Fighting Weekly Amnesia

All y'all who had "six weeks, tops" in the How Long Will This Last pool, don't spend those winnings yet.

Every weekend I have the same epiphany: when I ride my bike, I'm a different - and far happier - person. Just wheeling it out of the garage to pump up the tires gives me hope. A five minute spin around the block puts a smile on my face. A sunny, invigorating winter's afternoon around town? Euphoria. (The After-Christmas South Austin Hot Beverage Tour has the makings of a new tradition.) A simple dinner (tonight: apple and cheese crostini) is a feast, and I sleep the untroubled sleep of the innocent.

And by Monday afternoon, those memories have slipped away.

Fortunately, events have conspired to bring a break in this pattern within reach. Tomorrow's workday starts an hour later than usual; the weather, while cold, will be dry (so they say); and traffic may still be light.

Tomorrow I shall ride to work.

I haven't done so since June (a different job, a different home), when I had the #3 bus line as backup. From here, the end of the bus line is only one-third of the way to work. The rest is on narrow country roads, and at that hour it will still be dark. But I have blinking lights and a lime-green safety vest, along with long underwear and wool gloves.

Wish me luck.

Rides pragmatic and therapeutic

You know how it is: you've been out running errands - or even just having fun - all day, and now you're home, settling in and ready for dinner. Except in all that running around, you forgot a major ingredient, plus a couple of items you'll need tomorrow. So in spite of wet hair and gathering dusk and quickly falling temperatures, out you go again. But instead of a ten-minute drive, it's a half-hour on a bike.

Yeah, I cratered. My almost-driving-free weekend ended about 5 p.m. Sunday with a trip to the supermarket. I'd have made it if they carried stewmeat at the corner store.

Riding to the current job is still a long way off - but at least the job is still in the "current" column. Saturday I did some route-scouting to the halfway point, which is always fun. This point is also the closest possible bus stop to the worksite, an important landmark for any future trips into town straight after work - an option made poignantly more feasible after other events of the day.

Besides the data gathered, the ride Saturday was primarily to blow off steam and get out of the suddenly-lonely house. My sister had just left minutes before, taking with her my war-buddy from the trenches of a long campaign: my cat Boze, whom I inherited from my late dad. She's been with me for six years and through four moves, including the initial exile from her previous hilltop fiefdom that was the only world she'd known. My current living arrangement became untenable for the old girl, so off she goes to the north. My sister has two cats of her own, so she's suddenly become single mom to a blended household of aging felines. Boze is in the best possible hands, but I miss her.

I hope I can get out of bed tomorrow morning without her yelling to be fed.

Not even cycling can ease the pain of shopping for women's clothes.

The Small Town within the City

Today was a very good day, biking in perfect biking weather. Rode up to my former and still favorite neighborhood, the disgustingly charming Clarksville, pretty much just for the joy of riding. Had a light lunch of amazing corn chowder at Cipollina and picked up a few ingredients for King Ranch Chicken at the Fresh Plus, which is too cool for a website. It was there I spotted and said hello to one of my Texas literary-liberal heroes, Gary Cartwright, a close friend of the legendary late Governor Ann Richards. On the way back, I paused to listen to some guy playing the saxophone on the Pfluger Bridge. All told, about fifteen miles of meandering, no bus or car. Austin may not be the best city in the country for biking (although it kicks the rest of the state's ass), but biking is the best way to experience it.

Clarksville, also known as Old West Austin and Castle Hill, is living Austin history, in its people and environs. Houses date from 1880's limestone through Victorians to craftsman bungalows and a few remaining shotgun houses (now priced in the middle six figures). Oh, and a castle, from which the eastern portion gets the name Castle Hill. From the top of the hill you can see the Capitol or fireworks over Lady Bird Lake, or coast the eight blocks to the heart of downtown. In the heart of the neighborhood is a small-town Main Street (actually West Lynn) with a market (complete with butcher counter), drugstore with soda fountain, and several charming cafes and shops. The Shoal Creek Greenbelt borders this neighborhood and runs through Pease Park, site of Eeyore's Birthday Party. Sorry, I tend to lapse into docent mode from time to time.

Sadly, the rest of the week was car-bound. I keep meaning to bike the route to work on my day off, but - it's my day off, y'know? And nothing else of note is out that way (Creedmoor, anyone?). I did run one brief errand to the drug store a mile away Tuesday afternoon, a short trip that worked wonders on my mood. (The store remains anonymous due to its generic chainity, unlike Clarksville's longstanding and locally owned Nau's, pictured above.)

Whenever I bike into town, I feel like an exiled rebel sneaking across enemy lines. Like the love child of Col. Hogan and Capt. Mal Reynolds.

Toasted Mini-Rant

Seriously, how do y'all put up with this crap? And WHY? Crawling down the "free"way, nose to ass, cars to the horizon, an hour or more every morning, another every night. Day after day after day, the remaining days of your short, sweet life stretching out, inching along, just like that river of cars. And to what purpose? To work to afford the bigass rolling self-affirmer, with its bitchin' stereo and PrØnStar Instant Friend so you'll never feel as alone as you really are and will remain unto the end of your days in your rolling prison cell!

{Ahem} Sorry. Still adjusting to commuting.

