2008 - A review

The original purpose of this blog was to highlight my utilitarian trips by bicycle. I have always enjoying bicycling, but I did it more as a sport or pleasure. It was occasionally a mode of transportation. If it was a really nice day or my car broke down, there was always the bike.

In 2008, I changed that. I looked at my bike as the first vechicle and my car became what I used when I could not use the bike. The only thing I miss about driving is listening to the radio at ungodly loud volumes.

I really began slowly. It was a trip to the grocery store or church. Then I would try school every once in a while. Eventually, I began riding to school every day. There were times in 2008 that my car sat in the driveway for more than two weeks.

By the end of 2008, I had ridden a hair more than 3000 commuting miles. (I did not count pleasure rides.) That is more than 1000 more miles than my original goal. To put that into some sort of perspective, I put roughly 6000 miles on my car during 2008.

There are a number of things that I learned throughout the year...

• Those white lines that are painted on the road to tell the cars where to stop get very slippery in rain.
• There is nothing better than riding in a snowstorm.
• Riding with kids is awesome.
  
• There is an art to dressing for the rain. I have tried more than once to create a post about it, but I have a hard time putting it into words.
• After a while, the cars really do begin to get used to you being on the road.
• The worst thing about doing a blog is the guilty feeling about not updating it.
• The second worst thing the shamelessly promoting it.
• I really need to take better care of my bike chain.
• Other than my email, the only website I check every day is Yehuda Moon.
• There is a certain peacefulness to riding everyday.
• If I do not ride, I start to get crabby.
• Golf courses have a funny smell.
• Beer tastes better after a long ride.
• Beer tastes better during a long ride.
• I can carry anything I want on the Xtracycle.
• Secretly, I like it when people are amazed that I rode on a bike.
• I really need to get my backspace key fixed on my keyboard.

2009 has the potential to banner year for me. I have some great plans. I hope to share them with you all as they happen.

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A much needed update

It's been a while. Well, there are a couple of reasons...

First, I was off the bike almost all of last week. I wasn't very careful with a hoe last weekend and cut my foot pretty good. It's a dumb story with dumber actions, so I won't go into gory details.

Second, school has been kicking my ass. I am not sure how many of you are parents. If you are a parent, please rest assured that your child's teachers have much better things to do with their time than make up stories just to get your precious child in trouble. Chances are, your kid is lying, not the teacher.

Third, my overly hopped homebrew IPA tasted pretty good. I have a personal rule about staying off the internets when I have been drinking. I had a bad experience once with eBay and a credit card.

So there you have it. Three lame excuses as to why I have not written.

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1500 miles

To paraphrase an old joke that generally runs around whenever people celebrate a nice round number....

What's the difference between 1499 miles and 1500 miles? One mile.

Like most people, I like round numbers. I celebrated 1000 miles and I am celebrating 1500 miles. Why don't I celebrate 1364 miles? I did. I celebrate every time I get on the bike.

Yesterday I decided top celebrate by depositing a check in the bank 25 miles from my house. Thanks to Nancy, I had a wonderful route from west Columbus into London, Ohio. She has encouraged me to take this trip more than once. Finally, I did it. She was absolutely right about it being a great trip.

Here's a photo of the Scioto River. If I were to face south on this bridge, you would see the canoe launching area. If I were to ride north a few miles, I would be in one of the many parks in Columbus. We are truly blessed to have such a wonderful park system in Columbus. I could not have picked a better day to ride. Really. Take a look at the sky. The only bad thing about the weather was that my knees got sunburned. I don't know what is wrong with my body, but two areas get sunburned no matter what I do. The first is my knees. Not really my entire knee. I only get sunburned on the top half of my kneecap. It's weird but it is something happens while biking. The other place that gets sunburned is my bottom lip. This has happened as long as I can remember. I try to stop it, but nothing seems to work.
Now, one of my favorite things about biking is that it takes you to places most people do not see. This is what I consider to be the backbone of America. To the left of the picture was a tractor unloading something into the silos. To the right was a tractor trailer taking something away. Finally, after about 50 miles, I decided some beer would be good. A six-pack of Hoegaarden and a couple of 99 cent LaBatt Blues would be good.

