Two-Mile Bike Challenge: Getting Creative

I almost called this post “Cheating?”  Because I felt like I was cheating during some of last week.

First, on Sunday, I messed up and forgot to not drive.  Then on Monday, I had to take my daughter to an event at the local Masonic lodge. I’d thought about biking, but in the end, it came down to a safety decision. There’s no bike route to get there, unless you go a long way around. We’d have been biking on the shoulder or on the sidewalk in the dark, uphill, on a freeway overpass.  Or on a narrow path under a freeway, if we went the other way around. So we drove.  It was probably just as well. Someone purposely bent the antenna on our car while were inside; who knows what they might have done to a bike.

On Tuesday, I drove to a Girl Scout leader meeting, which was more than two miles away. I then used the “combining trips” strategy and stopped at the grocery store on my way back. Hey, I was out anyway. Combining trips really is a recommended strategy for saving gas and reducing emissions. So I feel pretty good about that workaround.

And the rest of the week was just commuting. Honestly, I don’t seem to run that many errands, so I didn’t need to plan extra bike rides. I do still need to make a grocery trip this week; weather permitting, I’ll stop on my way home tomorrow. By bike.