reason, excuse and elegant solution, #1 in a series
Posted on Jun 30th, 2008
by 
synonym for light
synonym for light
Reason #1 to ride your bike to work or home from work: If you ride your bike to work, depending on how far your commute is, you'll burn off any calories that you might gain from drinking a glass of wine later that evening.
Excuse #1 for not riding your bike to work or home from work: If you ride your bike, you can't stop at the special, local wine store on your way home to get a bottle of special, organic, locally grown and vinted, fair trade wine because your backpack might already be full and you'll have nowhere to carry that fabulous bottle of vino.
Elegant solution #1: Skip your daily glass of wine for a week or two. Ride the bike anyway. Burn the calories but don't drink the wine and in so doing create a calorie deficit in the biking body. Save the money from the wine and buy a rack and bag for your bike. If it doesn't seem so simple, go to the local bike shop where the guys are sure to be able to fix you up with something that can tote the extras you think of picking up on your way home on your bike. After two weeks of biking and drinking nothing but water, you'll have lost a pound or two, you'll have exercised some possibly atrophied self-discipline muscles, you'll be a touch more svelte, maybe one step closer to fitting into that cocktail dress you've had your eye on and you'll have one less excuse for not biking because now you have a rack and bag for the extras you didn't think of while packing your pack that morning. Oh yes and maybe you can pay for the slinky cocktail dress with the money you might've otherwise spent on gas or bus or train money. Alternatively you can donate that saved commuting money to a good cause like saving the rainforests or cleaning up the toxic plastic vortex in the Pacific or even a bicycle fund for a poor, car dependent neighbor.
The above photo was clicked with the little camera in my phone while I was 5 miles from work and 12 miles from home, looking back toward Aspen during my ride homeward this evening. It was gorgeous and I feel like a million bucks right now. Hurray for bikes and summer and camera phones and wearing high heels at home while doing laundry (since you can't actually walk any distance in them comfortably and they are darn impractical for biking).
Tune in again soon for the next installment of "reason, excuse and elegant solution".
Excuse #1 for not riding your bike to work or home from work: If you ride your bike, you can't stop at the special, local wine store on your way home to get a bottle of special, organic, locally grown and vinted, fair trade wine because your backpack might already be full and you'll have nowhere to carry that fabulous bottle of vino.
Elegant solution #1: Skip your daily glass of wine for a week or two. Ride the bike anyway. Burn the calories but don't drink the wine and in so doing create a calorie deficit in the biking body. Save the money from the wine and buy a rack and bag for your bike. If it doesn't seem so simple, go to the local bike shop where the guys are sure to be able to fix you up with something that can tote the extras you think of picking up on your way home on your bike. After two weeks of biking and drinking nothing but water, you'll have lost a pound or two, you'll have exercised some possibly atrophied self-discipline muscles, you'll be a touch more svelte, maybe one step closer to fitting into that cocktail dress you've had your eye on and you'll have one less excuse for not biking because now you have a rack and bag for the extras you didn't think of while packing your pack that morning. Oh yes and maybe you can pay for the slinky cocktail dress with the money you might've otherwise spent on gas or bus or train money. Alternatively you can donate that saved commuting money to a good cause like saving the rainforests or cleaning up the toxic plastic vortex in the Pacific or even a bicycle fund for a poor, car dependent neighbor.
The above photo was clicked with the little camera in my phone while I was 5 miles from work and 12 miles from home, looking back toward Aspen during my ride homeward this evening. It was gorgeous and I feel like a million bucks right now. Hurray for bikes and summer and camera phones and wearing high heels at home while doing laundry (since you can't actually walk any distance in them comfortably and they are darn impractical for biking).
Tune in again soon for the next installment of "reason, excuse and elegant solution".
Access: PublicTagged with: bike, work, reason, excuse, elegant, solution, wine, vino, organic, fair trade, high heels, cocktail dress, rainforest, bicycle, camera phone
bicycle
August 2008 
looks like a cool series!
Dawn this is such a wonderful blog….as simple as that…this life is.
The picture,I want to walk this road.
What a great road to bike on! I have all city streets but that's still nice. Unfortunately I have a job that requires driving but I'm trying to use my bike for everything else – except the trips to get the 40lb bags of dog food, which I could probably rig up somehow but I just save all the big things for that trip, and trips to get big things from the home improvement place.
I like to do things that work my body in an intrinsic way. I don't like going to a gym and I absolutely despise aerobics. It just seems so arbitrary and pointless. I worked on the 10th floor of a hospital for a while and everyone thought I was crazy for taking the stairs for every errand during the day. Then they all went to the gym to use the stairmaster.
