Category Archives: Biking

Friday facts

First up, if you haven’t already, check out Her Green Life’s snazzy new Facebook page.  I’ve resisted creating one for awhile, but I decided to give it a trial run, as another way for you to stay up-to-date on posts here.  Simply “Like” the page to stay in the loop!

Employment, or lack thereof
I’ve now been unemployed for over nine months.  Unlike the results of nine months of pregnancy, nothing special happens after nine months of being unemployed.  However, if we did have a fourth family member, we would qualify for food stamps on our one-job income.  Interesting, no?  (But definitely NOT incentive to have another child!)

That said, I have a job interview on Monday — fingers crossed!

Sir’s summer
Regardless of what happens with the interview, Sir will resume part-time child care starting sometime in June.  It’s something I’ve been pondering for awhile.  It should be good for his social development and my sanity.  The hardest part for me is giving up control of nap time, meals, etc.

Prior to that, Sir will travel with Baba (grandma) to Florida.  It’s bittersweet because I’ll miss his first time in the ocean, but it means I’ll have over a week child-free!  Look for some long-overdue posts that I’ve been meaning to write.

In the garden
The cooler, rainy spring means slow growth for most everything.  Our pea plants (snow and sugar snap) are quite stunted, and, in general, most everything (other than the weeds) is behind given the cooler, rainy spring.

However, after a crazy weeknight gardening blitz, we have seventy, yes, 7-0, tomato plants in the ground.  Grow, babies, grow!

Two-wheeled report
And, last, but certainly not least, sometime in the next few weeks, I’ll be embarking on an exciting bike-related project, as well as a new phase in my bike-commuting journey.  Stay tuned!

Weekend by bike

I spent Friday night and Saturday co-teaching CyclingSavvy.  Given the wet forecast, Saturday’s on-bike sessions seemed touch-and-go for awhile, but in the end we had a [mostly] dry, if chilly, day.

By chilly, I mean I was wearing three layers on bottom and four on top and fighting not to shiver constantly (in retrospect, they were rather light layers).

Having learned from our test ride how exhausting biking to the class location, riding the route, and then biking home could be, I planned a multimodal trip, hopping on Metro (with my bike on the bus’s rack) to start the day, shaving three miles off my total.

Despite a bit of ambivalence about heading out on a chilly damp Saturday (I was already planning a day of hibernating and baking if we canceled class), once we got going, I couldn’t have been happier.  We had a great class, and both the parking lot session and the road tour went very well.

Demonstrating the danger of a door zone bike lane
Demonstrating the danger of a door zone bike lane

I planned to use the same bike-bus strategy on my way home, and I arrived at the bus stop, at what I thought was almost exactly the time the bus would arrive, so looking forward to loading my bike on the bus and sitting down for ten minutes.

As I biked the last couple of blocks to the bus stop, I realized I was warm for the first time all day.  As in, too warm.  After I arrived at the bus stop and ascertained that the bus’s arrival was not imminent, I set out to remove some layers.

Unfortunately, my sexy striptease as I removed my rain pants to reveal my cycling tights was hampered by the fact that I had not first removed my ankle bands.  Striptease fail.

For better or worse, I soon realized that I’d looked at the time incorrectly, and I’d be waiting awhile for that comfy bus seat.  As much as I was ready to collapse, the idea of actually being underway and [maybe] getting home sooner than I would if I waited for the bus won.

I hopped back on the bike for the final three miles.  I arrived feeling mentally invigorated, but physically exhausted, like my [then] upcoming birthday that ends in a zero was 9-0 or perhaps even 1-0-0.

My do-nothing plans for Sunday were somewhat foiled due to a lack of milk and sugar.  After hearing Matthew debate making the less-than-a-mile-away grocery run by car, I sucked it up, put on my rain gear, and biked to the store.

Fortunately, the rest of the day was lower key, and did, indeed, involve baking, and eating the delicious results — zucchini bread and chocolate heaven cake with dreamsicle butter cream frosting.

Bike lunch date and play date

While I kicked off Bike Month yesterday with a distinct lack of biking (and a car trip at that!), I finished April with three consecutive days on the bike.

Sunday morning I biked to church with Sir for the first time.  The usual timing of services there has not been conducive to biking with him, or really to bringing him at all, but for last Sunday’s ministry fair, they rolled the 8am and 10am services together into a single 9am service — perfect timing for biking there, socializing afterward, and biking back without danger of Sir turning into a pumpkin.

Monday I rode across town to meet Matthew for Gokul’s lunch buffet.  I biked there directly from a dentist appointment, and by “directly,” I mean I was feeling too lazy to backtrack to the route I usually would have taken into Forest Park or to put in the mental energy to figure out another alternative to riding on Hampton Avenue, the most direct route and what I would have traveled without question had I been in car, so I just biked the 2.5 miles north from Chippewa to Forest Park on Hampton.