Obstacles, Internal and External

This week: drove to work Monday-Friday, plus several other trips. Saturday ran a few errands by bike, Sunday bought produce and yarn at the HOPE Farmer's Market - in this case the singular possessive is actually correct since there was only one farm represented. Some other cool artsy stuff, but they should really just call it the HOPE Market.

I also cruised around to more artists' studios and was blown away by Fisterra; between the art (left, byJennifer Chenoweth), the lovely garden, the lovingly restored old house, and the chicken posole, I all but wept. Bussed the uphill part back home, and later used the car to get the cat food I'd forgotten. Bottom line: forty-eight hours carless, seven days bikeless. Yeesh.

So, the commute. It's only twelve miles, twenty minutes by car, an hour by bike (according to Google Maps). BUT: no bus service, narrow, shoulderless country roads, 7 a.m. arrival time (so biking in pitch black). I had my choice of start times and took the one that got me home earliest; the others would have also had biking drawbacks, either more traffic or the same dark trip reversed and at the end of the day. Maybe I'll ride the route on the Thanksgiving holiday just to say I did. (The temp assignment ends Friday but may be extended or made permanent.)

As for the after-work errands, mostly they were trips to the store on the way home and could have been done by bike, if I'd been on one in the first place. I did have one evening of extreme running-around that would have been difficult-to-impossible without a car.

Besides the daunting externals, there are the wearying internals. After last Saturday's long mosey, I was very tired Sunday, the kind of tired that leads to injuries if unheeded. Definitely need to work on endurance and just daily saddle time (if they can do it in Minneapolis, surely I can in Austin.)

And the mental struggle? Being at a new job consumed most of my psychic energy this week, as it should. The best cure for that is a long-term stable employment. At least this job has a very regular schedule; it just starts too dang early.

So Far, So So

Week One was, well, a weak one. (Sorry.) Sunday's slow leak turned into Monday's Quest for Patches and the discovery of a broken spoke (and not the good kind.) By Tuesday, WIITWTWS (while-I'm-in-there-with-the-wrench syndrome) had set in. Wednesday's complete wheel rebuild bled over into Thursday, when I finally got in a test ride to run a small errand. The week's big finish, though, was today's long mosey around the East Austin Studio Tour, which really is the smartest way to do it. So the final score was: seven* car trips, two by bike.

So one of the hurdles to overcome in the next year is, how to deal with mechanical problems. This shouldn't be any different from being car-dependent, but it is (even though bike repair is much cheaper and easier to do at home with a few tools). It's a sad state of affairs that to employers, "reliable transportation" = "automobile ownership," no matter how crappy the car. Come in a few minutes late because the bus was behind schedule, and you'll get a dirty look and probably a note in your (boss's mental) file. Of course, your driving co-workers will be just as held up by the same traffic, but that's just an unavoidable happenstance. (I've heard working parents say that if a child is sick, they'll call in with car trouble because that's more acceptable.)

One possibility is a backup bicycle. I actually had a foster bike, Bonnie the Blue BSA (seen below), until she recently found a loving home. After I nursed her back to health last spring, I intended to overhaul my usual ride** before giving her up, but fate and procrastination intervened. It's a viable option for the future, especially if I keep taking in strays.


Actually I did have an alternative to four days of greasy fingernails, although I didn't think of it until just now. When I discovered the additional problems, I could have simply taken the wheel to my local shop, which is just a few minutes away on the handy No. 3 bus. Quicker and less stressful, but I wouldn't have learned as much.

So, lessons to apply towards my goal:

• Maintain a relationship with a good, convenient shop - or two or three.
• Do as much maintenance on my own as I can while I still have the car, both to get the bike tiptop and to get in the practice.
• Once that's done, become a foster mom again.
• Move inside the car2go operating area. (I'm guessing this one will come up again.)

And so we shall proceed over the next 51 weeks, dear reader, cataloging obstacles and forming strategies for dealing with them. Stay tuned.

*Probably more, I'm just forming the habit of keeping track.
**It's shameful that after four years, this trusty steed has no name. A little help with that?

The Countdown Begins!

I hereby declare November 11, 2011 to be my Carmistice Day.

I've been talking about it for 25 years; it's time to fish or cut bait. One year from today, I will be carfree. (Or else look like a total schlub. Either way, a win/win.)



Currently I drive a 1998 Chrysler Sebring convertible. For what I've spent on it just in the last six months, I probably could have been hiring a limo instead. Its problems are legion, but the biggest one is that it's a car. I don't need that - or at least, I hope to not need it. By this time next year.

I ride an Electra Townie, pictured above when it was brand-new. I absolutely love it; I've never had a bad day riding it. I also ride the bus quite a bit -there's a stop a block away - and have a convenient discount pass so I don't have to worry about correct change. Mostly, though, I do a combination of both. Whoever invented the bike rack for city buses should get a Nobel.

Earlier this year I signed up with car2go, but I've only used it once. It's a great concept, but a few months after joining I moved outside their "geofence." I'm still tempted, when I see one of their cars parked around town, to get in and drive it somewhere else. Just because I can.

Sometime soon I will go into a long philosophical discourse on why I want to be carfree, but for now I'll just say that I've wanted to for a long time. And now I've set a date to make it happen.

(That's all it takes to make something happen, right? Just set a date?)