Whatever Happened to the Car-Free Challenge?

S went off on Science Safari with a bunch of K-12 teachers, exploring the science of Utah, from particle physics to microbiology to astronomy. That was a week of riding around in a bus, with a less-than-stellar bus driver. That’s enough to make anyone start to hope that the combustion engine is on it’s way out! ; )

During that week, J stuck to the car-free challenge, riding his bike everywhere he went, stopping off at the grocery store, and so on. So far so good.

Then Trinket got sick. Again. This happens every August. Arg. She stopped eating and drinking. So we needed to get out there and check on her two or three times per day. But the car is still in the shop! Out comes old red, the 1989 F250 pickup truck that we keep around to haul the horse trailer. It typically sees about 2000 miles per year. This week, it went about 1/10 of that, all at once. Plus, J needed to go to a conference in Cedar City, so he rented a car from motor pool to get down there.

So we didn’t do so well for a week or so...

But then! Yesterday, we went down to C and N’s house for dinner. They live about 8.24 miles from us, according to Mapquest. The 640 bus goes right past their house, but the last bus coming back is at 7:15 on Saturday. That makes for a short, un-fun evening!

So instead, we rode bikes down to the train station, took Front Runner to get across the appalling mess of I-15/Riverdale Road/Hill Air Force Base. (We have yet to find anything remotely like a good way to get through there on a bicycle.) We got off the train at the Roy station, and rode bikes the remaining 4 miles to C&N’s house. All told, that’s about 7 miles on the bikes and 8 miles on the train. It took about 1:15 minutes to get there. Ironically, we average about 12-15 mph on the bikes on that type of terrain, and so could have gotten there in under an hour if there was a good way to go...

We left their house at 8:30, so that we could catch the train that would hook us up with the 603 bus coming back up the hill. We are still nervous about riding up the big hills in the dark... also, had too much wine to feel like riding bikes up the 36th street hill at 10 at night!

The 603 bus, it turns out, change its route at night (at least it does at the moment, apparently because of construction). So we wound up getting out at the Smith’s, and coming home across campus---can’t you just see the headline now? “Two University Professors get Bicycle DUI’s on Campus” We laughed all the way across campus as we wove our way through construction zones, deadfall from Friday’s windstorm, and the random insertion of stairs into walkways.

Did it take longer? Yes. Definitely. A lot longer than driving. But did we enjoy ourselves more? Yes, we did. And no ill-effects from our wine-drinking and pasta-eating this morning, since it took us an hour and 45 minutes to get home, and an hour of that was riding bikes. Nothing like exercise to help you metabolize butter, alcohol and carbohydrates!

Oh, and I have to say that there’s nothing like riding your bikes across a college campus at 10:30 at night to set your mind right and make you feel like you are 22 and invincible!

Today, bikes to the barn (Trinket is doing better---she is on some ulcer medications that seem to be helping). Hooray! And the car is still in the shop! If we didn’t know better, we’d think it was sulking... ; )