sunday adventure

new bag for Monica. Olive green liner

Coyote tan exterior

off shoot of the American River

Bike trailer update

I didn't go to work today so I worked on the bike trailer. Its mostly finished, It just needs some final welding and paint.

Once it was all together I could not help but hook it to the electric bike and take it for a spin. I had it up to about 22mph and could barely tell it was there, just a little rattling on bumps. It handled a lot better than I thought it would. I was doing full speed u turns on our street with no problems.

I cobbled the hitch together with some stuff I had laying around ( some kind of spherical joint/pillow block/ brass bushing thing- a model A ford shock mount bolt and a piece of pipe for the tongue.)

Very happy with the results. I can't wait to start hauling stuff.

bike trailer

My dad was the kind of guy that saved everything, knowing that someday he would need it for something. He had a couple of wheelchairs torn apart in his stash of stuff. He gave me the wheels a couple years back. He thought I could use them to build a bike trailer.

I never really needed a trailer with the xtracycle, but last year we hauled a bunch of bags of compost and potting soil from our local nursery. Plus we get straw bales for mulch from our feed store. Since we don't have a pick up truck we haul it in Monica's car and this leaves a big mess that I end up cleaning. I could get the compost in the xtracycle but the straw bales were to big.

My work is really slow right now so I decided to go for it. I'm trying to use only material I have on hand, It looks like I will only need to buy one short stick of tubing for the tongue and some bolts to hold down the floor. Its pretty heavy but I will be towing it with my electric assist xtracycle. Hopefully next week it will be completely welded, painted and getting put to work.

Community Supported Agriculture

Brian and I have been talking about our plans for this summer's garden. Last summer we took on quite a feat by completely transforming our entire backyard into a garden. We decided, before the summer ended, that we needed to scale it back some. We bit off more than we can chew and it became overwhelming and at times discouraging. We reached a point where we just 'gave up' on it and I don't want that to happen this year. Since we both have full time jobs we need more of a transitional process. We are wanting to gradually ween ourselves off our current jobs while gradually becoming more and more self sufficient.

We haven't decided exactly what we are planting yet but I'm going to refrain from trying to grow a whole produce department in my backyard. For now anyhow.

Since, for the time being, we wont be growing all the produce we want we decided to join Full Belly Farm's Community Supported Agriculture, a local, organic CSA in Guinda, CA. www.fullbellyfarm.com. I'm excited about it and look forward to what this change brings into our lives.

finally a break in the rain

We had a window of no rain on saturday, so we took a ride on the bike trail. We rode about 16 miles and it felt like 65 miles. Definitely need to get in shape.

I just finished a matching set of panniers for my bike

Monica found a mascot for her bike a couple weeks back

On a roll

We've ridden our bikes two out of three days this year! Today was just coffee and groceries but it was fun.

Monica is still rocking the new pannier with no problems.

I rode the xtracycle so I could test out the new bag.

Cappuccino at Temple.

Starting the year off right

We went for a short ride today. We left our house and headed to the american river bike trail. We went west along the river, and took a side trip along the levee to some ponds where we saw some beaver last year. No beaver this time, just a couple of hawks and some ducks.

we took a short section of single track, through a marsh area overgrown with blackberries.

Monica had my new pannier on her bike and the contents stayed nice and dry despite the rain. We stopped at rei to look for a touring book that I've wanted for a while, no book but it was a nice break. Monica fell in the mud while hiking up a hill to cross some train tracks to get back to the bike trail. The weather was nice, it rained most of the way. About 12 miles, it felt nice to get back on the bike and be outside.