Car-free?

I haven't posted in two weeks, wow!  I guess I was just too busy...a friend had some surgery and I was helping out, works been very busy and hectic, leaving me wiped out at night....

Anyway....this is about car-free, not necessarily just bike stuff.  For a week I was driving a car, my friend who had the surgery lent me his to get back and forth more quickly.  I enjoyed the convenience of getting some errands done for sure.  But...an interesting thing happened...I wasn't filled with a desire to be a car driver again.  It was interesting for me.  I started to miss my bike riding.  I did do some errands on my bike last weekend, and getting back "in the saddle" felt really right. 

What I'm trying to say is....this car-free really resonates with me.  I miss the exercise and the quiet time that biking to work provides.  Really looking forward to Monday's ride to work....

Listening to the most amazing podcast right now....It's a dj in Vegas that a co-worker, former co-worker  :o(, got me into, the dj, Faarsheed, is a friend of his.  This link is to his mixes....one of the mixes that I dare you to listen to and not start swaying back and forth to a bit is 008-1.  Quite a difference from opera, but oh, so, good..........

RANDOM CAR-FREE/ BIKE-COMMUTING THOUGHTS

---The reason I really wanted to start writing was to do two things....1) to chronicle this journey from very casual bike, very frequent car drive to a car free bike riding everywhere enthusiast...to watch my own change, monitor ideas, etc.  and 2) hopefully to help other people who are considering either giving up their car, or going car-lite....
So going forward...I’m going to try and add tips, ideas, etc...that even if the idea of getting rid of the car never enters your mind, maybe some things will register as possibilities to incorporate in your own commuting/errand-doing, moving about town meanderings.

---I like doing errands on the weekends on my bike...It feels adventurous to have to plan them out, what place to stop first, do they have a bike rack to lock my bike up, then what place is next, etc...
But...it’s sort of easy really.  For me it’s usually farthest away first....The bank, then Rite-Aid, Vons, the quick easy stuff...no real need for a car, or moreso, no real need for a trunk to put stuff in.

---I really am liking the evening ride home home, even in the dark.  I hated it the first few days last week after the time change.  But now it feels so cool, relaxing actually.   Of course, I do have three lights which helps a lot! 

---I think what helped me shift into liking the night riding was three different things....
1- a good friend told me to pretty much “just do it” and get used to it. 
2- turning it into an adventure, not an inconvenience....(I wrote about that before)
3-- and this was the biggest...I made a conscious decision to just take my time, go more slowly on the way home and to be more cautious.  I figured out, once I looked at my hesitation about riding in the dark, was that it was all ready just fear.  Our old friend fear rears its ugly head again...

---I was singing yesterday on the way home from work....feeling good, alive, connected to everything....it was a great old Brazilian song I learned years ago, NEGUE, by Maria Bethania....LOVE, LOVE, LOVE that song...reminded me of my wonderful friend Jan back in Baltimore.  (lots of love to you Jan!)

---While I was singing....( I find i do it a lot actually, LOL...) I came upon three teenagers skateboarding by....all laughing etc...one said, “nice, dude...”  It was actually so cool..I just joined in and laughed along.  THAT FELT GOOD. 

---I’m noticing slowly some changes to how I ride...and I’m liking it.  Without really thinking about it...I now, after a dead stop, while start standing up and pedal to get some speed up...Not all the time, but I just started doing it without realizing it.  It’s like it makes me feel more in sync with the bike.  Hard to explain besides just saying that it feels really like I’m part of the bike, together.

Riding on the bus, riding on the bus.....

I'm feeling so good today about this car free experience.  A big part of that was redisovering bus riding, how easy it is....and actually, how convenient too.  I had an idea in my mind that San Diego was so behind the loop on this.  I know it is behind other awesome public transit cities like SF and DC, but for my needs now....I've got a bunch of options.

Started off this morning....I needed to go into Hillcrest from my house, BEFORE going to work.  I could have ridden my bike....but I'm not up for adding another 5 miles (to and fro) to an already 9 mile commute.  Soooooo....thanks to Google Map's awesome feature of giving the option of "public transit" in their directions, it was a piece of cake.  Need to start carrying my latest book I'm reading in my back pack for just such an occasion...but this morning was fine just staring out the window watching the sky start to show signs of daybreak.  VERY frickin' cool.

So speaking of Google Map's, there are two points I want to make: one...there are so many features on there that are totally awesome, once you start playing around with it.  Here's a great link to an article on a bike blog about some features for finding bike routes on there, using the "drag route" feature.   And two:  I checked in later in the day before heading home....I wanted to play with the bus routes from home to work and back, so I don't have to feel 100% dependent on a bike, when I'm not feeling great, or we get the inevitable winter rain...And.....I found a bus route, the 960 that goes very close to my house, and practically lets me off a block from my office!!!  What a relief!  I hadn't been keying in "commute rush hours" when I looked before....so I would only get a very long, very circuitous route....this one will work perfectly!  I am very very very glad to hear that.  I am going to test it out one day next week!

Ending on this....one of the all-time best Homer Simpson quotes:

I saw this movie about a bus that had to SPEED around a city, keeping its SPEED over fifty, and if its SPEED dropped, it would explode! I think it was called “The Bus That Couldn’t Slow Down.”