Like, life-altering, man!

My sister in New York City rides her bike to work on a daily basis. The journey is six miles from her Brooklyn neighborhood to her Manhattan office. I think of NYC as being pretty flat, but there are a few hills here and there. Going over the Williamsburg bridge is halfway uphill and halfway down. Not a bad trip.

When I changed jobs, my commute shortened significantly, and I wanted to ride MY bike to work once I figured out that it was 5 miles from my front door to my office. DH was radically opposed to this idea, after I'd outlined my planned route to and from the office. Too dangerous, he said. I'm stubborn, though, and disagree that the neighborhoods I want to ride through are dangerous. I talked to my sis about it, and in typical R29 fashion, she said, "Lucille, ride your bike to work. It will change your life."

After DH stopped ranting and raving, he agreed that if I took a busier byway he'd be OK with me riding the bike. Very well; I drove that way to and from work on Monday, checking to see if it was doable on the bike. There's a spot of construction that could be a problem, but the sidewalks are all open through the construction zone. I don't like riding on the sidewalk, but it is either ride on the sidewalk or get smooshed by cars that CAN'T FUCKING SHARE THE ROAD. Ahem. Sorry. Maybe I should tell that part of the story another day.

Tuesday morning saw me hunting for a backpack and packing up everything I'd need to clean up after a 5 mile bike ride. I stopped carrying a backpack long before I got my undergraduate degree; I was a business student, remember, and worked full time at Ye Olde Evile Bank for the last two years of college. So I had a nice messenger bag when I was finishing up my degree. I still have it. But I'm not keen on carrying a messenger bag on a bicycle, and the bags o' stuff I've been carrying around wouldn't work well either.

I found the backpack in the attic. It is a throwback to my hippie days, made from hemp. I made the mistake of tossing it in the washer once, years ago, which shrank it, and made the already rough fabric even more coarse to the touch. It never really recovered from the washing. There's a red tag sewn into the natural-toned fabric. It says, "cannabis hemp." No wonder I quit carrying that when I started working in the business world.

The ride TO the office isn't bad. There are some uphill spots, but there's a lot and I do mean A WHOLE LOT of downhill coasting. The trek there took me roughly 35 minutes. The trek home...well, that took me about 35 minutes too. It is mostly uphill, and I rode the whole way, never getting off the bike and walking it. It was torture. My thighs were burning even BEFORE I crossed the bridge that is uphill, less than a half mile from my office.

Torture, and yet, I see exactly what my sister means. It was awesome, riding through very quiet city streets in the morning, just me and a few cars, getting to work before 7 AM (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!), a productive day, and an incredible sense of accomplishment when I finally stopped in front of my garage and was home. I was as euphoric as when I crossed the finish line at my 5K on New Year's Eve. (Took me about the same amount of time to catch my breath too!)

I had a motorist yell at me to "GET OFF THE ROAD" just a very short distance from my house on the way home. I yelled right back. "Kiss my butt, jerk, I've got as much right to the road as you do!" Or I might have yelled something a wee bit more salty. Maybe. I was NOT in the middle of traffic in the middle of the road. I was as close to the curb as you can get without ramming the bike's front tire into the curb. Plus I needed to make a left-hand turn in fairly short order to get home, so the sidewalk wouldn't have been the place to be anyway, even if there was one there, which there is not.

I think I'll do it again. Because I need the exercise. Because I feel fantastic, better than I have in a long, long, long time. Because I think I'm going to sleep better than I have in quite a while. And not least of all, because it will save me gas money, too. The only way to reduce dependence on fossil fuels is to find alternatives to them, my friends. Provided, that is, I can walk in the morning. If not, I'll try again next week, and give myself a day's rest in between cycling 10 miles a day. Lance Armstrong I am not. And never will be. But maybe I'll have the chiseled thighs I've always wanted. Eventually.

Oh, and if you're wondering....yes, there are shower facilities at work. Very nice ones. I would not do this if I couldn't get a shower after that ride, phew, stinky!

Ranty McRanterson

I hate Wal-Mart. With a burning passion that borders on the slightly insane. If I need the sorts of things that Wal-Mart sells, I go to Target. Or a drugstore. Or the grocery store. Strangely, I don't feel the same way about Sam's Club, my irritation is reserved solely for Wal-Mart. Also known locally as WallyWorld.

Unfortunately, sometimes I still have to go in there. There are at least 4 of them within a 30 minute drive of my home, two less than ten minutes away.

Yesterday was one of those days. I ran in to one of them, and the walk through the parking lot was an immediate annoyance. It was full of trash. People are pigs, yo.

The other day, I was watching Dirty Jobs on Discovery, and the host, the affable Mike Rowe, was in a storm drain in Los Angeles that I swear was hip-deep in trash. The dirty job was cleaning out the storm drain with the assistance of a vacuum truck. He ranted for a few minutes about pigs of the two-legged variety, and walking through Wal-Mart's parking lot, I have to say I agree. What a disgusting mess.

Don't you realize when you toss a piece of trash out of your car window that it is going to go SOMEWHERE? Gross.

After the trip into Wal-Mart and $15.86 poorer (q-tips, lipstick, knitting thimble) I started noticing the trash everywhere. On the streets. In vacant lots. In parking lots. In the corners at plazas and strip malls. Litterbugs, the lot of humanity, I swear.

PICK UP YOUR FUCKING TRASH!

