Christina Goes Carless

If anything proves the folly of hubris, it's riding a bike again after nearly 20 years. Sure, my confidence has improved since those first rocky weeks , and I've begun to think of my bike not only as my main form of transportation, but a perfectly natural one as well. I'm confident enough to kind of tilt a bit for fun when coasting (because I'm basically still a 10-year-old, in case you couldn't tell), often ride with just one hand and am far more confident about stopping. Still, that's not to say I'm not still adjusting. About a month and a half ago (Life's been busy, so obviously I'm way behind on my blog) I got cocky and paid the price. So did WheelieSchatz. I was riding off a mini-curb that couldn't be more than three inches high into a parking lot. The parking spaces had curb stops but I thought, " Pshaw, I can slip through those, easy. I'm like a master bicyclist now, right? " Except not. Perhaps inevitably, I missed t...

It’s surprisingly difficult to find a basic bicycle maintenance class in the greater Phoenix metro area. Even before we got our bikes, I asked several shops if they offered or knew of one and was mostly met with shrugs or vague allusions to classes that apparently “used to be put on.” Undaunted, I uber-Googled and eventually found Bike Saviours , a nonprofit bike shop, tool share and all-around phenomenal cyclist resource in Tempe, Arizona. From spare parts to a weeks-long workshop during which you can build your own bike from scratch , Bike Saviours has just about anything a cyclist in need could want. That includes answers to questions, too. Not surprisingly, Bike Saviours also offers a four-hour long basic bicycle maintenance class usually held on the last Saturday of the month .  And so on a beautiful Saturday morning in January, the Hubby and I rode our bikes to a bus stop, rode the bus to the light rail, rode the light rail to Tempe and finished the trip wit...

Being carless isn’t all healthy walks and eco-savings . The truth is sometimes it can just plain suck. Two recent bad experiences I’ve had have underscored this, though I’m still trying to remain positive. But I want this blog to be an exercise in a loose form of radical honesty , so it’s only right to post about the negative experiences as well. So, without further ado I present the cluster of what should’ve been a no-transfer, 15-minute ride turning into a two-hour ordeal. The jarring reality check of an unplanned stop A couple of weeks ago I was riding down Thomas Road from 40 th Street (i.e., the gym) to home, which means my destination was Thomas and 52 nd Street. It’s a short ride, with relatively few stops and the walk home from the stop in front of the slightly sketchy Shell station on 52 nd Street and Thomas is mere tenths of a mile. My short, nomally direct route. Today, however, the bus driver abruptly turned right off of Thomas Road and pulled...

What this blog IS This blog chronicles the (mis)adventures of an unathletic, overweight, clumsy woman in her mid-30s going carless in Phoenix, Arizona. That may not seem like a blog-worthy big deal, but I haven’t ridden a bike in any real sense in at least 20 years and haven't had to use public transport since I was a teenager. I'm also not great at reading maps and by "not great" I mean "totally incompetent". I am  pretty handy, being a fountain pen tinkerer and take-apart-the-toaster kind of gal, so I'm actually looking forward to learning about bike maintenance, but I suspect there will still be plenty of surprises in store. I'd like this blog to be useful to other people considering going carless who may not already be an avid cyclist. Whatever I learn, and how I learn it, you'll learn too by reading this blog. To prepare for this rather major transition, I’ve been doing a lot of research. That in and of itself has been an ey...