I was curious to see what my car use would be this week. I’ve had full access to my car since dropping my husband at the airport on Sunday. I’m a little disappointed by how much driving we did, but the week felt a bit urgent as we’re leaving town Friday ourselves. Here are the sad stats:

Monday: morning car to grocery store, afternoon bike to library and park
Tuesday: morning car to swim class, afternoon bike to beach
Wednesday: morning car to Tom Bihn, afternoon car to chiropractor, afternoon bike to kiddie festival
Thursday: morning car to swim and Tom Bihn (to retrieve credit card–doh!), afternoon bike to bank, grocery store, bike shop

I almost skipped our afternoon trip today, but we all needed a break from my frenzied packing and cleaning. As usual, our simple trip turned in to a cool adventure, thanks to traveling by bike instead of car. Locking up at the bank, we met a very cool dredlocked man (whom I’d imagine is known by everyone in Seattle and a fixture of the local bicycling scene) who said my bike reminded him of a Cuban bike. I wasn’t aware of a big biking with babies trend in Cuba, but it totally makes sense. I’d love to go investigate…

There were a lot of bikes at the Whole Foods bike racks and I admired a vintage-looking Mickey Mouse bike bell on the bike next to us. Nothng else too exciting, though. Trader Joes tends to get the flashy bikes, while Whole Foods gets the no nonsense variety. <insert high-price grocery store joke here>

Then the boys demanded we stop by the “puppy bike shop!” but unfortunately, Christiaan of Ride Bicycles wasn’t in with his house-sitted puppy. However, the mechanic who rides an Xtracycle was there and we talked X until my passengers got impatient.

The photo is from crossing over the freeway. It’s much more exciting to ride over the bridge when traffic is zooming by in both directions…but it’s more environmentally satisfying to scoff at the backed up car traffic. Today we had a bit of each.