in which i bike to work, and consider what it means to be "green."

well, i am back on the bike this week. i kicked off the bike to work revival about 2 weeks ago, but due to many interferences (illness, laziness, stupidity) i only rode in once each week. but this week! oh this week was different. i rode my bike in THREE TIMES - count 'em, three times! monday, wednesday and today. i hope that soon i will be in good enough shape to ride in everyday! i know, i know, that sounds awfully ambitious. and maybe it is. but it feels nice to say it.

already i can tell that my legs are on their way to getting rock hard and toned again. a welcome change after a long winter of sudden flabbiness. but, then again, my legs are always the first to show any reaction to exercise. one lap around the track and they start to wither away. which bugs the hell out of me, because my legs can often border on chicken-y looking and bony. they don't need to shrink much, let me tell you. just firm up. i mean, i can hardly keep knee socks up at my knees and those sexy knee-high boots? they either slump down and bag at the ankles or my bony shins bang around inside them like bell-clappers. but my doughy gut? i could jog all day, everyday, on a treadmill and i would still have a squidgy belly. even when i ran 4 days a week, training for races, i still had a mild gut. oh well. a body is a body is a body, i suppose. you can only do so much with the one you are dealt. but dang! it gets me mad.

i feel pretty good about biking in. i feel "green" about it. i bought the bike used, which kept a bike out of the landfill. i save on gas, too. driving to work, i went through a full tank about every 2 weeks. that's about $25 a week. i betcha i can double that by commuting 3 days a week.

but i can't lie to you. that's not why i bought the bike. two motivators fuel most of my actions in life:

1) first and foremost, i am CHEAP. some might say frugal, but i think sometime i am just mostly cheap. i might have some money in my pocket, but i get a sick feeling in my stomach at the thought of shelling out for something expensive. sure, i fritter away money all. the. time. but i like to get a big bang for my buck. if i am going to drop $200 on clothes, i'd rather do it at marshalls or value village and get 17 groaning sacks of things instead of a few well-chosen pieces to last a lifetime. i am too fickle for lifetime fashion. so when it came to getting a bike, i could have spent $400 at the bike shop and got a really nice new bike. or! i could spend $170 and get a neat, unique bike that i absolutely adore. i've always been a bargain-hunter. i live for the challenge. for a time after college, with my first paychecks burning in my greedy paws, i started to drift away from the hunt. but grad school quickly slapped me awake and rekindled the cheapskate within. and it's back to stay, i'm afraid.

2) in conjunction with being cheap, i enjoy having unique things. sure i buy clothes at target and furniture at ikea, but i try to hide them with other things that look more interesting. not like everyone else's. unless you have a lot of money to buy designer items, i find the best way is to patiently dig through thrift stores, junk shops, and stores that sell out of season or overstock.

so yeah! just pretend you didn't hear that, and you can think that i am just making some very good environmental choices by buying used items instead of new.


other "green" practices that we are doing at our house:

- recycling (we've always recycled the obvious stuff, like newspapers and bottles and such, but i am trying to get better. like the plastic thingies that grape tomatoes come in. cracker boxes. smelly cat food cans. things like that.)

- compact fluorescent bulbs (when i replace a burned out old bulb, i buy compact fluorescents to replace them)

- vegetable garden (i like to garden, but i think some of the cheapskate is very excited about not spending so much on tomatoes and gol-durned red peppers this summer.)

- judicious use of air-conditioning

upcoming projects:

- rain barrel to collect all this freaking rain, to water the garden

- compost bins for kitchen waste, to feed the garden

- insulation under the house to save energy (ahem, cheapskate wins again...)