Zhinka dinka doo

Hoo-ah! We won!

Results were delayed until this morning, as the number crunchers carefully examined the really close entries. In the end, we won!!! It was a really fun week-long competition, and I'm really glad I did it. I'm taking my bike in this week to have new brake pads put on, and then I plan to be back on the bike.

The photo above is our bike team (resolution degraded, to protect the innocent). I'm the one on the far right, with all the hair. One of the things I think it's really great about this bike team is that we're all ages, all fitness levels. For the week, we had 36% of the staff ride their bikes. Pretty damn good!


And finally, here's another reason why riding your bike is good: (Warning to Heidi, I don't think you'll like this!)

Bike to Work Week, day 5!!!

I made it! I biked in today! All 5 days, yay! Look at my goofy grin up there!

We tallied our family statistics (we're a family of geeks, this is how we have fun) and found that this week we biked a total of 133.7 miles, with an average trip length of 10 miles. The average was brought up by S, his work is way out in the woods. His average was 21 miles. This means that we saved 4 gallons of gas or about $13.80. I compare this to the $27 for the new pedal after I broke one in half yesterday, plus $40 for dinner out two nights because everyone (except Max) was just too tired to go grocery shopping or cook anything. Clearly we can do better money-wise with better planning. But of course it's not just about $$.

We don't have the official results yet from the workplace challenge, but we hear that it's a very close race between us and one other place, with a difference of less than 1%. It's a photo finish, or would be if this were a different sport.

Bike to Work Week, day 4

Day 4. I'm still here, I made it to work on the bike again. That's my bike up there. It's about 15 years old, still in almost pristine condition because I don't use it much. After I got it and tried biking around here, I found that I really despise hills. Which is something I'm working on now...

Today is the last day of the workplace challenge. The place that fields the largest percentage of riders wins bragging rights for the year, plus a new bike. We won it the first year it was on, but then came in close but not first the last two years. So far our ridership is up and we're doing pretty well. This year it's a 4-day challenge whereas the previous 3 years it's been a 1-day challenge. I think moving to 4 days is a good idea, but I did prefer just one day.

So please send good vibes, I hope we win this year! It certainly would make all this work feel just a bit easier.

Today is Bike to School day and S biked Max over to school this morning. I'll be picking him up on my bike in just a little bit. We got two mounts for the Trail-a-Bike, that makes it much easier to do this hand-off thing. Yesterday on our way home from school, Max said "You know, we can bike when it's not Bike to Work Week. Can we do that?" Yes dear, but first mama's going to need a little time to recover.

I'm not sure if I'll make it tomorrow. To be honest, the workplace challenge has been what's kept me on my bike, and since it's not going on tomorrow I may not have enough motivation to overcome the aches and pains. I happily admit that the ride today was a tiny bit better than yesterday. Progress in the positive direction, yay! So we'll see about tomorrow.

Bike to Work Week, day 3

Max's red cruiser bike

ughhhhhh...owwww....hhhhsmmmffffffff.....

Today is the third day of Bike to Work Week. Day 1 was much more fun. Day 2 was OK except for the butt-hurting thing. Day 3. All I can say of day 3 is ouch. My tush feels much better with my super padded seat plus padded bike shorts. But almost the entire rest of me hurts or is completely worn out. The worst is my shoulders, from pulling on the handlebars as I climb up (small) hills and make my way over rocks and felled branches on single track. I guess I should have remembered that this would happen, but I didn't. Surprisingly, my legs hurt the least, they're just tired of all the work. As am I. I plan to keep going, but I'm so tired.

On Monday, I had a plan for today: (all on my bike) take Max to school, go to work, meet a friend for lunch, go to violin lesson, pick up Max at school, go home. HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! What a nut job! I did go with Max to school today, but S pulled him on the trail-a-bike (thankyouthankyouthankyou), and I did climb the hill to work. And I will be biking home. But that's it. I'm going home, picking up the car, then I'll go to violin and pickup Max.

We got to do the bike-to-breakfast this morning. Once again, Max was so excited! He was awake at 6am, got dressed in a flash, and was so happy to be riding his trail-a-bike to school. We stopped at City Hall for bagels and orange juice. The nice people there were giving out Hawaiian leis to all bike riders (one woman was chasing them down as they stopped at the light). They also gave Max an apple and a power bar for later. The ride to school was nice, but only because S was the one pulling Max.

