Category Archives: My Life

Biking before the storm

Given the prediction for more winter precipitation headed our way, I made the most of the balmy temps (in the 40s) and improved road conditions to make some trips by bicycle over the weekend.  Over the course of three days, I visited the Y, the library, the farmers’ market, Meskerem Ethiopian restaurant, and church.

I’ve been riding Bub much more than Baby Jake this winter.  Bub’s slightly wider tires and overall geometry feel a bit more stable when riding over questionable patches, and the regular pedals allow me to comfortably wear boots or my Birk clogs, which keep my toes much warmer than the cycling shoes.

I didn’t want Baby Jake to feel left out, so I pulled him out for Saturday’s excursions.  Strangely, the ride didn’t feel that much faster to me than Bub, though the speed, or lack there of, may have been due more to the operator than the machine.

In addition to biking, I filled Friday with yogurt-making, tortilla-making (post on this coming soon), and ice skating.  When I told a coworker earlier in the week that I was planning to go ice skating, she replied, “Can you do that while you’re pregnant?”  And so it begins — and she knows nothing about the biking 😉

Moving my preggo booty

With the exception of Christmas weekend and my sick day last week, I’ve achieved my goal of getting to the Y three times a week since I rejoined in mid-December.  Part of my workout is getting to the gym.  It’s 3/4 of a mile from our apartment, which is a distance that I absolutely refuse to drive.  If the weather is so bad that I cannot walk there (which is very rare), I just don’t go that day.

Most days, I alternate walking and running on the trip there.  Other than the walk/run to and from the Y, my workouts mostly consist of weight lifting, though I’ve thrown a couple of Zumba classes into the mix.  The first class was a disaster, with my uncoordinated limbs all over the place, rarely in-sync with the instructor.  I went to my second class last night, and it went much better.

I’m not a complete Zumba newbie.  In fact, I bought the video tapes back in college, when Zumba was relatively new.  After my embarrassing debut at the Y class, I searched for the tapes so I could work on my moves in private, but they’re nowhere to be found.  Fortunately, Zumba is a great cardio workout, and it’s FUN — like one big dance party — so I’ll just keep going to the classes and work on my skills there.

Tiny Choices just posted on the environmental impact of gym exercise:

. . . there’s not much of a contest that exercising at the gym is probably not the greenest way you can exercise. . . . in general [a gym] is a large open space that is kept brightly lit and heated/ventilated at all times. That is a huge energy sink!

Fortunately, they did not conclude that gyms are a bad thing to be avoided at all costs, and they give some helpful suggestions for making your gym-going as green as possible.  For me, the fact that I am paying for a gym membership is definitely a motivating factor — I want to get my money’s worth!

Anyway, after the decidedly sedentary start to the beginning of my pregnancy, I’m very happy to be getting some regular physical activity.  I’m looking forward to continuing to use my bike for transportation on the weekends, but that’s a bit limited due to weather and road conditions this time of year, so for now, the Y is a great option.

Already increasing my carbon footprint

I mean that in a very loving and motherly way, of course 🙂

The big changes won’t come for another six months or so, but for two to three weeks in November, my diet consisted almost entirely of the items pictured above.  Items with packaging.

Prior to November, we made it through several months without buying breakfast cereal (we made our own granola instead), and we very rarely buy packaged items like pretzels or anything other than basic crackers to have on hand.  And then the nausea hit, and I just wanted to feel better.

The most atrocious item is not pictured above — a plastic bag of individually plastic-wrapped hard ginger candies.  For better or worse, they weren’t all that helpful, so I won’t be buying more.

On the up side, I’ll be getting prenatal care at a place that’s less than two miles from us — a nice, easy bike ride.  All last week I was anxiously watching the roads, hoping the icy snow pack would melt in time for my first prenatal appointment on Saturday.  Melt it did, which is good, because I was very determined not to drive there!

Anyway, the first trimester nausea came with a general apathy toward many things, including blogging, which explains my scanty posting in November and December.  At this point, I’m pretty much back to posting regularly (if you disregard the last seven days), feeling semi-normal, and eating a healthy, non-packaged foods diet, though I still have a winter squash aversion, which is unfortunate, because we kind of have a lot of squash in the basement (see header photo).

False alarm

So, I did it.  I took the plunge and bought airfare to Europe.  Now, I don’t fly often, partly because flying is not exactly on the “things you can do to reduce your carbon footprint” list, but I’ve never been to Europe (or off the North American continent), and this is something we’ve been talking about for more than two years.

During that time, I hem-hawed, waiting around for airfare that fit within my rather limited idea of “what I thought I should pay for airfare to Europe.”  When I didn’t see fares I liked for Fall 2008, I put it off until Spring 2009.  Spring 2009 fares not low enough?  Let’s wait for fall.  And so on and so forth.

We were already leaning heavily toward just doing it in 2011, when we received a bit of an extra nudge in November.  So a few weeks ago, I bit the bullet, found a decent (but still high for my frugal mentality) fare and actually bought the tickets.

I decided to be very well-behaved and not torture myself by continuing to track fares after that point.  All was well until I read “11 Tricks to Cutting Travel Costs in 2011” (see trick #4) — of course I had to take a peek at fares.

Now, I booked our tickets directly through the airline, thinking that if, for some reason, we needed to make a change, that would be the best and most reliable way to go.  Imagine my surprise (and excitement) when I searched that airline’s website and found the EXACT SAME itinerary for $150 less PER PERSON.

Three hundred dollars would be a nice chunk of extra change for our trip.  I immediately called the airline to inquire about a refund.  The customer service rep quickly dashed my hopes, claiming there would be a $250 “change fee,” which would  eat up a large portion of the fare difference. I asked a few more questions, trying to see if I could find any loopholes, but the conversation ended in disappointment.

After a brief retreat to lick my wounds (and scratch my very itchy torso), I regrouped and wrote a letter to the airline, expressing my disappointment with the situation.  I’ve pretty much accepted that we’re stuck with the original fare (which really was not too bad), but the letter can’t hurt anything.  Either way, we are Europe-bound in 2011, and I’ll spend the next few years working off the environmental impact of the trip 😉