Well, not really. It’s a loaner from my uncle who’s a huge bike buff. He hooked it up with this sweet ride:
Ian's sweet loaner bike (taken from my iPhone)
It’s my aunt’s old bike & since she hasn’t been using it, I’m gonna try it out for a bit.
Why the sudden interest in biking? My uncle convinced me that my 10-mile commute to work is totally bikable, especially since most of it happen on the bay coastline. In fact, a part of the commute has me riding through SFO…pretty neat! The decision to ditch the car for a pedal-powered machine is simple:
- Saves gas. If the forecast says I have five days of good weather, I save 100 miles in gas a week.
- Good for the environment. One less car on the road, less carbon emissions.
- Daily exercise. 20 miles a day will definitely bring the heart rate up! My goal is to look foine for my wedding. I’ll make sure to wear super-fitted Ts so everyone can notice.
- Promotes good health. Cyclists (from what I read online) need energy to burn. If I want to take this seriously, I may need to reconsider my eating habits.
- Good exercise in zen. You need to build nerves of steel trying to compete with 2,000-lbs. cars on the road. Obviously, the bike doesn’t win in weight, but it’s important to build ‘road presense’ so cars don’t overlook me on a two-lane road. Also, you have to get past that you need to dress the part, which is probably totally different that what I’m used to wearing:
Jazzy French cyclist (found on Flickr)
Of course, I have yet to commute to work, but everything above is very appealing to me. The next step? Actually taking it for a test spin. Wish me luck!
Bay Area, Health, Lifestyle
Growing up I much preferred to climb trees, play in the dirt with my brother or go fishing than to play with dolls and other typically girly things. So for a girl like me who was never the type to dream of an elaborate fanciful wedding as a little girl, wedding planning is tough.
by ToastyKen
For me the priority is to get married and go on a great honeymoon somewhere. The wedding (the getting married part) is planned. We are going to have a small, intimate ceremony with our immediate families only. Afterwards we’ll have dinner at one of our new favorite restaurants. It will be a simple event, but memorable and perfect in my mind with the most important part being that we will be married!
The honeymoon part is also in the works. We are researching online and talking with a travel agent to find the best deal. It’s going to be expensive, but we figure it’s once in a lifetime and it’ll be worth it.
The third piece of the puzzle are the parties. Yes, I said parties. Since Juice has such a huge family we are planning on doing two. One for his family and one for my family and friends. We want to keep it casual and fun. My idea was to do a tailgate since that’s something Juice and I enjoy, but Juice isn’t too hot on the idea and I can see his point. We’re thinking of maybe doing a barbecue or picnic or something, but that’s as far as we’ve gotten.
by Chirag D. Shah on Flickr
There are a couple things getting in our way…
- We are overwhelmed by the whole process of planning. I’m sure if we started planning then we’d realize that it isn’t as daunting of a task as we have it built up in our heads, but neither of us can get past it.
- The finances. As we all know, weddings are expensive even when the economy isn’t the way it is.
- This is probably the biggest factor: in our list of priorities, the parties are currently not ranking too high. There are a lot of things we want to do together in our lives (including a lot of travel) so spending a lot of money on one day is not the most appealing. Of course we would like to celebrate with our friends and family so we’re not closing the books on the parties yet.
All these factors impact one another creating a vicious cycle and leaving us where we are now…stuck.
wedding
Am I doing this right? Just want to test this out since I’ve never really done this before. I’m excited to start this project with Juice. I think it’ll be a great way for us to record our memories and combine our talents.
Bay Area