Most of the time, I only use big roads for short, connecting stretches when I’m driving my bike, but this longer trip worked out quite well (which is rather what I expected when I made my decision).  I pedaled along quite happily in the right lane, while motorists had one to two other lanes to use.

I arrived in good time, and we enjoyed the delicious vegetarian Indian offerings before Matthew biked back to work and I continued on to an appointment.

Tuesday morning, Sir and I headed out bright and early.  We quickly covered the few miles to the playground in Tower Grove Park, where we spent the morning with a friend and her son (and saw another biking mama and son duo).  We also swung by Local Harvest Grocery, where my relatively small purchase of broccoli, rice, and celery pushed my cargo capacity to the max!

After biking in the heat on Monday and Tuesday and the slightly higher mileage of Monday, I didn’t mind a break yesterday, though I would have been just as happy to limit our outings to those we made by foot (the playground and the gym).  However, I’ve been meaning to get BUB in for a tune-up for a number of weeks now.  I’ve been loathe to do so, since it means using the trailer with my other bike, rather than our beloved front seat for Sir until BUB returns.

While a well-maintained bike is ALWAYS important for safety, I am extra conscious of it with a little passenger, so I bit the bullet, loaded BUB on the bike rack, and drove to the bike shop.  I could have BUB back as soon as this afternoon, but since I have another bike to ride, I’ll avoid the one-stop car trip and wait until this weekend when Matthew will be in the vicinity of the bike shop for gardening anyway.

As a final Bike Month note, local blogger Jessica at City in a Jar challenged herself to go car free for the month of May.  She’s inviting YOU to join her, even if for just a day, or heck, a single trip, where you try biking, walking, or using public transit.  So what are you waiting for?  Let’s ride!

Gogogo, Mamama!

One of my favorite parts of biking with Gabriel in the IBert front seat is having him right there in between my arms, making for easy, constant interaction as we travel, both pointing out interesting sights to one another.

For the past ten months (since we first started using the seat), I’ve been chanting, “Go, Mama, go!” as we ride uphill, in an attempt to get him to pick up the chant and provide some motivation when my energy is flagging.  Little did I know that I would have a late talker on my hands.

The months passed, and aside from increased babble, we had nothing.  Around the nineteen-month mark, he said, “Gogogo!” while sledding, one of his first words.  I had to wait a couple more months for “Mama,” but my name is now a consistent part of his very small vocabulary.

Today as we biked to church, I helped him put the two words together, and, with a bit of prompting, he developed his own version of “Go, Mama, go!”

“Gogogo . . . Mamamama!” often followed by ringing the bike bell.  He can’t help pedal yet, but he might make a pretty decent cheerleader!

Oh, and another cool part of the ride — we spotted another cycling family.  A mom and her two girls, one daughter on a trail-a-bike and the other on her own bike, riding on Tower Grove Avenue, using lane positioning that indicated they were savvy cyclists.

While the number of families that use bicycles for transportation in St. Louis is growing, at this point it’s still a rare enough sight to be cause for excitement.  We exchanged waves and bell rings as we continued on our way.

Friday free-for-all

All things go in cycles — for quite awhile there, my writing was very food-centric, almost to the exclusion of anything else.  My concerted effort to post more on the bicycling-side of things perhaps worked too well, as my food-related posting feels a bit sparse of late.

I blame this in part on my slightly blah feelings on cooking in general, as I’ve been feeling unmotivated and [finally] a bit tired of eating primarily from our frozen and root-cellared stores.  After a number of months, it began to feel like the same food all. the. time.

Fortunately, spring is here (today’s blustery weather notwithstanding), and abundant fresh, local produce is just around the corner.  We’ve already had a few small spinach harvests (from the plants that grew under the low tunnels all winter), and I can’t wait for more.

In the meantime, I finally caved and bought a head of broccoli at the grocery store.  That broccoli is the first non-garden, non-local produce (other than onions, garlic, and frozen corn and peas) that I have bought in I don’t know how long.  It’s easy to focus on the [still many] foods that we don’t grow ourselves or buy local, but in reality we’ve taken some pretty big steps to lighten our food footprint.

Back on the biking side of things, after debating whether it was worth thirty minutes in the car to meet a Craigslist seller (to buy a life jacket for Sir’s upcoming beach trip), I contacted the seller to set things in motion.  Rather then me going to her (over six miles away), she suggested a meeting point conveniently located about two miles from us.

I happily ditched the car for a lovely (though windy and chilly) bike ride and returned home with a worn-once (looks brand new) life vest.  Sir approved the purchase and happily wore the vest for the rest of the morning (you never know, our second story apartment could flood — better safe than sorry!).

IMG_1720

He’s carrying the pump for my exercise ball, which he pretends is a vacuum cleaner (complete with cute sound effects).  Something about the life vest and pump-vacuum combination makes me think of Ghostbusters, though I can’t say quite what, having only watched the movie once, a long time ago.  For those of you more familiar with the movie, does my association make any sense?