I am a few days from hitting 10 weeks with only using one car for our family. My Honda fit has not moved since September 30th, it’s brake rotors are even rusty.
Once I used Our car to get to the train station; that was due to a ride home the night before and resulted in a complicated dance of ferrying my bike back home. Thankful yet again for my brompton.
Once I drove all the way to work. I got up late one morning and wanted to get to work early due to issues we have been having. Turns out in hind site taking the bus would not have mattered. We learn.
Both of these times it was in our yaris. Only once have we truly needed two cars. This was last Saturday when Mary was visiting her friends in Baltimore and I needed to attend a funeral with elie. Zip car solved this shortage of wheels. The amazing thing is that in the 9 weeks of my experiment up to that point there was only ONE time in which we needed two cars.
The cold has actually been pleasant. I get lots of weird looks and questions when people realize I still ride my bike in the winter. I have nailed down my clothing choices for 35f and warmer. Still figuring out the range in between 25f and 35f. I think after today I have that figured out.
I am very comfortable riding at night, but in the past it has only been once in a while. After seeing so many under lit cyclists out there I have become more observant of my own visibility. I moved my head lamp onto my helmet some time ago, a good choice. Recently I added a little blinker to my backpack. I felt the blinker on my brompton while bright was just too low, about 17″ off the ground.
In addition I just ordered a new helmet mounted light called VIS 360. It has a rear light that attaches to the back of the helmet with built in lion battery. A small wire attaches to an LED head light at the front of the helmet. Several things attracted me to this. 1) one battery that charges with micro-USB. 2) side amber lights 3) attached to the helmet creates movement that motorists see more.
After I get this I will still use my old light as an on bike light as well as my bike mounted tail light. Redundancy is good, I almost went without a headlight once because I forgot to charge it, not again. I’ll let you know next week how the VIS 360 works.