drought and water transportation #thirdworldproblems

This past March was the driest on record for Boulder county. The water doesn't get turned on at our garden plot for another week, so for the past month, we've been hauling water there (2 blocks) every day or so, to try to get our seeds to germinate.

Last year we lugged water with arms and backpacks; this year we discovered the wheel—we've been using our bike trailer as a wagon to carry the water. It isn't perfect. We use a ski pole stick to steer. It would be really nice to add a third wheel. Maybe next year. Maybe we could hitch it up to the dog and make him a working dog.

boulder, colorado - 150 mile local food radius

For each person "local" can mean a different thing.  For you it could mean a region, a state, a set number of miles from your home, a town, or even your own backyard.  I personally think that it's a worthwhile lifestyle experiment to set a limit and test if you can live within it for a little while (a few years ago we did a month long experiment of local eating with only a few exceptions).  It reveals where your food supply systems might be broken.  Like maybe there are laws getting in the way of local, small dairy farmers.  Maybe you live in a grain growing state but you can't buy any local grain because it makes more sense for agribusinesses to ship everything across the country to be processed, over processed and shipped back to you.  It's interesting to see how the invisible web around you is working.  And on a more positive note, a local eating challenge helps one truly appreciate an occasional orange that's been flown across the country.

Anyway, for the sake of the Dark Days Challenge, the winter time rule-of-thumb definition of local is a 150 mile radius. The image above is what that looks like for us here in Boulder.

car share

As mentioned in the previous post, we moved! Our new location is near a bike path so I can get to work and near a bus stop so Eric can start getting to work in another month after he wraps up his thesis! Other bonuses are that we gained square footage and we're allowed to get a dog. Unfortunately, my dreams of gardens and chickens and food cellars have not come to fruition just yet. Ah well, someday soon enough...

As for the logistics of hauling our stuff across town, we considered doing some sort of organized bike move, however, given our current time vortices - Eric finishing his thesis and our upcoming wedding - we opted to utilize eGo CarShare, a local, non-profit car sharing organization. As members of eGo, we can rent any of their cars parked around Boulder or Denver at an hourly rate. We make our reservations online and we have an electronic key that allows us to use the car when its our turn.

There are several of these kinds of organizations across the country including ZipCar, a widespread for-profit company. It's a fantastic way to reduce car ownership. They fulfill people's random car errand needs like buying furniture from craigslist or taking a pet to the vet. I can now attest that they also work marvelously for moving across town!

ride to longmont

We took a bike ride to Longmont, CO yesterday (39 miles round trip). It was a really beautiful day. The mountains were dramatic as usual. The clouds were unusually dramatic. I love Colorado.

I got a flat tire 15 miles into the ride which was no big deal because we had a spare tube.

While we were in Longmont, we stopped by Left Hand Brewing Company to enjoy a few beer samplers. I can't wait for our IPA to be ready...

honey run

We rode our bikes up to Lyons, CO (32 miles round trip) and refilled some empty containers with 20 lbs. of affordable, local honey from Madhava. We also stopped at Oskar Blues for beer ice cream. Mmm... It was a good ride but a really windy day as you can see from the photo.

We'll be making similar posts in the upcoming weeks. Why? Because we plan on doing several bike trips to surrounding towns this summer. The long term motivation is to increase our fitness and endurance so that we can eventually do longer trips across Colorado, around Lake Michigan, maybe even across the U.S. The more immediate motivation is to get out and enjoy surrounding microbreweries, campgrounds, etc. without any need for a car.