Category Archives: Biking

Chattanooga, you had me at hello

Market St. bridge across the Tennessee River, taken from the Walnut St. bike/ped bridge

Hello from Pro Walk Pro Bike 2010 in lovely Chattanooga, Tennessee.  Ya’ll (I can say that because I’m in the south now), Chattanooga is a lovely city that has made huge pedestrian and bicycle enhancements in recent years and I’m surrounded by fabulous and inspiring people from across the country (and the globe, in some cases) who are working hard to create safe, viable transportation alternatives.

Art Museum at Bluff View Art District

I packed for the conference after looking at the weather forecast and seeing temps in the high 80s (i.e., almost 90 — ugh, hot) all week instead of the reality that I would spend 8am to 5:30pm in a refrigerator an excessively (and wastefully) over-air-conditioned building.

After hours, I’ve been exploring Chattanooga by bike.  Given the conference hours, this means that I’ve been exploring Chattanooga by bike IN THE DARK, both a.m. and p.m., which wouldn’t be a big deal if I had Baby Jake and my usual riding gear, but it’s a little iffy on the rental with no lights or reflective vest.  Note to self: always travel with reflective vest, you never know when you might want it.

I’m only scratching the surface here, but so far I’ve enjoyed the Walnut Street Bridge, the Tennessee Riverpark (an 8-mile long multi-use greenway), and biking around downtown in general.

Spinach walnut ravioli at 212 Market Restaurant

The food scene (normally, I would consider this the most important part, but I’m so enjoying the biking and the beautiful riverfront):

However, eating out is not nearly as fun without Matthew.  I can try many more things when he’s there to share in the fun and food.  I’ve already informed him that we’re coming back to Chattanooga together 🙂

Strange bean

I really want to tell you all about the amazing time I’m having at the Pro Walk Pro Bike conference and how much fun I’m having exploring the host city (to be revealed in a later post), but time is short, so I bring you a little garden tale.

While picking a very large quantity of green beans on Sunday, Pam remarked, “I’m just glad I haven’t picked any of the black with green stripes variety.”

Only a short time after making that comment, she came across this guy.  Harmless, but not exactly what you want when you’re expecting a handful of green beans!

Burlington by bike

On Friday, we biked to Starr’s Cave.  The temps were blissfully chilly, so much so that I didn’t bother to remove my bike gloves for the hike.

Saturday morning, we stopped by Mosquito Park on our way downtown.  In middle school, my friends and I often biked to, and hung out in, this lovely little park.

Matthew feels that the park should change it’s name for marketing purposes.  If you’re not sure what he’s doing in the photo, he’s mimicking a biting mosquito.

Our downtown shopping included Nature’s Corner, Tom’s Market, and some antique and thrift shops.  (As usual, the majority of our purchases were food or food-related, though Matthew was also on the hunt for some old farming implements.)  Our purchases exceeded the cargo capacity of Matt’s crate, but my rack plus a bungee cord came to the rescue.

My last ride of the trip consisted of biking to church on Sunday with my dad for company.  We conquered some big hills and arrived in plenty of time.  On the ride home, my bag almost took a spill, but I caught it just in time.

I am happy to report that we rode our bikes on all four days we visited Burlington — the wonderful weather aided us in this effort.  I enjoyed rediscovering my hometown via my favorite form of transportation!

Bikes on board

Stopped for lunch at Wakonda State Park

Carrying the bikes on our trunk rack for long trips makes me very nervous, but I bit the bullet for our trip to Burlington, IA this weekend.  The bikes behaved very well on the trip, not much moving around back there at all, but they did put a dent in our MPG 😦  Not very aerodynamic.

Burlington riverfront

We started with a quick trip to Bickel’s for some rim tape and a back-up tube to (hopefully) solve my rear tire flat woes on BUB.

We arrived at my parents’, and I wasted no time reassembling my rear tire.  It seemed to be holding air, so we headed down to the Riverfront Farmers’ Market for sweet corn, eggplant, bell peppers, garlic, and farm fresh eggs.

Bluff overlooking the Mississippi in Burlington

We made it back to my parents’ just before the rain rolled in on Thursday night.

Given the gas mileage sacrifice, I was determined to ride these bikes A LOT while we were there.  Stay tuned for more of our bike Burlington adventures.

Greening the Festival of Nations

Thanks to our BYO everything (water bottles, utensils, plates) strategy, we produced just one piece of trash on day 1 of the Festival of Nations last weekend.  I spent way too much time debating weather to trash that cardboard serving dish or recycle.  The sign on the recycling said they accepted cardboard, but this was dirty cardboard, despite our best scraping efforts (we don’t lick our plates clean in public), so I reluctantly deposited it in the trashcan.

Props to St. Louis Earth Day’s “Recycling on the Go” program for providing recycling at the event.  And by “providing recycling,” I don’t just mean setting out the bins.  They actually had people (volunteers?) walking around and removing recyclable items from the the trashcans to place in the recycling bins (don’t worry, they were wearing gloves for this activity) — really taking it to the next level!

Although I didn’t attend, the LouFest Music Festival (also last weekend) really pushed the greening theme, and I would love to see Festival of Nations implement a few other key programs, a water station for refilling water bottles being the main one.

Bike parking also makes the wish list, although this item is for Tower Grove Park in general, not specifically the Festival of Nations.  I heard through the grapevine that Tower Grove’s excuse for the lack of bicycle parking is that bike racks “don’t fit the Victorian theme of the park.”  Wha???  Of course, all of their accommodations for motor vehicles are perfectly in keeping with that time period, because there were lots of cars around in the Victorian era. Yeah.