First, apologies (again) for my absence in posting.  Things are so busy with work and Bici that when I get home I have nothing left in me to write.  I do miss you all, and am hopeful that things slow down soon.

Last week, I celebrated 2 big days…my 31st Birthday and my one year anniversary of being car free!  It was any other day…riding around to meetings and friends houses.  Nothing special about the day, in fact it practically came and went before I remembered.

What has being car free taught me?

That my friends rock.  When it rains, when I need a ride home from the Greyhound station, when I need to borrow a car to head to a conference 2 hours away…they always show up.  It is amazing.

That Birmingham’s public transport really does suck.  In one year I have yet to take it.  The reason?  I can’t figure the damn thing out!  The maps are all separate and trying to get from one end of town to the next takes hours and multiple bus transfers (on a less than timely bus “schedule”).  For those people who don’t even have bikes, I am not sure how they do it.

That the hottest summer in history makes for a lot of sweaty meetings.  Seriously, I spent most of the summer wiping sweat from my brow while talking to people about food security!

That I can eat as much food and drink as much beer as I want and not worry.  Sure, I have gained some weight, but I still look the same (muscle weight, baby!) and feel great.

That your gas costs go down, but your food intake goes WAY up.  I eat so much food.

That I am not sure I ever want a car!!

Thanks everyone for all of your support.  This year has been great and terrible and I never regret selling my car.  Freedom!!!

My date and I decided to ride over to the botanical gardens for a picnic and a nice walk around.  He’d never been there before, but it is one of my favorite places in Birmingham. It’s so wonderfully woodsy and green, with a great variety of gardens and trails to venture through. A great alternative to a backyard, with much less work!

We spent a few hours wandering around, which was a bit of a challenge in our clipless shoes. Eventually, we decided to hit the road for our next stop – cupcakes and ice cream, hell yes.

Unfortunately I didn’t get a good before picture; we were a little too excited about our delicious booty to even think about documentation. After devouring, we hung out for another hour waiting for our milky sugary food to digest before heading back. Our trip was a short 12 miles, but it was perfect. We got home just as a storm hit.

Image stole from here. Want!

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I got the wheelset via the co-op. Benefits, people. Go volunteer at your local cooperative and reap the rewards! The tires were originally of the cyclocross/randonneuring style, but they didn’t fit well under the fenders so I switched for road slicks.  Also, my front fender got in a little accident and I have yet to get that fixed and back on the bike.

There have been some hang ups with the handle bars – the ones I originally got from Velo Orange were too big for the Brooks grips that I found on killer sale while in Minneapolis.  I decided the grips were way cooler than the bars so I switched at first to some mustache bars from friend.  They were kind of ghetto in that they had been chopped off for something or another, so the grips didn’t fit all the way to the end.  I just had the bars changed out the other day to these straight titanium ones from the co-op that fit the grips much better.  These probably won’t be the ones I stay with because the handling is a little uncomfortable for me, but it’s definitely a step in the right direction.

ChrisKingChrisKingChrisKing! Why is Chris King such a big deal? Who knows, I’m just in it for the cool points. And pretty points.

BrooksBrooksBrooksBrooks!  I got the seat post and fenders from Velo Orange, love ‘em.

ChrisKingChrisKingChrisKing! I found this bottom bracket in Minneapolis as well. I think I was way too excited for the sales dudes, but they also appreciated my enthusiasm. We talked some cross. It was fun.
The cranks were the final piece I needed, and I got them from a shop in Winston-Salem, NC. At that point I was desperate to finish it and realizing how much freaking money I spent, so I just grabbed the cheapest single speed cranks I could get. They still had to be special ordered. The anticipation was killing me.

Spacers were needed to fit the wheels as single speed – I found these while traveling around the beaches of North Carolina.

TAAADAAAAAHHHH! the finished product. I have a ridiculous hxc look on my face for some unknown reason, but I must say that Whitey 2 is one sexy bitch.  I am having a wonderful time riding around with my new friend!

(if you’re wondering about the runonwords in places, it’s a ghetto solution because I do not know how wrangle naughty wordpress into text arrangement submission. Any wordpress designers out there want to tackle our problem?)

Another reason I love my cycling life…the boys at Bici.  Seriously, they are awesome and we have a great time with them.  They are dedicated, hard working, funny and pretty damn good looking. 90% of the time it is just them and us, and while it took Anna and I some time to get used to it, we all get along just fine.

They say things like “wicked bike”, we say things like “Aaawww, that bike is so pretty!”.  We make dirty jokes alongside them and they wait to make sure we are safe when locking up the shop.

We sometimes find ourselves calling them “our boys”.  I love it.  Thanks guys!!

1. My commute is about a mile of completely flat terrain – my building is freezing so when riding home I don’t break a sweat even though it’s 100 degrees. Amazing.
2. Very little traffic – my building is small and the only residential unit on the block in an area void of much life. I rarely worry about cars flying by or not giving me room. If they are there, it’s for a reason. I used to not like living in such a solitary area, but now I relish my time of solitude,and it’s still just a few blocks of easy road to my favorite places.
3. The industrial wasteland is strangely beautiful – I see photographers and videographers around my street all the time. I saw my friend Seth of Green Block Productions filming a guy walking down the street with a guitar yesterday!

This bike rack was specifically for the bar.  Insane!

I returned to Portland for another work trip, and this time I was able to spend time with friends here and enjoy the town a little more.  I stayed in the Ace Hotel, which has bikes available free for guests!  Needless to say, I took full advantage of that perk.

I acquired a pretty wild steed with a coaster brake.  It took me a while to figure that one out.  I rode around for a minute the day after I arrived, and then the next day it was an all afternoon/evening affair.  There are many different styles of accessible bike routes around town, and here’s a few that I experienced.

First would be the full bike lane.  This was right by the hotel, and it was awesome.  I’m sure drivers aren’t too happy about it, but who cares about them?  I love love loved it.

This would be more of a bike route.  Cars can drive on the lanes, but I take the bike symbol to mean, “hey bikes, do whatever the hell you want to!”.  There were also speed bumps every few meters to reduce car speed.  A transplant friend from Birmingham who rode around with me one night said that this prevents many cars from driving on these roads at all.  That made me happy.

Here would be the Springwater Corridor, a bike/pedestrian path.  I rode on this around the end of the work day on Friday, so there were a ton of people out riding.  It was great seeing all the different types of riders that make use of this path.  I enjoyed this path while going to check out a bike shop that carries a frame I’m considering purchasing for Cyclocross, by Traitor Cycles.  The shop was right off the path – a small business with the owner and one other guy wrenching and hanging out.  Lovely!  The bikes were brilliant. I was also told to go check out another shop on the other side of the path because they carried Vanilla and Sweetpea bikes, so I headed over there next.  Unfortunately I didn’t find either of those at the shop, but it was a much bigger operation that was packed full of folks buying gear, checking out the awesome bikes, and getting work done.  I was interested to see the many (and I mean many, there’s tons of shops in town) different styles of bike shops around.

I also rode a bit on the Waterfront bike loop, another bike/pedestrian path.  People everywhere were enjoying their bikes in the picturesque weather.

These types of bike routes were mostly what I rode on.  I wound up on a few larger roads that were a little intimidating, comparatively, but you know I’m not spoiled enough to have really been frightened.  I actually enjoyed knowing that everywhere in Portland isn’t perfect.  Who likes perfection anyway?