2,000 MILES!!! And at the end of each day I still end up in the same place I started - geez you’d think I’d be dizzy from riding in circles (OK, big commuting circles). Hit that milestone on my bike ride to work this morning. No celebratory confetti or balloons but a low-flying plane overhead just as the odometer hit 2,000. That’s 2,000 miles of biking instead of driving. 2,000 miles of saving money by not spending it on gas or car insurance (I saved a lot of money by dropping Geico - weeeeeee) and according to a recent article in Forbes apparently I’m not the only one… http://www.forbes.com/sites/tanyamohn/2012/05/20/bicyclists-in-the-united-states-save-at-least-4-6-billion-a-year-by-riding-instead-of-driving-ased-on-friday-to-coincide-with-national-bike-to-work-day-part-of-national-bike-month-which-occurs-each/  - “if American drivers replaced just one four-mile car trip with a bike each week for the entire year, it would save more than two billion gallons of gas, for a total savings of $7.3 billion a year, based on $4 a gallon for gas.”

So leave the car at home once in awhile and get out there and ride : )

Thanks again to New Belgium Brewing’s Tour de Fat! http://www.newbelgium.com/events/tour-de-fat/tour-dates.aspx

Here’s to many, many more miles! Happy Biking!

FREE ICE CREAM!!! OK, now that I have your attention Bixby Knolls/Long Beach is having an inaugural “Kidical Mass” bike ride this Sunday. So come on out for a family fun bike ride through the neighborhood. For more info go here… http://bixbyknollsinfo.com/kidicalmass.html 

MAY IS NATIONAL BIKE MONTH : )

So get out there and ride! Now’s the time to dust off that bike and remind yourself how much fun biking can be. Spring is here and with summer just around the corner the days are getting longer and warmer. No better time to kick off a summer full of biking. Start by riding your bike to places close to where you live that are within a few miles (grocery store, school, work, etc.). Before you know it, you’ll be hopping on your bike all the time for those short trips instead of taking the car.

NEXT WEEK…May 14th - 18th is National Bike to Work week. Check your local communities to see if they are hosting any bike to work events.

Become a part of the National Bike Challenge - This free program runs May 1 to August 31 with the goal of uniting 50,000 people to bike 10 million miles  http://www.endomondo.com/campaign/national.

Ride safe and ride on!

BACK ON LAND and it’s time to get my biking-legs back as I had to trade them for my “sea-legs” for the last month! I had an unexpected trip come up with work that none of our employees/biologists were able to do so lucky me had to drop everything in my life and spend a month at sea on a fishing boat (it’s tough being cut off from everything and everyone for that long - no cell phone/internet access 800 miles offshore). The trip went well especially since I hadn’t done a long trip like this (29 days at sea) in 9 years! We had good weather throughout the trip, good fishing and overall a safe trip. No seasickness - YAY! Guess it’s like riding a bike, something you get back into and get use to again right away.

Even though I hadn’t been biking in the last month, my 6-month mark into this car-free commitment occurred while I was at sea. Hard to believe it’s already been 6 months! Where does the time go?! Still don’t miss my car and surviving just fine without it - biking (of course), taking public transportation, carpooling and I guess we could call last month “boat-pooling”. At this point I don’t see myself rushing out to get a car once my year is up. 

In other exciting news…before I left for my trip I had applied for a scholarship to become a League Cycling Instructor through Women on Bikes SoCal http://www.womenonbikessocal.org/ (a cycling advocacy group based in Long Beach with the goal of increasing the number women riding bikes). I’m happy to report that I was selected as a candidate for this program and am very excited about the opportunity. Stay tuned for more info on this.

VERY HAPPY TO BE BACK ON LAND AND BACK ON MY BIKE!!!

Q&A with C.I.C.L.E.

