous arterial miles (especially since the other route is equidistant (if slower)), but it was fun to challenge myself and try something new.

Spring cleaning for cash

As of Saturday afternoon, we have a bicycle trailer-size space in our garage. After about six weeks on Craigslist (felt like longer!), with me questioning all along rather I really wanted to sell it, Sir’s Chariot found a new home.

Given that we’ve probably used the trailer to transport Gabriel all of ten times in the two-and-a-half years we’ve owned it, letting it go was certainly the logical thing to do. But of course there was that little voice saying, “What if you need it?” Once you have something, it’s much easier to default to keeping it, just in case.

That, and the fact that the trailer was a really exciting purchase — a great product for a great price (we got a very good condition, high end trailer for about 1/3 retail value) — and the culmination of months of searching CL, for the item that would allow me to use my preferred form of transportation, with an infant (at the time, I did not know about the wonder of front-mount infant seats).

Ironically, as hard as it was to find a used Chariot (now Thule Chariot) trailer in the fall of 2011, by the time I decided to put the trailer on CL this spring, they were everywhere. It both made me despair of ever selling ours, and feel a bit better about the decision to sell, knowing that if, for some reason, we decided we really wanted a child trailer again, we might have an easier time finding one.

The sale/cleaning also included the Yepp Maxi standard rear seat that I bought in error (we needed the Yepp Maxi Easyfit for the Edgerunner). We debated keeping the standard seat as well, as a back-up child transport option, but instead we have a plan in the works to retrofit one of our existing bikes to work with the Easyfit seat (more on that later).

I’m also planning on making a rain/weather cover for the Yepp seat (having something to keep Sir dry was one of the main arguments in favor of keeping the trailer).

On a side note, the CL sale was cash (the only thing I’ll accept as a CL seller). After selling Matthew’s bike in July, I commented that I wanted one of those counterfeit-bill detector markers for future big-ticket sales. I didn’t get around to getting one, of course, and then the trailer buyer prefaces handing me five hundred-dollar bills by asking, “Have you seen the ones that look like this before?”

Of course, since I don’t walk around carrying c-notes, I had, in fact, not seen the “new” hundreds (actually dated 2009), and I was more than a bit wary. I’m pretty sure they’re legit, but I wrote down the guy’s license plate number, just in case (he seemed like a nice guy, but you never know).

In the end, the hardest part was negotiating a price with the buyer (done by email and text before we ever met), when all along I had the little voice questioning the decision to sell in the first place. Twenty-four hours post-sale, I’m feeling rather good about the decision, which is a good sign. No seller’s remorse, so far.

Given the recent [temporary] addition of the refrigerator, garage space is still going to be tight when we bring the Edgerunner home this week (!), but having the trailer gone will certainly help!

Sir goes to school

Sir’s normal caregiver is on vacation for two weeks, so he is a guest student at “Baba’s school,” i.e., the Montessori preschool where my MIL teaches, this week and next. He will be an official student there starting this fall, so this serves as a trial run for all of us.

I, of course, had a basketful of worries heading into these two not-our-usual-routine weeks: would he nap at school; should I pack his lunch or let him eat the school lunch; would getting him to/from school impact my work time; et cetera; et cetera.

As of Day 1, my worries were mostly unfounded. I decided it would be easier to pack his lunch the first day, and make a different decision about later days, if desired, than letting him eat the school lunch and then expecting him to go back to eating what I packed. He ate fairly well (for whatever reason, lunch is often his lightest meal of the day).

Sir is used to napping on a cot, and having nap time with other kids, but not as many kids as are at the preschool. Despite my worries, this part of the day went fine, too.

As for transportation, we’re trying a variety of modes and transporters this week.

Monday: Baba picks up in the morning on her way to school.
Tuesday: Matthew takes Sir to school by bike, using the trailer.
Wednesday: I take Sir to school on “our” bike (i.e., BUB + IBert).

On all days, at least this first week, my MIL is hanging out with Sir for a couple of hours after nap time, outside of school (her workday usually ends around 1pm, when the kids go down for their naps), and dropping him off at home in time for dinner.

The Tuesday morning trailer trip was a bit interesting, due to a known problem with the rear drop-out on Matthew’s newer bike, where it just doesn’t hold the axle well. The result is that sometimes, especially under load, the rear wheel shifts out of place. If not immediately caught and corrected, this is a very dangerous situation (i.e., his rear wheel could come off, causing a crash).

[Bike tech note: The bike has semi-horizontal dropouts, which are useful for fixed gear conversions and allowing adjustable wheel bases, but don’t work well with the newer external cam quick releases. The older standard internal cam quick releases work better, particularly ones that are either steel, or have steel “teeth”. ]

The issue was made better by swapping to a different axle a couple of months ago, but he’d never ridden this bike with the trailer-specific axle before, and pulling trailer plus Sir definitely equals a heavy load. It did not go well — over the course of the 4-mile trip, he had to stop five times to adjust the rear axle/wheel. But they made it there safely.

