Bike to Work Week

It's Bike to Work Week!  This girl is coming out of bicycle commuting retirement and pedaling to and from work all week, and I'm actually really excited :-)

I would like to encourage everyone to participate in BTWW by riding your bike to work some day this week, or by using public transportation - or both!

There are many great reasons to ride your bike to work - here are a few:
1.  Exercise is always good for you - use the bike ride as a way to cross train.
2.  It's a fun way to wake yourself up in the morning, and cool down after work.
3.  Bike shorts are sexy.
4.  Riding your bike or using public transportation is an environmentally friendly alternative to driving your car
5.  and you save gas money!
...etc, etc, etc.

OCTA has put together a nice program where you can pledge to bike to work and receive a gift certificate to Jax Bicycles, and get entered to win numerous prizes.  They also provide a bike map, and bus routes/schedules for Orange County.  Check it out here!

Pedal away, friends!

The Car Chronicles

So about that being carless when I moved to California thing?

Things started out great.  I had a 12 mile commute to work that took some getting used to, but I really started to enjoy the cool, crisp mornings and the mellow, calming rides home after work.  After a long day, it was so relaxing.  And being a Minnesota girl, this weather was just too good to be true, and I was more than willing to spend my mornings and evenings commuting.  If for some reason I wasn't up for the ride, the bus was always a fairly convenient alternative.  As described in this post, I really was falling in love with the commuting lifestyle, and I became a lot more serious about sticking with it...I even vowed to stop using Pete's truck for things like grocery shopping.  By the end of November, I was enjoying biking so much, that Pete and I spent a week biking 400 miles up mountains, across the desert, around a sea...and back.  It was one of the best experiences of my life and it made me even more passionate about being on my bike.

I'm not entirely sure where my turning point was, it may have started with all of the rain we got, but by January biking started to lose it's fun.  Commuting was no longer enjoyable.  It became a chore.  Something I had to do everyday.  I described the pros and cons of being without a car here.  However, finding and buying a car is a pain, especially when you don't know much about cars and have never done it before, so I pedaled on, looking here and there every once in a while.

Things really got bad about a month ago.  I mean REALLY bad.  Drivers appeared to get ridiculously dumb, careless, and evil.  I had a lot of close-calls, and I started getting severe road rage.  This is not good when you're on a bike.  I wanted to plow people over...who were in cars...going fast.  Get the picture?  It got so bad, that commuting made me want to cry, and I wanted nothing to do with it.  From then on, I would take the bus.  I guess you could say I hit the "wall?"

In the midst of my commuting mid-life crisis, I got an email from an angel named "My Dad" (my mom's gonna love that one).  He asked me if I would like to buy his 2000 Jetta for $2k.  Umm...YES.  That decision took about a minute.  Best day of my life!  Long story short, the Jetta made it from Houston to Huntington Beach via some plane rides and road trips, and my life is already better.

Since I retrieved my car almost 2 weeks ago, I've been able to get out and do so many more things without having to rely on Pete or a bus or my own two legs.  One nice thing is being able to sleep more in the morning because my travel time is about 40 min less, and my nights seem longer for the same reason.  Yay more time to run!  I was also able to go drive to San Diego for a night, a new place to do my 20 mile run and cheer on everyone at the LA marathon!  I also signed up for another race in the Santa Monica Mountains next weekend...BECAUSE I CAN DRIVE THERE...and because it sounds fun :)

All of the biking I did was a great experience, but after 9 months, I learned a completely carless lifestyle is not for me, at least not while I'm living here.  Now that I have been driving for a while, the idea of biking to work again is actually kind of exciting and I plan to start commuting a few days a week soon.  There's definitely a difference between having to bike to work, and wanting to bike to work.  It's nice to finally have that option.

Carless Inconvenience

It's been 7 months since I sold my beloved 1995 Saturn SC-1, and I want him back.

My dad purchased my Saturn my senior year of high school after a not-so-tragic, person-less accident that resulted in my 1990 Mitsubishi Mirage getting totaled by a truck - happiest day of my life!  We received $800 for the $2k of damage done to my Mirage (that was MAYBE worth $200, so I couldn't stand making the poor guy pay $2k just because he forgot to use his e-brake when he parked on a hill), sold it to my step-bro for $100, and purchased the Saturn for $1500.  Not too shabby.

Five years, 80k miles (long distance relationships can be a b*tch), a few repairs, and a weird noise or two later...I sold my Saturn for a measly $300.  I was about to graduate, get an awesome new bike, and move across the country, so I just wanted to get rid of it - it definitely wasn't going to make the 1500-some mile commute from Madison to Huntington Beach, anyway!


When I moved here, I decided I didn't want to buy a car - looking back, I think I just got really sick of deciding anything having to do with a car, and the idea of another loan was definitely a major turn-off.  So for the past 7 months I've gotten by with biking, utilizing public transportation, and borrowing Pete's truck more often than he'd like.  Frankly, I'm sick of it.  I want my Saturn back.


Since I'm one of the world's worst decision makers when it comes to this sort of thing, I took the usual route and made a quick list of pros and cons to help me along.


Why I like being carless (pros):
- Gives me the ability to save a lot of money and pay off student loans


Ta-Da!  Honestly, this is the only real reason I like not having a car.  Yes, there are many other reasons, like how I get good exercise from biking everywhere and can appreciate sights and sounds people miss out on when driving...but what makes me think if I had a car, I couldn't experience these things, too?  Seems to work for lots of other people.  The environmentalist side of me pats myself on the back for not having a car, but I truthfully don't care enough for that burden to outweigh the proceeding cons.  I can be environmentally conscious in other ways, and me not having a car isn't going to make the world better (unfortunately).


