Riding To Work

I guess now being GREEN is the new black and the cool thing to do, so in order to increase our coolness level we have tried adapting a few things here in there. In the end is a matter of feeling good about what YOU can do. I realize that it would take a combined effort to see results but I also believe that everyone is responsible for their own actions, that being said it's frustrating to see how many people drastically change their life styles to be more green, then a few weeks down the road they do a 180 turn and go back to the norm or worse than before.

Norma and I have been taking smaller, achievable steps to be more environmentally friendly. Simple things like being more diligent about recycling stuff at home, using reusable bags, turning our AC down or off and carpooling or riding our bikes to work.
Over the last several weeks we have only driven both cars to work on a couple of occasions. Instead we plan our days a little better and either carpool, I ride to work then we drive back or we have left one car at work and we both ride there the next morning. It requires a little bit of planning but when you combine it with your training rides it makes it easier. Our commute is 24 miles, so on a regular day it would take me about 1:15 to get from the door of my house to work. On windy days, especially North winds, or when we both ride to work the ride extends to 1.5 hours or if Coach schedules a little more time than that, I take the long way and make it a full training ride. On the easy days, I scan the shoulder of 347 for odd stuff. It makes the ride go a lot faster. Besides dead snakes and coyotes or water coolers the sky is the limit on what you see, from furniture to ladders, it makes you wonder what would you do if that item happens to fall right in front or <knock on wood> on top of you. Then once you get to civilization, meaning after exiting the reservation, the show is on the left side. Drivers putting on make-up, eating, singing aloud and off course ignoring bicyclists on the road. We have had a couple of close calls, all within the last two miles of our destination. In order to avoid some of this we ride a short stretch on a canal path then we jump off our bikes to connect with the next street. I've been practicing my cyclo-cross dismounts on this section. About a week ago, I gave Norma a good demo on how NOT to dismount when my left foot didn't unclip on time after crossing my right leg over. Fortunately I was going slow enough to hop a couple of times with my bike still attached to my shoes and avoid a face plant.

Anyway, happy rides to everyone and kudos to you if you ride your bike to work, even if it's one day a week!

On other news, the tentative racing calendar for 2009 is taking shape. Among the new items I have my eyes on a little fun ride of 100 miles in a town called Leadville. According to Eric Neat it's one of those races that you have to do at some point during your mountain biker life, so I figured why not give it a try next year. Of course that depends on the lottery thingy but we'll see. Sea Otter is also tentatively penciled in along with 4 other events of the newly created Unites States Cup. Still waiting to hear about MBAA calendar.

Lastly, in addition to training times on the road, the pounds are also going up at the gym. On most of the strength exercises I have graduated to lift more that just the bar. Doing planks on the ball still kicks my butt and makes for the most dreaded 45 seconds of my evenings at Coyotes Athletics but I already can see some of the results on the bike. Now I can ride on the drops of the road bike for more than just 5 minutes.

That's all for now. I have to go see if I can get my road pedals replaced.........
Pura Vida!