5 months into my car-for-bike-trade and “Cyclists Inciting Change thru LIVE Exchange” (C.I.C.L.E.) - the non-profit bicycle advocacy group in Los Angeles that benefited from the auctioning off of my car - caught up with me for a little Q&A to find out how my car-free experience is going. Enjoy : )

I love to ride my bike, especially when I get to carry home flowers from that special someone : )

Not a bad record having only 1 flat tire in 4 months with over 1,200 miles on my bike! And what caused this flat…2 teeny, tiny metal splinters! Grrr! The timing of it all is kind of funny. I recently attended a “ladies night” event at OutSpoken bike shop put on by the ladies at Tough Chik…

http://rideoutspoken.com/2012/01/tough-chik-ladies-night-outspoken-feb-2-2012/

It was a fun night (I even won a Tough Chik t-shirt in a raffle). They had a few reps from different bike companies talking about women-specific designed saddles, bikes and other women’s riding issues. They also gave a demo on how to change a flat tire, and how to clean/lube your bike chain…

No problem, I’ve had many flat tires before and had to replace and patch my bike tubes (with the help of Scott) numerous times…on my mountain bike. I had yet to fix a flat on my new bike. The difference being that this bike has a internal gear hub on the rear wheel and I wasn’t exactly sure how to disconnect the shifter cable without messing something up. Did I think to ask anyone at OutSpoken while I was there??? Nah, I’ll be fine. I’ll just get some spare tubes while I’m here just “in case” I ever get a flat. Come on, it had been 4 months…well I think I jinxed myself and picked up the splinters somewhere along the ride that day/night.

The next day I noticed the back tire pressure was low (always good to check your bike before you ride - think ABC…Air, Brakes, Cable/Chain), pumped it up with more air and rode to work. It was lower again that night so I thought since I was new to the Presta valve stem on the tubes maybe it was loose and leaking air. So checked those on both tires (and in doing so managed to let ALL the air out of the front tire as well - like I said I’m new to Presta valves) and again with the help of Scott managed to put more air in now both tires. Nope that didn’t work for the back tire, it was slowly leaking air somewhere. Great! How the heck do I do this? Having a new bike with all the fancy bells and whistles is great…when everything is working properly. When things go wrong I get the “deer in the headlights” look. Crap! What do I do? I called a friend that’s a bike mechanic and he tried to explain it over the phone, saying that it was pretty easy and there were only a few extra steps I had to take. What made sense to him wasn’t computing in my brain at that time. So once again it was You Tube to the rescue! Thanks Bike Friday for posting this video…

“Bike Friday How To: Disengage Cable on Alfine 11 Rear Wheel”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VyP0wX8IodA

Oh, so that’s what my friend was trying to tell me. Now it makes perfect sense. So with some more help from Scott we got the cable disconnected, the chain off the hub, the wheel off the bike, replaced the newly purchased tubes and got it put all back together. So far so good! Now I know what I need to do next time and am carrying the right tools (in my Bike Burrito…http://www.etsy.com/shop/bikeburrito ) in case of an unexpected flat, hopefully it won’t be for at least another 4 months or longer.

I guess similar to my learning experience with the clipless shoes/pedals I tend to take the “scenic route” in learning the new things about my bike. Thanks for coming along for the ride!

May the air be filled with tires ; )

And still going! It took a little over 3 months but I hit that mileage milestone last night on the ride home from work. I celebrated with Scott (who has biked just as many miles and still has his vehicle) with what else but a New Belgium Fat Tire beer : ) Many more miles to go. In addition to my commitment to being car-free for a year, I made a pledge with Team Wonderbike to bike 3,000 miles in 2012. http://www.newbelgium.com/Community/team-wonderbike/home.aspx

It may seem like a lot of miles, but considering I had my car for the majority of 2011 I still managed to bike 2,235 miles!  

Now it’s your turn! I’m not talking about jumping in and riding hundreds or thousands of miles, I’m talking about baby steps. If I can get you thinking about biking more and driving less, that’s a start.

