In my household, everything has to work. There is no free ride...well maybe the cat doesn't have to work! My truck takes me camping and hauls larger loads. The Bronco excels in the snow and can also haul a lot of gear and with the roof rack works great for hauling the bicycles. The Mustang is a project and is fun to drive, but it also is used for shopping and hauled all of my monthly shopping items from Costco last week. My bicycles get into the act too. A couple are light and are fun to ride fast. The mountain bikes work really well off road. And a couple of the bicycles are set up for hauling loads including unsupported touring. I have toured thousands of miles and camped out many nights on one of them. I even have a tandem bicycle to ride with friends, it doesn't have very many miles on it. As a single guy, there are times when I have to leave a vehicle or the boat somewhere and return home on one of the bicycles.
So today, I went to Seattle to buy some boat supplies. The place where I shop is at the north end of Lake Union near Gasworks Park. Seattle has a great bicycle path system that I can ride from the ferry terminal to the store with very little riding on the streets. So, I have become used to doing as much shopping as possible with one of my bicycles. It works really good. The cost for the ferry is about 1/3 the cost of taking a vehicle. I usually catch the 0720 ferry and can get to the store before they open at 0900. Usually I can get my shopping done, take the long way back over the Ballard Locks and back to the ferry terminal to catch the 1110 ferry and back to my house by 1230. The total distance is 25 miles.
So, why do I do this? It is cheaper, gives me some good exercise and is just fun to have the adventure of riding away from my home and being self sufficient!
Waiting at the Seattle Ferry dock waiting to board. This is actually a small load, on other trips I have carried a lot more boat stuff back from Seattle.
On the ferry approaching Bremerton. This bicycle was actually my "all weather" commuter bicycle when I worked.
No comments:
Post a Comment