The wheels on the bike go round and round
So, I have a lot of little things I want to post about, and I'm totally blogstipated.
Partly, I've been in a non-posting humdrum, but partly is that my work environment doesn't make posting as easy as it used to be. That's why I end up stacking three posts on a day I work from home :-p.
Any any rate, some low-hanging fruit: bicycles!
We were doing a lot of grocery runs before we got the car. Sometimes me and SB and sometimes just me. It's not nearly as quick or easy as I had hoped at the outset, but it is fun and invigorating. Since everything here slopes steeply toward the mountains, we've found that the most pleasant way to make the trip is to do it in a loop. Since our house is uphill from the bike trail, it's useful to take the bike trail to the grocery store, then go home via neighborhood streets that stack the hard uphill climb at the beginning of the trip. Once we get to turn downhill for that return, we can coast all the way home almost without pedaling. That part is certainly fun, if not in itself part of the exercise.
We didn't ride any for the two weeks after getting the car. It was too much of a novelty to drive it around. This Saturday, however, we ranged farther afield. We biked to Flying Star Cafe for lunch, stopped at the bike shop to finally buy panniers, ordered some GURPS and Arkham Horror expansions at Active Imagination, hit the grocery store with all the new cargo capacity, and then went home. It made for great lazy afternoon fun, combining some luxury treats with the cycling. The circuit was about 5 miles, so not absurdly far as biking distances go, but it was the farthest we'd attempted. With the slope it's a workout. In fact, I didn't shift to a low enough gear soon enough on the Active->grocery leg and tired my muscles more than necessary. So in the worst of the slope, I felt bleak about attempting too much, but once that was past and the post-cardio endorphins set in, I was eager to do it again. The cardio part was fine, really, but I need to build more muscle endurance, and I have confidence I can do that.
The panniers don't look that big, but they have an insane amount of cargo space and don't seem to drag me down too badly when filled with groceries. SB now has his eye on speedometers. Clearly we can trick these fellows out to the limits of our finances.
Partly, I've been in a non-posting humdrum, but partly is that my work environment doesn't make posting as easy as it used to be. That's why I end up stacking three posts on a day I work from home :-p.
Any any rate, some low-hanging fruit: bicycles!
We were doing a lot of grocery runs before we got the car. Sometimes me and SB and sometimes just me. It's not nearly as quick or easy as I had hoped at the outset, but it is fun and invigorating. Since everything here slopes steeply toward the mountains, we've found that the most pleasant way to make the trip is to do it in a loop. Since our house is uphill from the bike trail, it's useful to take the bike trail to the grocery store, then go home via neighborhood streets that stack the hard uphill climb at the beginning of the trip. Once we get to turn downhill for that return, we can coast all the way home almost without pedaling. That part is certainly fun, if not in itself part of the exercise.
We didn't ride any for the two weeks after getting the car. It was too much of a novelty to drive it around. This Saturday, however, we ranged farther afield. We biked to Flying Star Cafe for lunch, stopped at the bike shop to finally buy panniers, ordered some GURPS and Arkham Horror expansions at Active Imagination, hit the grocery store with all the new cargo capacity, and then went home. It made for great lazy afternoon fun, combining some luxury treats with the cycling. The circuit was about 5 miles, so not absurdly far as biking distances go, but it was the farthest we'd attempted. With the slope it's a workout. In fact, I didn't shift to a low enough gear soon enough on the Active->grocery leg and tired my muscles more than necessary. So in the worst of the slope, I felt bleak about attempting too much, but once that was past and the post-cardio endorphins set in, I was eager to do it again. The cardio part was fine, really, but I need to build more muscle endurance, and I have confidence I can do that.
The panniers don't look that big, but they have an insane amount of cargo space and don't seem to drag me down too badly when filled with groceries. SB now has his eye on speedometers. Clearly we can trick these fellows out to the limits of our finances.