How to enjoy a sunny semi-holiday: Go on an 11-mile bicycle ride across the city!

Now, I know quite a number of serious bike riders pedal more than 40 miles most days. But the farthest I’d gone on my pink townie was just 6 or so miles — until today.

Today I learned that Presidents Day is an excellent day to go car-free. The impetus for the trip was the fact that my bike was still in Santa Monica, despite the fact that I moved to West Hollywood nearly five months ago. My friend Sara Bayles — The Daily Ocean blogger — was bike-sitting for me because there’s no place to keep a bike in my tiny West Hollywood apartment.

But my boyfriend had space for my bike at his place, and serendipitously, he managed to break the chain on his own bike last week. So we walked to Santa Monica Blvd., loaded his chainless bike on the Metro Rapid 704 bus, was forced off the bus prematurely because it was a short line that didn’t go all the way to Santa Monica, got on the Big Blue Bus 2 and continued down Santa Monica, got back off again at 26th, and walked down a block to Helen’s Cycles, where the bike was given a new chain in under 10 minutes for just $16 and change!

Then we biked down to Sara’s and all walked the five blocks or so to Thyme for a fresh lunch. Then began the bike ride — down Pearl, then down La Grange, then down Santa Monica Blvd. to West Hollywood.

I’m proud to say that after 11 miles of biking, I feel pretty good! The pace was leisurely — My ride’s a townie, after all — the weather beautiful, and the traffic not too bad, since many people get today off work.

Of course, being a freelance writer, I had a day’s worth of work ahead of me once I was done with the half-day bus-bike adventure. If I were concerned about efficiency alone, moving the bike from Santa Monica to West Hollywood would have been a lot faster with the help of a big car.

But if I’d driven my bike to West Hollywood, I’d be less happy, less healthy, and less excited about life in L.A. Plus, my pink townie wouldn’t have gotten to fulfill its daily destiny as a transportation machine!

What did you do this Presidents Day?

Photo by Michael Dorausch

Tired of the “Valentine’s Day is a horrible example of capitalistic materialism and consumer excess” arguments — and want to do something positive on this day of love? Then try rebooting Valentine’s Day as Generosity Day.

That idea’s the brainchild of Sasha Dichter, who as an experiment, said yes to every request for a month — including appeals for money from panhandlers, street musicians, and philanthropies. “I found it transformative,” writes Sasha — and invites everyone to go do likewise on Valentine’s Day.

What is Generosity Day, exactly? By Sasha’s definition, it’s “one day of sharing love with everyone, of being generous to everyone, to see how it feels and to practice saying ‘Yes.’” How does one “do” Generosity Day? Basically, “say YES to everything that’s asked of you, all day long!”

As a blogger, I’ve already run into a problem with a directive — because the majority of emails I get are from people who are asking me to write about some topic. I get more than 100 emails a day; I cannot write that many posts. If you’re having similar problems with simply saying yes to everything, Sasha has some other great ideas:

* Give money to….a street musician, a homeless person, your favorite charity
* Take old clothes from your closet and give them to goodwill
* Leave a $5 tip for a $2 coffee
* Introduce yourself to someone you see every day but have never said hello to
* Bring in lunch for your co-workers
* Give someone a compliment

Which will you be trying? Feel free to comment here about your Generosity Day experience — or tweet your thoughts with the hashtag #generosityday. The day also has a Facebook page where you can engage with other Generosity Day participants.

Photo by Michael Francis McCarthy

>> 14 sexy sustainable men’s undies. “Nothing kills a mood faster than a dingy pair of overstretched tighty whities (except, perhaps, for the fatal underwear-and-sock combo),” according to Ecouterre, which provides a photo slideshow of green man-drawers to help reset the mood.

>> Bring sexy back while keeping it green. Your Daily Thread’s got tips on greening your sex life, whether you’re celebrating solo or with company.

>> Get wild for Valentine’s Day. The Sierra Club’s Green Life blog points out that green Valentine’s Day gifts can be gifts that keep giving — if they’re donations to help preserve wild spaces through The Sierra Club. What you do in those wild spaces is up to your imagination –

>> Will more people break up with Scientology? Writer-director Paul Haggis (“Crash and “Million Dollar Baby”) broke ties with Scientology after 35 years — and the New Yorker took the occasion to reveal how the basis of the religion’s based on historical falsehoods.

>> Is Valentine’s Day not your favorite holiday? Comfort yourself with this coupon for $2 off 2 organic, fair trade chocolate bars from Alter Eco (PDF).

Photo by CarbonNYC

What’s the greenest bouquet for Valentine’s Day? Whether you’re getting them for yourself or someone else, flower-shopping for environmentalists can be a task fraught with uncertainty. Should you go organic, fair trade, or local? Buy online or get delivery? Opt for live plants or go for silk?

Each option’s got upsides and downsides. Want to buy local at a florist you can walk to? That’ll be great for your local economy — since buying online, whether from national names like FTD or unknown small resellers, usually means your local business is either getting a raw deal or no deal. That’s why Cinda Baxter, the founder of The 3/50 Project, an initiative that encourages people to support their local businesses, urges people to get flowers from local florists.

But even if you walk to your local florist, the flowers you buy are unlikely to have been grown locally. Finding local blooms can be a challenge real challenge in February in most places in the U.S., after all.

Plus — what about the pesticides? Finding a local florist who offers organic flowers is likely to be a challenge — an impossible challenge for some — and non-organic flowers have often been treated with potentially harmful chemicals.

How about fair trade flowers then? The good news with these flowers is that the workers who grew and cut the blooms received fairer wages, as well as some environmental and social benefits. And practically speaking, Whole Foods Market will offer fair trade flowers in its stores this Valentine’s Day, so finding them locally will be easier. However, fair trade means international trade’s involved — which means that just like most flowers given and received on Valentine’s Day, fair trade flowers have a hefty travel carbon footprint.

Should you go for fake silk flowers? Slate looks at that option — and concludes the eco-benefits of that choice is unclear: “it’s impossible to say how many real roses it takes to equal the environmental impact of a bouquet of silk flowers.” What is clear, however, is that dusty fake flowers often don’t necessarily make for a gift that keeps giving, even if they technically last forever. As Slate puts it, “are you seriously considering hauling the same dusty vase of fake flowers out of the closet every year?”

What should you do? If you must have roses, I suggest trying to find a local florist who offers organic or eco-certified blooms as a first option. In L.A., we’ve got Wisteria Flower Shop, which offers organic and Veriflora-certified flowers. But if that search criteria doesn’t turn up anyone in your town, you’ll need to make the tough decision between supporting local businesses by buying conventional flowers from a neighborhood florist — or supporting the organic farming by buying organic flowers online — or supporting fair trade by buying fair trade certified roses.

If you or or your Valentine’s more open to other types of pretty plants, you’ll have more options, especially if you move to California — Ha! Buying truly local (locally grown as well as sold) and organic flowers in February is easier in the Golden State, where certified organic local flowers are sold year round, both online and at farmers markets.

Barring that option — Live, organic plants are gifts that keep giving. One of the favorite gifts I’ve received is a cute basil plant that smelled yummy and tasted even yummier.

Will you be buying flowers for this Valentine’s Day? What option will you choose?

Photo by Liz West