You can reach your goals; I'm living proof

I usually don't set goals.  Maybe something obtuse like, "Read more books!"  But last December I realized that after a full year of stay-at-home-dadding, I had become overweight.  I kept thinking that the trips to the playground with a bucket bike fully of pre-schoolers would do the trick, but it apparently did not.

When I started riding bikes (again) in 2005, I was training for STP and bike commuting, so I started a mileage log which I continued diligently as my bike commuting habit grew stronger.  During that time, my body hit a sweet spot and stayed the same size and shape most of the year.  Yay cycling!  2009 marked the first year where I wasn't counting every mile, which is probably why I was surprised when I got on the scale after Christmas and saw a much larger number than normal.  It was resolution time, and figuring that I had only ridden about 1200 miles in 2009, I set out to ride 2010 miles in 2010.

I don't own any cyclometers, but wanted my data to be relatively accurate.  Most of my bike trips are to/from home, so I made a reference table with distances to places I frequently ride.  The occasional long ride usually gets googlemapped post-ride.  I broke everything out by bike, taking care to separate cargo vs. solo miles.  Cargo miles are almost always transportational, while solo miles are often recreational, but not always.

This method of data logging is helpful when I'm trying to justify why I keep certain bikes or why I should be willing to spend money on maintenance.  My Xtracycle has a ridiculous number of miles on it, but I haven't so much as changed the chain.  Even if I have to replace the entire inexpensively equipped drivetrain for $150 at mile 3000, I'll know that was money well spent since all those miles replaced car trips.

I did so many charity rides this summer, and led enough short weekly training rides, that I met my 2010 goal in early September.  I never reached my weight-loss goal, but I did figure out about how many miles per month it takes for me to break even with my nutella toast and beer consumption habits.  And that's the key folks: finding balance.

The really interesting thing about these stats is that I've racked up 800 miles on cargo bikes alone.  These are the short day-to-day trips that most purely recreational cyclists would probably ignore, or just simply drive a car.

Xtracycle: 335 miles (average trip length: 4.3 miles)

Madsen:   425 miles (average trip length: 3.7 miles)

The best part is that the year isn't over!  There are still plenty of opportunities to pedal to my destination and burn off all of those holiday goodies.

Do you track your cycling miles?  Do you find it motivates you to ride more?  What kind of cycling goals do you have?

Harvest Foods

I was inspired by Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle this spring and have started to dabble more and more into preparing foods at home with seasonal produce. My wife was raised in a "from scratch" kitchen, but I've had to work at it. So here are a few of this season's works-in-progress.


Home-made Pizza
Our tomatoes have finally ripened in the last few weeks, along with my mother-in-laws zucchini crop. You have to take advantage of the bounty. We put both on our homemade pizza last week, along with some left-over broiled chicken, and made a pie for the gods. The crust is easy, just throw all of this into your bread maker (in order) and use the "dough" setting (mine takes 1hr 20min).

1.5 cups lukewarm water
1 T salt
1 T oil (olive is nice)
2 T honey
3.25 cups whole wheat flour
1 T dry yeast
1 t each of dried oregano, basil, thyme, and garlic powder

It makes two 14" crusts, so cut the dough in half and work each onto a lightly floured pizza stone. Convect at 400°F for 8-10 minutes, or until lightly browned. Remove from oven and reduce temp to 350°F. Top each pie with 2 T of your favorite sauce, cheese, fresh veg, nuts, leftovers, and whatever else you can find. Return to oven and convect for 7-15 minutes to desired level of tastiness. I like the cheese to bubble a bit. Allow to cool on the stone for 10 minutes before serving.


Zucchini Bread
We still had zucchini piling up on the counter, so this morning I made a mega batch of zucchini bread. I'll get around to modifying this recipe soon, but needed a baseline. It's from Betty Crocker: Bridal Edition, which I've used quite a bit.

3 cups shredded zucchini (2-3 medium)
1.67 cups sugar
0.67 cups veg oil
2 t vanilla
4 eggs

Mix all of that around, then add:
3 cups all-purpose or whole wheat flour
2 t baking soda
1 t salt
1 t ground cinnamon
0.5 t ground cloves
0.5 t baking powder
0.5 cup each nuts and raisins (optional)

I baked one batch in a stone mini-loaf pan (4 mini loaves) for 55 minutes at 350°F. The other batch was split between two regular stone loaf pans. Those needed 5-10 more minutes, but came out a bit more moist. Allow to cool on a rack before slicing.