I keep thinking back to high school, when I ran track. Sprints, the 400-yd almost killed me every single time I did it. At the beginning of each track season, I would arrive with absolutely no off-season training. The first week would be pure hell (kinda like this week), the next week would be a little better, then after that it would be a constant low level of pain. I'm much older now, so maybe it will take me more than 2 weeks to feel better? I think I could keep this up if I knew it would get better. Since it always did in track, and then again in crew (rowing) in college, I feel pretty certain that it will here too. But then my body says OH YEAH? SHALL I REMIND YOU OF THE PAIN HERE?

And then I tell my body to shut up, what does it know? Except with age it's getting harder to out-shout it.

Bike to Work Week, day 2

In our continuing saga of Bike to Work Week, we awoke this morning to this:

A couple of inches of snow. Undaunted, I was still going to bike to work, right after my 90 minute dentist appointment for crown prep. We found out that school was delayed by 2 hours, which for kindergarten means it's cancelled because kindergarten is only 3 hours long. So there were a few more hours at home than planned, a drive to drop Max at a play date, then riding to work.

By then it had stopped snowing and was a bit warmer and more pleasant. The urban trail wasn't too muddy, I didn't get a skunk stripe up my back. Those are the good points. The bad? Man oh man does my butt hurt. After picking up Max from his play date, we hightailed it over to the bike shop and picked up a new soft, squishy, gel-filled seat for me. I'll report tomorrow on whether it helps or not.

Tomorrow is supposed to be sunny and warm. And it's bike to breakfast day! Yay!

Bike to Work Week, day 1

Art by Karen Knorowski, click picture to go to FlagstaffBiking.org

This week is Bike to Work Week in my town and in lots of other cities across the US and the world. This ties in well with a Low Carb(on) Diet that we're on with a bunch of other friends (more on that later), one of the things we're trying to do is to reduce the amount that we drive to reduce the amount of carbon we put into the atmosphere.

BTWW is fun, with lots of activities planned. Today was the kickoff ride around the downtown center, with some breakfast goodies at the end. And then a bike-police escort to school! Officer Dave's bike was complete with red and blue flashing lights and a neat little siren! Very cool for the kids. I think that Max was the only kid there with training wheels. There were others about the same age, but they were on trail-a-bikes (which we'll do the next time too). He did really well, riding 3.8 miles total. He just rides slow; he has training wheels so he has no need to go fast, and this was a much longer ride than he was used to. We were bringing up the rear of the opening bike parade and had two traffic wranglers, the bigwig in biking in Flagstaff as our personal cheerleader, and a police pickup truck keeping all traffic back as we slowly brought up the rear. Happily, everyone in cars was really nice. No one honked or tried to jump the bike line. On the ride to school we weren't able to keep up with the police escort; after we crossed the main busy street with everyone else, we stopped, rested, and walked a lot. But we made it to school in time, just as the kids were going inside from the playground, and everyone cheered as we came into the parking lot. Max was tired but really excited about his adventure. He did request a ride home in the car, though.

After dropping him off at school, I biked to work. Unfortunately, I work at the top of a 400-ft. hill. It's not too bad to walk up, but biking...that's another story. The road is pretty steep. Lots of people at work make a real effort to conquer this hill. And I think that many succeed. But me, I take the back way, up the urban trail (nice wide, woodchipped trail through the forest, no fumes, deer for company). I biked until my lungs were working serious overtime and my heart rate was way past "training" and into the "call the paramedics" range, then got off and walked the rest of the way up. It was so pleasant. I arrived at work tired but not peel-me-off-the-floor exhausted, and was able to actually work while I was there! I have biked all the way up before, but then I just lay on the floor for two hours and don't do anything. Not very useful. Especially since we had a friend of Max's over for a playdate today. I didn't want to be so tired that I would turn on the stove burners and tell them to make themselves lunch while I crawled into bed.

Tomorrow it's supposed to rain, but I have rain gear (because I'm married to my husband, who for some reason always seems to hike in the rain), so we'll see what happens. Then Wednesday is Bike to Breakfast day, with free breakfast stops all around downtown. Thursday is Bike to School day. I'm planning to bike every day this week. Who knows, with luck this may become a habit.