Why I don't like being carless (cons):
- Commuting to work via bike or bus uses up an entire hour of my morning, and evening...every day.
- Unless I want to spend hours commuting, I'm limited to activities within a ~10 mile radius of HB.
- I have to plan to go everywhere - hard to be spontaneous when you have to work around a bus or train schedule, or allow yourself lots of time to bike.
- Since helmets are a necessity - MY HAIR IS NEVER, EVER CUTE...not that I'm the kind of girl who really cares that much, but it eventually gets old.  And, I can't pull off the look nearly as well as PunkRockRunner :)
- I don't like being cold, wet or cold and wet.  I'm not about to complain about SoCal weather, but the mornings get cold, and the few days a year it does rain are unwanted and I bug Pete for his truck...which leads to the next con...
- I hate bothering Pete for his truck.  Even if I wash it, fill it with gas, change the oil, etc...I still feel guilty asking to borrow it, and I'm not entirely convinced he truly likes letting me...


So, it's pretty obvious there are more cons than pros.  Even though the one pro I do have is a pretty big deal to me, I think it's time to give in and settle for convenience.  I don't know how long I'll be living in this SoCal heaven...so I want to be able to explore, venture out of Orange County, and truly experience California while it lasts - and look cute doing it! :)


I've learned to love biking enough that I know I won't give it up if I get a car...in fact, I might appreciate it even more knowing I don't HAVE to do it all the time - it's nice to have options.  


Currently seeking a reliable car for $5k or less (aka no loan! where did I get the idea I had to buy something shiny and new, anyway?) 


Suggestions?  Also, I'd prefer not to have to mow it...

A Special Case of the Mondays

After a long and severely turbulent flight (worst flight EVER), I'm finally back on the ground in California. Thankfully!

I was uber happy to see Pete, Spokey (my bike), be out of the cold, and back into the comfort and familiarity of my own room.  However, it was Sunday night and I was not excited about going back to work in the morning.  I just wanted a day to do absolutely nothing: no driving, no packing/unpacking my suitcase, no listening to people lecture all day, no thinking, no nothing.  As you can imagine, I wasn't very excited to hear my alarm of obnoxious bongo-like drumming go off at 6:30 this morning.  Definite case of the Mondays.

But not all Mondays can be bad.

About a month ago I decided I was going to put all car purchasing plans to an end, quit using Pete's truck for convenience, and rely on Spokey or public transportation to get everywhere.  Maybe I caught the "going green" bug.  Maybe the amount of money I'd have to spend on a car seemed daunting.  Maybe I like the exercise.  Probably all of the above, who knows.  I made it a whole two weeks before I had to use the truck to get to the LB Half Marathon, and then had a rental car for the past two weeks in Minnesota.  Today, I was back at it.

Once my brain sort of started functioning it sunk in that I was going to ride my bike again for the first time in two weeks - yay!  Then I remembered I had bought some biking gloves before I left for Minnesota and I'd get to test those out too - yay!  Then, when I walked out the door I noticed that it was incredibly foggy - yay!  I had not biked through the fog yet.  Turns out this Monday wasn't so bad, and it was about to get even better.

I reached the bike path and was having fun watching people emerge from the fog - it seemed like some sort of surreal, weird, other-dimension that these people were riding out from.  Freeing me from my "fog trance," I heard a "Goooood morning commuter girl!"  It was Alan.  I had met Alan, a 60ish-year-old retired electrical engineer with a nice Octobeard, back in July on one of my first commutes to work.  That day, Alan ended our "get-to-know-each-other-in-2-min-small-talk" with an intriguing request: "bike commuting is going to change you - figure out how and why and you'll learn to value your ability to bike...next time I see you out here I want a full report!"  And he pedaled away.

Naturally, the first thing Alan said to me after his initial greeting was "so, figure it out yet?!"  I had totally forgotten about his request until this moment - isn't he supposed to be the "old" and forgetful one? But without even hesitating I blurted out, "the simple and unexpected things make me incredibly happy."  Where did that come from?  I'm pretty sure I said it without even thinking first, thankfully it sounded sort of smart and actually made sense!  That usually doesn't happen when I don't think before I speak.  Anyway,  it must've been the "right" answer because Alan got the kind of grin your parents get when you've done something to make them proud - like clean your room or wash the dishes without being asked.  Alan then proceeded to laugh a bit and explain that I seemed more scared than incredibly happy when he unexpectedly emerged from the fog shouting "good morning."  What a goof.

So here I am, happy as can be on this Monday afternoon.

The simple, and often unexpected things are really what matter most.

Today's list of simple pleasures: happy halloween/welcome home card from the roommate, trying out my new biking gloves, uber fog, crazy Alan, smell of fresh-cut grass at the end of October (this doesn't happen in MN), cupcakes from the boss.

Something to think about:
[Thought taken from a talk I went to last week by John Daly]


Can you remember all of the [expected] birthday or holiday gifts you've given or received over the past 5-10 years from family members and/or significant others? (I have trouble remembering past this year)

How about the small, simple, "surprises" you've received (or given) for no specific reason?  (I can remember these types of things, in detail, as far back as 10 yrs ago)