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Crazy Guy at Kroger

Don't get me wrong. I am used to crazy people yelling things at me. I heard "Get a car!" and various other comments questioning my sexuality in the past week. Usually people yell at me from their car and quickly drive away. Today's crazy guy yelling at me was totally different. He came up to me in person.

"Hey! Hey, hey!"

I looked up from loading my bike. Usually when I hear that tone, someone is about to back into someone. Not this time. Instead, he is coming right at me.

"You," he yells, "on the bike!"

"Aw crap." I think to myself. This guy does not look normal. Still, I hope that he is going to ask me about the Xtracycle (which is carrying Lindsay's fishing pole, the girls' birthday presents, 22 pounds of ice and a 20 pack of Coors Light). Hope as I might, I don't think this is going to be a friendly meeting.

He is next to me now. "America was built on the car. The car is what made America great. You young kids today don't know what it is like to sacrifice." Really? O.K.

"When I was your age, I would have been happy to have a car. No, you have to ride some toy around. What's next? Are you going back to the tricycle?Maybe you want a horse and buggy! Gas may be expensive, but you can afford it. You know what the terrorists want? They want Americans to give up their way of life. If you give up your car, the terrorists have won. But people your age don't really care about that, do you?"

I am wondering why I lock my bike up so securely. If I would have just done the cable lock, I would have been riding off by now. Nope, I had to do the U-Lock and the cable lock.

"All you care about is whether you get something right now."

Don't worry about following his logic. I was there and I had no idea where he was going.

"Once you abandon America, the terrorists have won. We might as well have a 9/11 every day and you wouldn't even notice. It's all about you, isn't it!?"

At this point I started to ride away.

"Get on your bike you drunk! Don't think I don't see all that beer!"

Wow. This was a different type of crazy than I am used to.

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On a totally unrelated note, I found this while searching for the Grandpa Simpson yelling at a cloud. I thought it was funnier than the whole cloud thing, but it did not really fit in with the post.

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Great Commute Race - Columbus Version

I have read quite a bit lately about a bike beating a car in a commute race.  I have even talked about the time it takes in a car vs. bike on my own route here.  Still, I have been involved with a race with my neighbor during the past month.  

Typically, I will leave for work a few minutes before him.  He'll usually pass me right before I turn on the the bike trail.    We'll meet again once I turn onto the main road.  Nine times out of ten, I will be ahead of him.  I head towards the highway overpass and then turn onto the main road of my commute.  Then I ride for two or three minutes, waiting for the familiar honk.  My neighbor pulls up next to me, honks his horn, give me the "you owe me a beer" sign, then pulls away.  There was always a little comfort in the thought that he just barely beat me the train yard where he works.

Today, with two days of school left, I beat him.  Maybe he'll buy me a beer this weekend.  I'm in the mood for Sam Smith's Oatmeal Stout.

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Fixing a flat

I have never understood the people who travel without the basic equipment.  Although flats have been rare, I have always gotten them at bad spots...  carrying my kids around, a mile and a half away from my house while it is pouring down rain, thirty miles from anywhere...

 I have a fanny pack (yeah, go ahead a make fun of me.) that I keep all of my essentials in.  I keeps a tube for each of my bikes, bike pump and multi-tool.  With this setup, I can drop the fanny pack into whatever bag I am carrying.  If I am riding without a bag, I can cinch it down to fit on my rack.  In a worst case scenario, I wear the fanny pack.

Today it came in handy.  Not for me, but for some stranger on the I-70 overpass.  

He was walking his bike on the shoulder, so I pull up behind him.  I asked if he was OK, and he told me it was a flat.  I asked if he had a tube or a pump.  The answer was, "no."  I told him I could help.  He was leery of my offer.  His shiny new bike told me he not not really had the opportunity to experience the kindness of cyclists.  