The stone pans are great. I try whole wheat flour next time and also sub flax seed meal and/or applesauce for the oil and maybe some of the eggs. Those are my standard tricks.

Next week: COOKIES.

Powered by Grain

My family eats almost an entire loaf of bread every day. Toast with breakfast, sandwiches for lunch, crusty bits at dinner. In fact, most of my bike commutes started with a cup of strong black tea with milk and a slice of sprouted grain toast with butter and honey. The sustaining power of this combination is impressive. Sprouted grain bread can contain twice as much goodness as white bread, so it doesn't take much. The downside is that sprouted grain breads are purchased at a premium, nearly $4/loaf at the grocery store.

I mentioned here that my household had rediscovered their bread machine a few months ago. I finally tried the "dough" setting, opting to bake the bread in the oven in a stoneware bread dish instead of in the machine itself. There were many benefits to this method: thinner, tastier crust; a more consistent density, particularly with the whole wheat; slices of a more reasonable size, and the ability to make more bread in a day. Since my wife broke down a few months ago and bought a sprouter (like this) that works great, my next bread-making endevour will definately involve sprouted grains.

Spring is around the corner (I hope!) and it won't be long before I'll be needing a peanut butter, honey, Nutella sandwich on sprouted grain bread to get me through that first 50 mile ride of the season. What foods keep you going on long rides?

Dude, where's your car?

You may have noticed in the numerous bike photos taken in my garage that there is never a car in there. Don't let me mislead you, Reader, into thinking that I don't own and use a car regularly.

My wife and I each had a vehicle. They fit nicely in our two-car garage. Then I started bussing and carpooling the 14 miles to work in 2003. By late 2004, we had sold the pick-up and kept the hatchback as our shared vehicle. It was great. We saved tons of money on insurance and car payments, and surprisingly put less miles on the hatchback every month than we were before.

However, with our first child on the way in 2005, we decided that we needed to add a vehicle to our fleet with more modern safety features. And, to be honest, we weren't sure how we would juggle commutes and daycare dropoffs with just one car. It didn't seem possible, and, without changing where we lived or worked, it really wasn't possible.

After only 9 months running car-lite, we were back where we started. Two cars. It was easy. We drove more.

But, where are those cars now, you might ask? Well, in the late summer of 2007, after nearly two years of shuttling our daughter to daycare and with a second child on the way, my wife decided to reduce her hours at work and stay home more. After a few months of consistent bike commutes and carpools by me, we proved that the little hatchback was now excessive and sold it to a family friend. When child number two arrived we traded to a minivan so we could haul more people/kids/dogs/things at once and combine more trips. It works for us.

We have been a car-lite, family-of-four for just over a year now, and I can't think of a single time where we were put in a bind because we didn't have a second vehicle. Like many folks, we borrow someone's truck now and then for big hauls, but that's about it.

A few more personal opinions on automobiles and their energy consumption:
1. Not everyone needs to drive an automobile for every trip, even if they own one. We take the bus downtown with the kids on weekdays to the Children's Museum to avoid parking hassles and to teach our children about public transportation. It takes a few extra minutes, but we notice more about our city from our chauffeured seats on the bus.
2. I don't bash on folks that drive inefficient vehicles. Not everyone can afford a new, gas-sipping car. And let's try to look at the big picture here (or at least one interpretation of it) and agree that all cars pollute, even the ones with batteries. Driving a used car into the ground may be a better solution in some cases.
3. Ethanol is wasteful to produce and consume. If you think that running out of crude oil sounds bad, let's imagine running out of food because we eventually become so dependent on burning it to get to the grocery store.
4. I'm not worried about global warming in the short-term. I'm worried about the immediate impact of your tailpipe emissions on the health of my family.
5. The City of Tacoma should charge every resident a fee for on-street parking in the city. It could be collected when you renew your vehicle registration.
6. I worked for an oil company in a group of seven employees. On any given day, four of us vanpooled, carpooled, biked, bused, or telecommuted to work. When friends and relatives would inevitably ask me, "So, why are gas prices so high?" I would have to ask them, "Well, did you drive somewhere today?"
7. Not driving a car from A to B is very patriotic.