Oops....too long

It looks like I went a little longer than I had intended without updating. I apologize to my legions of adoring fans.

I made another bike trip to the grocery store pulling the Burley on Sunday. It is actually possible to stuff as much in that trailer as you can fit in a shopping cart....I had to hang a couple bags of chips from my handlebars, but I also had the 3 12 packs of Cherry Coke Zero in the rack under the cart, so I think by volume it balances out. I had posted about the tongue of the trailer seeming to flex before, but I'm no longer sure that's accurate. It might just be super emphasizing my regular acceleration/deceleration as I go over bumps in the road--which we have no shortage of.

My work schedule has changed from 9-6 to 10-7...that could be annoying in the winter when my ride home will be entirely in the dark, but I built a pretty sweet light (http://www.bikeled.org/), so seeing is not a problem. Speaking of seeing, I almost hit another cyclist on the bike path the other night. I was coming home from watching "The Incredible Hulk" at about 12:30 in the morning, and I didn't see this guy until I was about 30 feet away, and even then I only saw the lighter-colored part of his shoes moving. Probably blinded him pretty well too, as I had my light on bright (as soon as I saw him, I dimmed it and aimed it at the ground....if he had been smart enough to actually have any kind of light I could have done this from much, much further away and spared his vision).


I am going to try to be almost 100% car-free for the month of July. There will be a couple of exceptions though. I think I found a doable bike route to church (18 miles), but I will have to give it a test run before I ride it. And I won't be able to ride there when I'm on call, because it would take too long to get back home to my computer in a work emergency if I biked (have to get any problem resolved within an hour or it alerts my boss's boss).

I guess the car-free thing will also be hurt a little bit by the fact that I intend to drive back to my hometown for 4th of July weekend. I think a 400 mile trip for a weekend is allowed when one is flirting with the car-free lifestyle though. I think I would, even if successful, be classified as "car-lite" though, because I still plan to keep the truck around for mountain biking trips. There may be irony hiding in there somewhere.

Every time I see gas prices go up, a little part of me is happy--it means I can raise my estimate of gas saved for the year. There's something wrong with me.