Category Archives: Biking

Thursday thoughts

Reading more bike blogs
As part of my goal to share more here about the biking side of things, I’ve decided to seek inspiration by reading more bikey blogs.  No doubt part of the reason my focus here has shifted to include lots of food-centric posts comes from the fact that I read many food-centric blogs.

I don’t have a list of favorites yet, but there are a few that I’ve read from time to time.  My reading time is limited, so I’d like to pick a handful to read regularly.  Simply Bike makes the list of a [semi]regular read, and S’s blogroll contains enough suggestions to keep me busy for quite some time.

In the fridge
As of this morning, we had no less than four types of milk in our fridge: organic soy, almond, a new local cow’s milk, and breast milk pumped during Sir’s recent sleepover at Baba’s (the last has since been consumed).

I don’t really drink milk anymore, but occasionally I crave something other than water to wash down fresh chocolate chip cookies or peanut butter brownies.  In those instance, unsweetened almond milk hits the spot.

This weekend . . .
I’ll be attending our regular veggie potluck on Friday night and looking at a couple of house on Saturday.  One house in particular could be very interesting, but there’s a big IF in the picture related to garden space.  Due to time constraints, distance, and various other logistics, I’ll probably be making both those trips by car — compromises.

Browns’ Green Garden delivery service

Matthew has continued selling limited quantities of winter squash to Five Bistro throughout the winter.  For previous deliveries, he dropped by on his way home from the garden in the car.

For last week’s mid-week delivery, I loaded up the bike trailer, since we already had the produce at our place: fifteen pounds of squash and fifteen pounds of sweet potatoes.

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A flatbed trailer would be much better suited to hauling cargo than the child trailer, but I manged to fit the produce AND a passenger.

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With a squash on either side of him and sweet potatoes under his feet, Sir was a bit cozy on the way there (about 3 miles, I think), but he didn’t complain.  The delivery went smoothly and we visited a new park before heading home.

Here’s a recent menu item with our squash (in bold):

Benne‘sFarm half chicken,
Brown’s [Green] Garden buttercup pumpkin,
Ozark Forest oyster mushrooms,
Rissi Farm potato, braised napa cabbage,
bacon, grain mustard & pan jus

Fun to see our name on the menu (even if that’s not exactly the squash variety — I’m guessing they chose a simpler, more self-explanatory name for diners?)!

Amazingly enough, I’ve posted every. single. day. this week — pretty much a miracle.  The timing of this post is also amusing, given the inches of snow and ice currently covering our streets — I would not be attempting this delivery today unless I could get there on foot!

Upgrading and jump-starting

‘Twas quite a busy weekend, all told.  We kicked things off with a great “Truth and Techniques of Traffic Cycling” class on Saturday morning.  I’m looking forward to teaching the full course (classroom plus on-bike sessions “Train Your Bike” and “Tour of St. Louis”) in May.

Thirty minutes before the end of the [highly computer dependent due to animations and video] class, our laptop conked out.  Fortunately, Matthew quickly got the onsite computer up and running so we could finish the course.

Coincidentally enough, our preplanned post-teaching errands involved a stop to pick up the new laptop we ordered earlier in the week.  We knew we were on borrowed time with [what is now] our old laptop, but we didn’t think we were cutting it quite that close!

The old guy dates to about this time of year in 2004, and nine years old is very old for a laptop.  Matthew’s been nursing it along for the last few years, but the time had clearly arrived.

So, I’m blogging from our new computer, which has a few to many bells and whistles, including the Windows 8, “I’m pretending to be a tablet,” operating system, but I’m getting used to that, and I certainly don’t mind the increased speed and reliability.

I’m not sure that we bought the “greenest” machine out there, but if we can go another nine years before upgrading, that in itself will go a long way toward lessening our “electronic stuff” footprint.

Speaking of things conking out, on Monday morning, after wrangling Gabriel into his car seat for the drive to Baba’s, I turned the key in the ignition only to hear a sad little clicking sound.  I sat there frustrated, waiting for help to arrive, watching the precious minutes of my one day a week that I have to myself tick away, annoyed to be so beholden to a stupid car.

While I am thankful, I suppose, to have the option of a motor vehicle to use as needed, I don’t like feeling helpless and stranded when the littlest thing goes wrong.  The most regular use of the car for us these days is traveling to/from my in-laws’ in the suburbs, and, while I’m thankful they’re relatively close, how I wish they were walkable or bikeable.  Oh, how I wish!

Anyway, I called my MIL (Gabriel’s Baba) and arranged to switch driving directions.  Matthew pushed the car to a spot on the street where she would have room to pull up in front of us so we could attempt to jump-start the car.  After a brief internet tutorial in hooking up jumper cables (I’m glad I know how to do it now), we connected the cars, turned the key in our ignition, and, voila!  A running car!

Our car has stupidly designed, easy to accidentally bump and turn on, reading lights under the rear view mirror, and, as it turns out, one of them had been on since we returned from our errands on Saturday afternoon.  After over 36 hours sitting, our battery was, understandably, dead as a doornail.

Since Matthew was running late by that point, and we needed to run the engine for awhile anyway, I dropped him off at work.  He was torn on skipping what was probably the nicest biking weather all week, but, for this trip, driving IS faster than biking.  Anyway, not the best way to start the week, but I’m thankful it wasn’t a bigger issue, and that we can make many of our trips by bike or on foot!

Tastefully fueling active transportation

If you’ve really been paying attention, you may have noticed a change in this blog’s tagline last week, from “Normalizing green living,” to “Tastefully fueling active transportation.”

While I’ve been pondering a new blog title for months now (without coming to a conclusion), I settled on the new tagline almost immediately.  While there are many ways that I attempt to live “green,” replacing car trips with human-powered trips and eating a largely local (and homegrown) diet play a major role in my efforts.  Plus, I enjoy writing about said topics.

I chose “active transportation” instead of biking or cycling because, as much as I enjoy biking for transportation, walking is even simpler, and anything that gets you out of the car and moving under your own power works in my book.

The posts here have been skewed a bit toward the food side lately, but that doesn’t mean the biking and walking isn’t happening.  In many ways, biking somewhere doesn’t seem noteworthy to me — it’s just what I do.

That said, I plan to increase my bike-related posts, since I hope to encourage and inspire others to get out on two wheels (or three wheels, or two feet, or whatever works for you), and, despite the fact that I would like biking to be the norm, in this country, it simply isn’t, so there’s plenty of room for change.

Anyway, my hunt for a pithy blog title that captures the spirit of my writing may be put on indefinite hold, as I rather like the original title with the new tagline.  Happy reading, gardening, cooking, eating, and actively transporting yourself to a greener lifestyle!

Truth and Techniques of Traffic Cycling

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!