Semester Personal Project

My baby, my road bike

I have had my own road bike for the past 3 years. It is a beautiful, classic Trek 1200 in red, white and blue. But I have only always exclusively used this bike for team rides with my Little 500 team, or for racing in triathlons and such. I have only always rode around a cinder track with a fixed gear bike, or rode up hills just to go back down again. I had never attempted riding my bike in street clothes. My bike does not have a basket, a squishy seat, or a bell. But most importantly I had never ridden my bike for the sole purpose of getting from point A to point B.

But this summer, I interned with the Bloomington Commission on Sustainability and decided to try biking to City Hall from my home on 3rd and Grant St. After realizing how much faster biking is compared to walking (crazy idea right?), I started biking to work, to the library, to the Union, all summer long. So I want to take this challenge further for the rest of the semester as my personal project. 

 

This is the kind of riding I am used to
(Little 500 Qualifications 2010)

My plan is bike/walk to wherever I am going as much as possible. I will allow myself one car trip per week for instances where it is too far/unsafe to bike. Since I will only be allowed to use my car once a week, I will have to chain trips if need be, allowing me to only use the car once (that is if I even need to). I will look into a certain mile radius around my home that will challenge me to use my bike instead of my car for all of those short trips that most Americans use their cars for. I plan on looking back into my credit card statements to see how much I have spent on gas each month and equate that to greenhouse gases and emissions, and then see how much I can save in the upcoming months. 

 Throughout the semester I plan on blogging about active transportation options in Bloomington (I worked on some with Jacqui Bauer this summer), common issues that come up with bike transportation, the best way to go grocery shopping via bike, additional bike expenses, and the best bike routes from my experiences. Overall, I want to see if I can turn myself (and my road racing bike) into a bike commuter.



The kind of cyclist I was (Little 500 2010 in the light blue)

The kind  cyclist I am right now (Chicago Triathlon 2012)









And the kind of cyclist I hope to be....
(This is obviously not an actual picture of me)