[Part of my challenge to give something away every day for 29 days, again]
There are bicycle people who own like 10 bikes and pick one out for the day the way I pick out shoes. I am not one of these people, because even just having two bikes kinda stressed me out a bit — though they look like cute friends in the pic above –
But I’m really a one bike kind of girl. After I got the chainless Dynamic bicycle to review a few weeks ago, I started having trouble sleeping at night because I was afraid a bike’d get stolen: twice as many bikes = twice the chance for theft. Okay — I didn’t really have trouble sleeping, but theft issues did cross my mind more than usual –
I’m also someone who thinks the bike should just be there for me to serve my needs, as opposed to someone who enjoys looking after the bike, maintaining it, even dusting it. I do those things once in a while, but somewhat grudgingly…. and two bikes meant twice the work.
Anyway — Today I took the cool black-n-white chainless bike down to Bikerowave, the awesome DIY bike shop that helped me put the bike together to begin with — and donated it to the Bikerowave cause. I was going to keep it longer, but honestly, I wasn’t using the second bike — I never even put batteries in the front light that Bikerowave helped me install, opting instead to just take my pink townie out at night. The Dynamic bicycle is a v. cool, quiet ride — I just already had my basket and lights all set up on my townie and I guess I’m a creature of habit –
What Bikerowave will do with the bike: According to Art, one of the inventory people at Bikerowave, “The Bikerowave plans on keeping this bike as part of our “stable” of shop-bikes (ideally we want to have a variety of about 5 or 6) that we’ll keep around to loan-out or rent, etc.” I’m not quite sure who these shop bikes get rented or loaned out to — but hopefully it’ll be used to make good things happen.
Thanks to Dynamic Bicycles for letting me try out the bike, and for agreeing to donated it to Bikerowave.
View my page on 29-Day Giving Challenge
Hi. Please join the Bicycle to Work! LinkedIn networking group. Members pledge that they will try to ride their bicycle to work or on an errand at least once a week. Although the benefits should be obvious, let me outline them here.
Right now people in the industrialized world are facing two very grave problems: obesity and a growing scarcity of oil. Compounding this problem is the new food shortage brought about, in part, by the conversion of food cropland to bio-fuel crop production. Most people feel powerless to help, but there is one thing that we can do. Ride our bicycles to work.
If everyone would agree to ride their bikes to work one day per week we could cut oil consumption by as much as 10-15%. No one would argue that riding a bike burns more calories than driving the car. Although popular politically right now, most bio-fuels consume more energy than they produce. We would be much better to eat those bio-crops then use our own energy to transport us around.
So spread the word. Make it a movement! Bicycle to work one day a week and do your part to cut back obesity and the overuse of oil and precious cropland.
Just go to my profile at http://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffreylstevenson and you can click on the group to be included. While you are there, don’t forget to ask to link to my network of more than 9,000,000 like-minded professionals. I accept all invitations and look forward to meeting you.
Jeff
Comment by jeff — June 8, 2008 @ 6:57 am