I offered my tube, pump and services.  He took me up on the offer.  It became obvious that he had no idea how to change the tube.  I explained the steps and the importance of keeping the tires properly inflated.  I told him about a couple of websites that that would help him begin bike commuting.  

I hoped it helped.  I hope that there will be one more person on a bike.

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I have not done this in a while but here are gas and CO2 numbers

Money not spent on gas: $127.75

CO2 not released into the atmosphere: 693 pounds

Beer I drank tonight: Great Lakes ESB

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Hey, are you that guy on the bike?

Today I had to make a run to the grocery store.  Well, truth be told, I begged my wife to let me go.  It was a beautiful day and I would have killed to be on the bike--even if it was only a two mile round trip.

I hooked the trailer to the bike and the girls hopped in.  We rode up to the store singing "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star."  In the store, I grabbed baby formula and headed over to the beer cooler.  While I was trying to decide, A man came up to me and said, "Hey, are you that guy on the bike?"

He has seen me around the neighborhood, so he had plenty of questions.  He asked about the Xtracycle.  (Everyone does.)  He saw me the day I carried six bags of mulch on it.  I got to brag about that thing and everything it can do.

He asked about the trailer.  I deferred those questions to the four-year-old.  She answered them much better than me.  After she talked about how much she loved it, I think Burley owes me a few bucks.  

He followed me out and checked out the rig.  Then, the real question.  "Is it safe?"  I gave him my standard answer.  People in cars will not run you down because they do not want to dent their car.

I had to leave, but I gave him my name and number.  I hope he calls.  Heck, we even picked out the same beer. Anyone who drinks an IPA can be my friend.  

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Cycling and calories

I have ridden more in 2008 than I have ridden in the past couple of years.  I don't know the total miles.  Instead, I have only kept track of the mile I did not drive.  For example, today I rode for a couple of hours.  I only kept track of two of those miles because I stopped by the grocery store to pick up some lettuce for salad with dinner.  My legs feel like I rode 20-25 miles, but I do not know.

My wife has pointed out that the oatmeal and salad consumption in the house has increased dramatically since I decided to get back on the bike for the two mile challenge.  That got me thinking.  I have been bragging about CO2 not released and money not spent on gas, but how many calories have I burned?

This was not as easy as I thought.  Kent's Bike Blog has a calculator on the sidebar, but I have to know the hours I have ridden, not the miles.  I have only kept a record of an estimate of miles this year.  I checked out a couple of different places and figured I have burned about 16,000 calories when I could have been simply sitting on my backside in my car.  

In terms of my favorite foods, 16,000 calories is:

• 100 bowls of oatmeal
• 761 heads of lettuce
• 355 cucumbers
• 286 cups of broccoli 
• 1000 strips of bacon
• 123 Reese's Peanut Butter Cups
• 26 Burger King Stackers
• 20 Burger King Triple Stackers
• 390 bottles of lite beer
• 76 bottles of Dogfish's 60 minute IPA
• 35 bottles of  Dogfish's 120 minute IPA
• 140 ounces of cheddar cheese

Of course, each one of those is 16,000 calories.  If you eat that much food in one sitting, I am not responsible for your waistline.  

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Biking in a blizzard

As a Boy Scout I learned a very important phrase. "Be Prepared." My friends and family all laughed when I would diligently put one bottle from every six pack into storage. It took a while, but I ended up with more than 150 bottles of beer. (The two other boxes also contain beer.) My family may be out of milk and lunch meat, but I have plenty of beer.Even so, I felt the need to go out today. Getting milk and lunch meat would have been nice, but the real reason I wanted to head to the store was so that in 50 years, I can say, "You kids have it easy today. Fifty years ago, I rode my bike in a blizzard." This ranked among the top 50 stupid things I have done.
The snow is about knee deep. I figured if I was in the tire tracks left by the cars, I would be fine. Wrong. Even though the cars made a decent path, the snow was still about 3 inches deep. I was sliding all over the place. I fell more than once.

My wife snapped another picture as I slid down the street. She liked it because she likes to see people fall down. I liked it because the guy in the background watched me as I rode past and just shook his head.

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