I biked to my old stomping grounds (U-City Loop area) today for a conference at the RAC and the Moonrise Hotel. The day ended with networking at the Moonrise’s rooftop bar — very cool space, other than the ashtrays.
Anyhow, I headed to the restroom to morph into biker girl for the ride home, and that’s when things got weird.
I walked into the restroom. “What a strange restroom,” I thought to myself. “What are those . . . ? Hmm, they appear to be urinals. Wait a minute — urinals?!?!”
I did an abrupt about-face and slunk out the door, hoping no one noticed.
Next time I’ll try the door that says “Women” on it first 😉
My one hangup with my fabulous new carpool is the bike parking situation. I hoped for some kind of covered, secure place to lock my bicycle, perhaps a garage, easily accessible basement, or a covered porch at my coworker’s house. I rode the first morning, not knowing exactly what I would find (I already knew the garage option was out) but determined to make it work one way or another.
I arrived early on day one and found no covered parking options. Instead, I locked up to one of the vertical support poles of a chain link fence in the back yard. Baby Jake and I were not pleased. Other than when actively being ridden, or for relatively short lock-ups when running errands, Baby Jake is an indoor bicycle.
I didn’t like the idea of my lovely bicycle sitting exposed to the elements for ten-and-a-half hours every day, not to mention some concerns about theft.
Enter Back-Up Bike (BUB).
BUB lacked some of the convenient commuting accessories I’d added to my main bike, namely a rear rack and crate. I found a used rear rack at Bicycle Works, and planned to just switch my lone plastic milk crate back and forth between Baby Jake and BUB, but I tired of that pretty quickly. I toyed around with the notion of carrying a back pack, but it’s so nice to ride “naked,” i.e., no back pack, especially in the heat of summer.
I could just bike to a store and buy a plastic crate, but that would be too easy, so the search for a used milk crate (or something similar) continues. I will find one! In the mean time, I rigged up a super classy cardboard box, as you can see in the above photo. It fits will with some of BUB’s other swanky features:
Wine cork in handlebar endAnother cork, plus fender secured with string
The coffee bean sack saga started innocently enough. Our friend Dani witnessed first hand our losing battle against the weeds in our commuter garden, and asked, “Have you ever thought about using cardboard or coffee sacks to keep weeds down in the paths?”
Why no, we had not, but it sounded like a wonderful idea. I emailed a few local coffee roasting companies, and received three invitations to stop by and pick up some coffee sacks. Two of the three said to stop by anytime; the third (a much larger operation that shall remain nameless) asked me to let them know when I was coming.
Due to some weekend and evening work hours, I had last Tuesday off. I started the day by running a bike errand in the vicinity of the coffee roasters. I had not heard back from the third roaster with a specific time, but since I was right there, I decided to stop by anyway. BAD IDEA.
My carpool ended abruptly a couple of months ago, with the departure of my carpool buddy. Toward the end, our carpool days dwindled, due to different schedules, leaving me discouraged about the whole carpool thing.
Fast forward to now, and my new carpool. I almost don’t want to write about this, because I’m afraid it will disappear. A couple of weeks ago, I discovered that a new coworker drove almost my exact route on the way home. Toward the end, our paths diverged, but she couldn’t be that far away.
Like a good, patient stalker, I waited a few days before broaching the carpool idea with my coworker. She was not only interested in carpooling, but also open to the idea of me biking to her house and paying gas money. Who’s excited now?
It just so happens that she lives less than two miles from me, with a nice, easily bikeable route between our dwellings. I’m not thrilled with the lack of indoor bike storage accommodations for my precious, so I’m working on equipping the old bike with a rear rack and crate. I found a used rack at Bicycle Works and, for now, I’ll just use the crate I have on my other bike. While I was happy to get a used rack, the price tag was barely lower than new — annoying! Also annoying — the fact that the design of my old bike is such that attaching the rack presents a bit of a challenge.
Those little bumps in the road can’t dilute my overall excitement about the new arrangement. Although my commute is far from car-free, bicycling is back in the picture, and I’m one happy girl!
Recycling resides at the bottom of the three R hierarchy in terms of environmental benefit. First comes Reduce, then Reuse, and then, finally Recycle. Recycling is nice, but it means that some object was produced in the first place, often with the intent to be “disposable.” When, and if, that item makes its way into a recycling plant (after consuming energy to transport it there), it requires inputs of energy, water, and other products to first break it down and then make it into something new.
So I’m kind of ashamed to show you this:
I’m not sure how we ended up with this many spent non-rechargeable batteries! We only buy rechargeables, but products that come with batteries have disposables in the package. It’s not like we use lots of battery powered “stuff,” but we’ve been saving these for awhile.
My church offered a battery recycling collection box — time for these babies to go! I balked when I read that each battery had to be in its own plastic bag to reduce risk of fire/explosion. I resisted my temptation to rebel and just throw the whole bag in there. A bit more research uncovered an alternative to the individual bagging — simply place tape over the positive terminal of each battery — still some waste involved, but much less. As an added bonus, I avoided having a burnt down church, or some poor postal worker killed by a battery-induced explosion, on my conscience.
In a bit of a recycling blitz, I also pulled out some old tennis shoes for a shoe recycling collection for the Shoeman Water Project. Reusing or recycling shoes, and using profits to dig wells in developing counties? Sounds good to me!
I delivered the batteries and shoes by bicycle, of course. And now back to reducing and reusing 🙂
Her Green Life 