Sir enjoyed pointing out construction equipment and trucks along the way, and Matthew enjoyed dropping The Dude off at Baba’s school. The other kids definitely seemed to think Sir arrived in style (he was in a Chariot, after all).

We’ve planned these two weeks for over a month now, and I was really hoping that we would get to trial our new bike for the school run. We don’t have it yet, but there’s a chance that we WILL have it for next Tuesday or Wednesday! (The frame and parts shipped late last week, and our LBS told us 4/28 or 4/29 as an estimated completion date.) I don’t know how the Edgerunner will compare to riding with the IBert, but it should be much easier than pulling a trailer! We are ready!

Shopping at Aldi

I’ve been meaning to write this post since the mid-January thaw, when I ventured to my local Aldi grocery store for the first time ever.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m no stranger to Aldi. Growing up, my family did a decent bit of our grocery shopping there, and, as a college student and a grad student, I appreciated the affordable prices.

I probably shopped Aldi most frequently my first year out of grad school, when I lived within half a mile of a store. When I was in grad school, I lived closer to Soulard Farmers’ Market, so that was my go-to source for produce (though often not locally grown). When you’re going by bike or on foot, it’s all about proximity!

Anyhow, my biggest issue with Aldi was and is the packaging on the produce, which this site mentions as one of their cost saving strategies. In addition to saving cashiers’ time weighing bulk produce, I imagine prepackaging produce also cuts down on product loss — instead of being able to pick through for the best pepper, or the best apples, you take what you get, the good with the not-so-good. But it’s a lot of packaging, especially the items (like peppers) that are placed on polystyrene trays and then wrapped in plastic. Ugh!

On the other hand, Aldi was one of the first stores to encourage bringing your own bags (again, as a cost-saving measure), long before it was en vogue or “green,” and some of their other cost-saving measures are also good for the planet, so it’s a bit of a conundrum.

Anyway, my January trip was spurred by citrus season, and my memory of Aldi carrying fairly nice oranges and grapefruit for a very good price. Also, we have not bothered to unsubscribe from the weekly mailer that includes the Aldi flyer, and I had seen that they were starting to carry some organic items, including apples and bananas, and I wanted to check it out.

They did indeed have good prices on citrus, particularly the three for a dollar grapefruit. On that trip, I came home with three grapefruit (not prepackaged!), a bag of oranges, a bottle of wine, two 1/2 pound blocks of cheese, and a bag of walnuts (a pound for less than $8, vs. the $10+/lb I usually pay at the bulk bins).

My haul did not include any of their “new” organic offerings, though I did scope them out, along with a few other items:

Organic soymilk — good price, but sweetened, which is unnecessary sugar, in my book
Almond milk (non-organic) also sweetened
Organic bananas 59 cents/lb, but were all green, so I skipped them
Organic toasted O’s, but only a 9oz. box
Walnuts — a good price, as I mentioned above; not organic, but, for better or worse, I don’t usually buy organic walnuts anyway

Finally, the cheese. I prefer to keep dairy consumption pretty minimal, and, as much as possible, organic [practices]. Avoiding dairy completing is tricky (and for us, unnecessary) and it does taste good. But organic and/or small-farm dairy, and especially cheese, is pretty pricey. Enter the “frugal foodie” debate. On this trip, I went ahead and bought a half-pound each of two cheeses (less than $2 each), knowing they were not up to my preferred standards for dairy.

I find it ironic that many of the Aldi dairy (and perhaps meat?) products are packaged in their “Happy Farms” label, since I imagine the animals have far less than happy living conditions. But, to be fair, the dairy and meat products at Aldi are, in general, no worse ethically/environmentally/health-wise than similar, name-brand products at other stores.

Enough on the food, though. What finally spurred me to write this post was the current week’s flyer, which features none-other than BIKE accessories in the “Special Buys” section.

While many of these items are not likely high-quality, if you’re trying to get set up for biking, and you’re on a tight budget, it would be better to have these lights, than, say no lights (but please don’t skimp on a good quality bicycle!).

I’m particularly interested in the helmets, as my current noggin-protector celebrated it’s 5th birthday a couple of months ago (general recommendations are to replace helmets every five years (or after an impact)). With bicycle helmets, more money does not equal more protection. As long as a helmet has the Consumer Products Safety Commission (CPSC) stamp of approval and fits correctly, it is good to go!

I do have a few other features I want in a helmet, so I’ll head over tomorrow (Special Buys don’t start until Wednesday) to see if my store actually stocks something that will fit the bill.

Do you shop at Aldi? Why or why not?

*Neither of these pictures accurately captures the color of the bike, either, at least not the way the photos display on my computer.

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