Christina Goes Carless

There’s no denying it: if WheelieSchatz* were a woman she’d be a big, curvaceous, sexy beast. And like all beautiful women, this makes her just a bit more high-maintenance, though worth the extra effort. While not a fat tire bike, the frame of my beloved Electra Townie Commute 8D   is quite a bit thicker (and heavier) than the frame of most bikes, at least from what I've observed. When faced with obnoxiously thick bike stand rails, locking my bike securely becomes quite the challenge. Granted, my bike came with a pretty awesome Arbus frame lock , possibly because the designers (engineers?) at Electra saw this dilemma coming. It’s a snazzy device, too. It works by locking the wheel so that even if someone did take the bike they couldn’t ride it.    For most people that’s probably enough, especially considering I don’t park my bike at particularly high-risk locations. Still, I spent enough years as a crime reporter and currently spend enough time on Nextdoo...

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...

As brand-new bike people go, I'd say my hubby and I pretty well equipped when it comes to bike gear. Not because we had tons of money to just go out and buy it, we didn't. But once the decision to go carless was made, every paycheck I would crunch the numbers and figure out what Bike Thing we needed I could squeeze into that pay cycle. Sometimes it was a larger purchase, like a (as in, one) Kyroptonite U-lock  . Another week it was a CO2 tire filler thingy ; the actual cartridges came weeks later. The first thing we bought was a bicycle pump with a tire repair kit and that was four months before we went carless and six months before we got our bikes. I seriously considered suggesting a celebratory dinner the week we pulled off decent bungee cords. Slowly but surely, our Bike Stuff shelf in the garage began to fill up. Once we had our bikes and figured out what else we needed, we got that stuff, too. But this post will focus on the preparatory gear, as it were. Wh...

A couple posts ago I recounted a frustrating and discouraging bus experience, and while I think it’s important to be completely honest in this blog about my transition to carelessness, I’m concerned I may have given the impression I don’t support or endorse Phoenix’s Valley Metro system. Nothing could be further from the truth. I love Phoenix and frequently tell anyone who asks about being carless how great Phoenix’s public transportation system is.  I defend the city’s transit system ad nauseum online on multiple social media platforms including Quora, Facebook and Nextdoor. I point naysayers towards My Sidewalk forums  asking for user feedback and whenever possible give concrete examples of how that feedback is integrated with the city’s transit plans. So it seems like a post listing everything I respect and like about the city’s public transit system is in order.  Scroll down for the listcicle; keep reading for the context. Why people think it suck...

I've already rhapsodized about the childlike bliss of rediscovering bike riding in a previous post , so I'll try to rein that in this time. But now that the Hubby and I have had our bikes for a couple weeks, suffice it to say I love biking more with every ride, even though I did take a few (well, three to be exact) minor tumbles as I learned to adjust to my Electra Townie Commute 8D 's step-through frame. The Hubby got the Electra Loft 7i , which suits him uncannily well. If you'd like to know more about riding that bike, let me know and I'll have him write a guest post. The Bike As always, allow me to remind readers that I am not a "serious" cyclist, just a girl trying to go carless. I am, however, a conscientious consumer and chronic researcher, so long before we turned in our 2014 Nissan LEAF I had spent countless hours researching bikes that would be best for my urban commuter/errand-running/ we're-serious-picnickers needs. But first,...

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...