Cool

The end of 2007 was somewhat typical of the rest of the year for the weather around here. Unseasonably warm, weather that is very unusual for the time of year. Our summer was cooler than usual, which was nice 'cause I detest the heat, but the fall and winter thus far have been much warmer than they ought to be.

Hey, Mr. President? Global Warming? Is real. I'm so not in the mood for politics today.

On New Year's Eve, the temp was in the mid-40s. Weather that we should have at the end of March, or near the middle to end of October. Not in December. And then the next day, New Year's Day, it snowed like a sonavabitch, with high winds, blowing and drifting snow...we were forecast at least 4 inches, but didn't get that much around my home.

I am one of those rare lunatics who LIKES the cold. Yes, really. I'd prefer an inch of snow on the ground to 90+ temperatures. My logic goes something like this...in the winter, you can pile on lots of layers to keep warm, or attempt to keep warm, anyway. In the summer, there's only so much you can take off and not be arrested!

We keep the temp fairly low in the winter in the house, partly to save money, partly because we like it that way, and partly to conserve natural gas. Rarely is the thermostat set higher than 68, and overnight it goes down to I think 62. All I know is that woe betide thee if you get out of bed in the middle of the night, because it is COLD in here. It isn't set that low in the summer (our electric bill would be un-payable) but it is pleasantly cool in here in the summer too.

Like so many other things I see going wrong with the country, the weather's anomalies make me nervous. Will my niece and nephew and greats and grands see true Oh-hia-ia winters? Sledding used to be something that we all did (even my parents) every winter. I don't see kids do that these days. There weren't a lot of crisp, cool fall days last year. Days when you feel like you ought to buy some #2 pencils and new notebooks, drink some apple cider. The temps stayed in the high 60s until nearly November; Auntie H's funeral, held 1 November, was sunny and warm, not a cloud in the sky.

I know I'm mostly preaching to the choir. If you read this blog all the time, chances are high that you agree with my POV mostly always. But.

Recycling and making a conscious effort to reduce our consumption of natural resources are, in my ever-so-humble, about the only way the average person can attempt to assist in slowing the destruction of the planet. Even though I don't plan to have kids, I'd like the next 3 generations to be able to continue to live on this planet. I'm working on doing my share; part of my next paycheck is going to one of these. Composting is something I feel I should have been doing for a long, long time. Cutting down on the amount of waste I contribute is a goal for the year.

Cool, eh?

Love Your Mother (Earth, that is.)

The last vestiges of snow have finally disappeared into the March sunlight, and although Earth Day is nearly a month away, I want to talk today about some environmental issues. Now that the snow is no longer covering the earth like a downy white blanket, I see her begin to awaken and renew herself.

In places.

Because in other places, those huge snowbanks were covering mounds and mounds of TRASH. Fast food bags and wrappers, plastic water bottles, plastic grocery and big box retailer bags, stuff that probably could be recycled and was just instead carelessly tossed out of the window of a speeding SUV.

We have just the one planet, folks. That's it. The dreams of sci-fi writers everywhere have yet to come to fruition, and we're not actively occupying space nor seeking new planets to explore. We just don't have the capability, and I'd argue that until we get this planet back into some decent shape, we've got no business screwing up another one.

I'm going to quote song lyrics again, in fact lyrics that I've quoted before, because they say so eloquently what I'd like to express. This is from Dave Matthews Band's One Sweet World, and is the opening verse.

Nine planets around the sun
Only one does the sun embrace
Upon this watered world
So much we take for granted


Clean air. Clean water. So many other resources, natural gas, coal, oil, even things like phosphorus. There's not an endless supply. And we use them every day, never thinking about the impact that our own personal usage might have on the planet. It worries me a great deal.

The prevalence of the aforementioned SUVs makes me crazy. Because really? You NEED a V-8 engine with towing capability, Mr & Mrs Six Pack? What for? Yes, there are people that do need larger vehicles, I won't dispute that. But the rise in recent years of more and more people purchasing, oh, let's say HUMMERS for example? Is just a case of a deep seeded need to show off wealth, not because the behemoth is really a necessity.

My little piece of American suburban hell does not encourage recycling. By that I mean that the community does not force consumers to recycle, and does not actively insist on consumers participating in the process. Which also bothers me a great deal. Yes, the local trash haulers offer a recycling service, but to truly reduce your impact on the amount of trash dumped into local landfills, you must do some real, actual work yourself, and I don't just mean separating your trash. There are plenty of things that the recycler/waste hauler won't take, so you must transport this stuff yourself, which entails first finding out where it goes, who takes what, and how they prefer it packaged.

I must confess, that even tree-hugger me does not do nearly enough as she should, something my sisters both harass me about when they're 'home' in Ohio. I wish that I had a compost pile, but I do not, and in fact I think my neighbors in my planned community with its accompanying home owner's association might have something to say about it if I started a compost pile in my shared backyard. Then again, they might be all for it, but I doubt it.

I worry as well about the lack of funding for research into alternative fuels, the dearth of spending on wind or solar energy. I realize, however, that if I'm not willing to give up things like the electricity that runs this computer (power plants in Ohio are primarily coal-burning), then I'm doing even less than I think to help the earth.

Since we're about to turn over a new month, and I've always thought of spring as a time of renewal more than the turning over of the calendar in January every year, I'm going to make an April resolution, rather than a New Year's resolution. I resolve to work extra hard this month to reduce the amount of garbage that I produce, taking the time to rinse out the aluminum cans, plastic bottles, glass containers and really recycling this stuff rather than tossing it.

What else could you be doing to care for the earth?