Think about where you live and the errands that you run in your car. Could you do those same errands by bicycle? How far are you from the store and how much stuff do you need to get? Have kids? Get them involved too by loading up their backpacks with some things. Make it a fun adventure. Who knows maybe you could get that grocery cart full of food home after all.

Above all BE SAFE!!!

Think about how far your commute to work is. Could you bike there? Are there alternate/more bike friendly routes you could take? Could you supplement your bike commute with public transportation? Do the research an then get out there and try it! Figure out what worked well or what didn’t. Make those adjustments and then try it again. Start off with once a month, then gradually work up to once a week and keep building on that. Again, most importantly - RIDE SAFE! 

Cheers to 1,000 miles and many more to pedal…

Apparently all the biking I’ve been doing will stretch out a bike chain (current mileage count…872 miles). It started to fall off when I rode over bumps, which happened a few times at first then becoming more frequent. The last time it happened the the chain got stuck between the chain stay and crank case and took some force to get unstuck (fortunately I was close to home when it happened). That pretty much sealed the deal on needing a new chain since the next day just riding normally it fell off 3 times within 3 blocks of my place.  So we loaded it up into the back of Scott’s truck and took it to our friends at OutSpoken Bike Shop http://rideoutspoken.com/

Michael was nice enough to replace the chain while I waited and only charged me for the price of the chain. No installation fee : )  Thanks!

A few days later Scott surprised me by putting Christmas lights on my bike!  Yay! I got to be even more festive during the holidays. Although, with the holidays coming to an end I’m thinking of calling them “Safety Lights” so I can keep them on year round. Think that would fly? 

I got our 1st Christmas tree for our new place by running the Winter Solstice/Christmas Tree Race. They gave all finishers full size trees! Needless to say I wasn’t able to get it home by my bike, but I tried. Here’s the tree complete with bottles of New Belgium Snow Day for Santa. Uh, I mean empty bottles of Snow Day…sorry Santa we drank it all.

A closer look at our tree…the New Belgium bottle caps and Tour de Fat bike license plate make great tree ornaments.

Ride On to 2012!

OK, technically it was a “Hailman” ; )  Scott and I got caught in a crazy storm yesterday while biking home from work that dumped what seemed like a couple inches of hail!!!  WHAT?!  Aren’t we in SoCal?  I guess I got a mini taste of what the other “car-for-bike-traders” in CO and other places that get real winter weather have to deal with.  This was probably the closest thing to snow that we’ll get in Long Beach.  It was awesome!!!  It felt like the Tour de Fat folks were at it again brewing up the storm just for me ; )

We could see the storm building as we left work, Scott said ” Uh, we better hurry”.  As we started biking, it started to rain, we could see the lighting getting closer and got about a 1/2 mile before we took shelter in a parking garage.  Then the storm really kicked in with pouring rain, crazy amounts of hail and about a dozen flashes of lightning.  It was insane and so cool!  It’s times like this when I wish I had a smart phone to take pics and video (yes, I still have a “dumb” phone, one of these days I’ll upgrade ; ) Here’s a picture that someone in the area took and uploaded to Long Beach Report.com

There’s a few more photos and videos on the site…

http://www.lbreport.com/news/dec11/haillb.htm

We took shelter there for about 45 minutes waiting for the rain to let up and the storm to pass…it wasn’t.  It had stopped hailing and we didn’t see anymore lightning, but the streets were seriously covered in hail and it was still pouring rain.  So while we waited we made our little Frosty the “Hailman” ; )  Finally, we just had to go.  The storm wasn’t moving and we had to get home to get to our Hophead Holiday event.  So it was a wet, cold, rainy ride home.  But my Black Sheep did great in the rain (loving the fenders), even through a couple huge ankle-deep puddles where all the rain and hail caused some minor flooding. 

Oh yeah, 747 miles on the bike : )

Ride safe!  Ride on!