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Bicycles Are Go!
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I gave up my bike when I went to college. Nowadays I tend to walk (places nearby) or take the short drive to the city's public transit.
I used to ride everywhere down hills with no hands, uphills with little effort. once you learn to ride a bike you never forget, but your butt does!!
My chief mode of transport - a stretch limo for three. It's for sale, by the way, because the kids now have their own bikes and they're too big for the seats.[image error]
We have six bicycles in our house (literally...for some reason, our front room has become storage for bikes, golf clubs, etc.)I'm the least likely to ride one. I love the idea, but I still harbor a pretty intense fear. I rode my bike everywhere when we lived in Texas and NYC. Then came the day in a park in New York where we watched a guy bike down a hill, hit a bump, and go over the handlebars. He got up and spit out all of his teeth. My mother helped him gather them, and we got him back to his apartment. I never rode a bike again until this spring. I've decided I'm willing to try, since we have some great places to bike.
In theory, I'd love to bike to work. It's four miles, but I'd have to choose between a pretty winding road where people speed around blind corners, or a non winding six lane road that people treat like a highway. I think I'm not ready for traffic yet.
*hums about Daisy and her bicycle built for two*
I used to ride my bike all the time as a teenager, but not so much after getting my own car. I hardly touched my bike when I was living in Texas. Which was a shame, because Texas is so flat, it's perfect for bike-riding.But after moving back to the northwest, I got in a conversation about biking with a college friend, who does those long bike trips, like RAMROD (Ride Around Mount Rainier in One Day) on a fixed-gear bike (only ONE GEAR!!!), and I realized I missed riding.
So I got out my old bike, loaded it into the car, drove to the trail, and then discovered the pedals weren't connected to the gears somehow anymore.
So, I took that as an opportunity to get a new bike (I got my old one fixed and gave it away to my best friend, who hasn't had a bike since hers got stolen back in college), with more comfortably situated handlebars, and now I bike whenever the weather allows. I get out of shape every winter.
Yesterday, I biked over to St. Martin's University and saw some bunnies and a monk! And then I stopped at the grocery store on the way home for bananas and tuna fish. I felt very small town girl doing that. :D
Monk?
or ....
It's a Benedictine school with an Abbey on the grounds, so this kind of monk, Larry:[image error]
Abbot Neal Roth, leader of the Benedictine Monks and St. Martin's University in Lacey, advises people to never let a day go by without prayer. Try daily prayer of some form in 2006, and you will notice a change.
http://www.seattlearch.org/FormationA...
Bunnies in the grass next to the bushes on the university grounds, Larry. It was in the evening, and quiet, not many people around.
When I was in northern Germany last summer, there were little old ladies on bikes everywhere. The landscape was very flat and the roads were good, and gas was expensive, so all told I guess it makes sense. I aspire to be a little old lady on a bicycle some day.
I live in the middle of the city -- and there are bunnies having babies all around where I live. They sure are adaptable. It's neat to see the little ones darting in and out of the bushes in the evening.
Our local bike path is a bunny accident waiting to happen. And chipmunks and moles and deer, too. Maybe I shouldn't have mocked that tv guy who ran into a deer because I almost nailed one myself last week.
It's amazing how many people ride bikes in Portland. I was working the night shift there last March, and saw so many of them out at 2 or 3 in the morning. It's wild.
I have definitely fallen in love with my bike again since moving to Portland. I love that 6 out of 7 days our car sits in our driveway just taking up space. It definitely helps that the drivers in this town are so bike friendly. When I rode in Tucson it seemed as though I had a target painted on my back (perhaps that was just a hallucination caused by sunstroke, we'll never know).
I'm surprised there are so many bikers in Portland. Isn't it really hilly there? I would think biking would be pretty challenging.
You learn to avoid the really steep streets pretty quickly. The rest just seem like gentle climbs and there's nearly always a downward slope on the other side so you can recover your wind (if, like me, you have the lung capacity of an 80 year old sufferer of emphysema).
I used to commute by back from Soho to the UWS in NYC, but one day a blacked out can opened the door right for me to plow into. I went over the handlebars and landed in the middle of 6th Ave hearing squealing brakes and assumed that was the last thing I would ever hear. Oh and I wasn't wearing a helmet - terrible for the hair, doncha know, and this was in the 80s when people didn't yet wear helmets alot. I was fortunate enough to walk away from that accident with only a hand injury, thank you god if you were watching over me.After that, I became afraid to ride in NY of course, and would either walk the 5 miles or take the horrible trains. Descending into the subways during the summer felt like stepping into hell it was so hot. A few times I was convinced there was a fire down there.
Biking had always been one of my joys, even as a child. After I stopped riding in NY, my tolerance of the city, already at a low point, evaporated. And after another year or so, we moved.