Yes, Hurray for summer & bikes.. & glasses of wine :-)
- living in a hardcore biking country, I dare you: with a lil bit of practice, high heel biking
becomes quite easy; we do it all the time when city biking..& with a rack on your bike,
there is a place to leave the heels for the long hauls.
I got two racks on mine & I'll wear a backpack as well for the big shopping…which on
occasion makes the installation called tara shopping kinda wobbly due to overload
when biking home.. & definetely not looking anywhere near elegant, so I will await
your next installment with great anticipation ;-) love & joy tara
I LOVE this post, this photo, and I do hope there are more R, E, & ES posts!
Beautiful photo and great words. I would really like to bike to work in the future…
i do hope that series continues! - awesome stuff :) i work at home, does it count if i bike before work?
lovely piece, gorgeous picture. look forward to more
best rationalization I've ever heard!
wow, I work on wedding photo editting for 12 hours straight and then decide to take a break and visit gaia and this is what I find!! a whole gaggle of gais commentting on my silliness.
thank you all for coming to visit.
firstly– it's a wide path, not even a real road. no cars are allowed on it. I love biking on a path where no cars are allowed. it used to be a rail road. now, horses and bicycles and pedestrians are allowed and we all have to share.
yesterday I saw lots and lots of birds, some squirrels, maybe a marmot (too quickly disappeared into a hollow log in the field next to the trail to be sure) and a dear about 50 feet off the path lazily eating some sage brush. which gives me an idea for the next reason, excuse and elegant solution piece. I have to finish editting the photos from that last wedding before I can post another blog.
oh and ohmsmom– yes, it counts. it counts even more if you ride it on an errand instead of just for the heck of it, or maybe that's not true. I think bike riding for the heck of it is good too. it's better than burning fossil fuels for the heck of it. :-)
I was thinking of sharing this post with our local newspaper. it was bike to work day last week. and we have a great path, so maybe more local people could start using it.
back to the grind for me now.
xoxox to you all y'all. :-)
-d
maybe YOU (tara) should write a reason, excuse and elegant solution piece about biking in high heels? or something else. I'd love for every single person here to right a reason, excuse and elegant solution piece. maybe I'd learn something about something that's been hanging me up????
so maybe now that's a new tag game. yeah. consider yourselves tagged. it doesn't have to be about biking. :-)
jeannie– “I worked on the 10th floor of a hospital for a while and everyone thought I was crazy for taking the stairs for every errand during the day. Then they all went to the gym to use the stairmaster.”— this is the beginning of a possible reason, excuse and elegant solution piece. it's actually all there already. perfect. :-)
hey friend … I love this “reason, excuse and elegant solution” … we'd solve a lot of our personal problems by going through this simple process. (you are so very smart)
Riding bikes is great exercise and good for our environment. I would be riding my bike all over instead of driving my car the 15 blocks to the grocery store … but I gave it away last weekend at my “EVERYTHING IS FREE” recycling day(s).
Excuse: I'm moving and trying to lighten my load. I gave my bike away to someone who really wanted it.
Elegant solution: All the money I'm saving with this move will allow me to purchase a really fine bike and bike racks/bags/high heels … and whoooopie!!!
Seriously, I gave away an ancient bike and it was, in my mind, ready for it's next home…. the person who took it was sooooooo happy!!! and that was cool.
So what kind of bike do you ride? I think I wanna check it out.
love you,
peri
Peri– you are good at this game!!! I have a cruiser that I never ride. I have two unicycles that I haven't been riding much. and I have my commuter bike. I got it in order to do a mountain bike triathlon several years ago, so it's not really a “commuter bike”. It's a full suspension zillion speed schwin moab moutain bike. it's not the best bike to get if you want to have racks on the back, because of the suspension. if you are in the market for a new bicycle you should haunt bike shops and bike websites and ask lots and lots and lots of questions. if you are going to have to ride through many puddles, make sure you get fender thingie's to keep the muddy water from wrecking your clothing. get a basket on the front too maybe. and a headlamp, in case you don't make it home before dark. and reflector thingies to make sure cars can see you if you ever ride on the road. get clips for your shoes and pedals if you are going to go long, long distances. pretend you don't have a bus pass or a car or a train pass for a week after you get your bike. ride it everywhere. each time you ride it, you'll think of something that would make your ride more enjoyable. I'm trying to make my bike into a no-excuses bike and myself into the kind of girl that acknowledges the challenges and finds elegant solutions for them. :-)
oh!!! I love gaia. it helps me be the person I really want to be.
-d
dawn, you are a delight & I like having lil assignments coming my way too.. I'll give it a thinkabout when biking to the beach this weekend.. no heels though! I do like you, wear high heels on occasion when doing the laundy; heck I might even dress up as a 50's style suburban housewife for sheer entertainment.. that is if there is any clothes left to wear when I finally force myself into that oh so tedious of tasks ;-)