Seattle is extremely hilly, but so many people ride their bikes here. And now in these ultra PC anti-gas days, many of the active bike commuters are totally obnoxious. Claiming they want to share the road, but really they ride like they own it, in the middle of the lanes. Ugh. As a former commuter, I hate that attitude!
These days, even tho I can't really walk very far, I have discovered that I can still ride my bike! So after not riding for a long time, I donated my old racer and bought a mountain bike so I don't need to worry about going on grass or slipping on pebbles. Raider is so well behaved, he trots along with me with no leash. And I'm getting the same joy I did as a child!
Yeah, I really appreciate the bike lanes, wide shoulders, and bike paths all around Olympia. It's scary to ride on roads out in the country without a shoulder.
I tried biking a few years ago when we lived close to campus. Mobile is surprisingly hilly for the Gulf Coast and my legs didn't enjoy it at all. I'm pretty lazy, so no more biking. I've wondered about it in NYC when I move there. I'll be in Queens, Lori, so I assume it won't be as traumatic as your experience was?(Did you name your Raider after the one in Needful Things???)
These women stopped in Mobile last year and visited our NOW group. It made me wanna try biking again.http://wanderlustwithrhonda.com/wande...
OK, cool. Looks to be some stuff in the CUNY Law area. So what do you do when there's not an established bike path? Is it illegal to ride a bike on the sidewalk?
What part of Queens, Mindy? Like I said, I grew up in Brooklyn riding my bike all over the borough - it's completely different than Manhattan! Quite nice, lots of residential areas, believe it or not slower pace without any of that road rage stuff. Most people from NYC do NOT drive there especially during the day, it's enough to give you a real spike in your blood pressure and pulse, because basically because you are really not moving very much sitting surrounded by all those crazies who think non=stop honking will magically open up the street. Ha!
It's in Kew Gardens, and I'm gonna try to find a place close to there.I'm still unsure if I should bring my car or not. I can't stand traffic. But seeing as how I can't ride on the sidewalk...
:)
Does your place have parking? If not, does that neighborhood have alternate side of the street parking? Because that's a real pain in the ass. Kew Gardens is pretty residential I think. Don't know Queens well. In the boroughs it's extremely nice to have a car. Not only to to do major supermarket runs if it's too far for the wheelie carts, but other runs too like a bakery (Queens has some excellent ones - you can get the best canollis there too) but to drive into the city at night to do stuff so you don't need to worry about the subway very late, but also it's wonderful to be able to get awaaaaay! Out of the city! So many very beautiful places not too far.
I don't have a place yet. I won't be up there till mid-August, but I think I will look for places w/parking 'cause I do love to drive, so I will definitely want to be able to get away and see some of that loveliness (is that spelled right?) beyond the city. Gus is the Queens expert, but I haven't gotten any advice from him yet about the car thing.
Oh Gus definitely would know Queens better!
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And back to the subject of the thread, upon which I never got a chance to chime in on before it veered, I love and adore my big, rickety bicycle.
I was almost struck by a hipster riding a 'vintage' bicycle in Williamsburg. This event occurred yesterday afternoon. Lovely.
Damn. For a second I thought we were "almost accident" twins, Matt. This morning a car missed me by about six inches while I was leaving a coffee shop meeting and walking to my own car. The near accident was totally my fault, though. I wasn't pay attention. Bad me.
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I have to get my head out of my butt around traffic. Had I been hit people would have gathered around and said, "He walked right into traffic! Why was he looking at his notebook instead of the street?" I would have been a cautionary tale on the noon news, with a reporter standing in front of the coffee shop, reporting my death, and my picture would have run in the local paper.
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Like, you dropped the pump? Did gas shoot everywhere? Eek.
:::writhes on Sally's behalf:::
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And did it get all over your shoes as well? That's the worst.I wonder if you screwed up their take!
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I've overflowed the gas tank, but never that bad. Usually just b/c the auto thing didn't work. Yikes!Sally (and anyone else), you can come visit anytime, and it will definitely be in Queens, ideally walking distance from the school. Who all lives up there? I know Chairy is in CT.
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Do you ride a bicycle? Why? Where?
I live right off an extensive bike path so now the weather is decent I mix riding my bike in with other workouts. I have an old (maybe, seven years old?) Trek hybrid, only worth a few hundred bucks new, and definitely not new, but I like it. I ride different directions, depending on the wind, either south/southwest as the path winds behind a couple towns and over some streets. If I head north after I leave town the path cuts a straight shot through corn fields. I usually go ten miles in either direction and ten miles back...both routes have some inclines but nothing killer as long as the wind isn't tough. If the wind tops 15MPH or so riding becomes less fun.
I don't ride to places much. I mean, I can't ride to the library and worry about carrying books or whatever.
I also watch people on the bike path from my front porch. We're right off a confusing turn so my kids have learned to point in the right directions when the riders look lost:)
What about you? Bike? Not bike?