It’s April! That means 30 Days of Biking and biking every day and hopefully blogging about it each day.

Ugh, so I forgot the Nutella when I went shopping at Safeway four days ago. I figured I’d try my luck one block over at Bi-Mart so I could also pick up a bag of dried corn on the cob for our squirrel picnic table. Unfortunately Bi-Mart had neither Nutella nor squirrel corn, plus the bike rack was mostly blocked by plants. I’m fine lifting my cargo bike up a curb to access the rack when it’s so blocked, but I felt sorry for the owner of the trike locked next to me who probably had a tougher time of it. It wasn’t my day for bike parking because at Safeway I found a bike parked sideways along the entire rack. I was able to squeeze behind the rack, but what a weird way to park!

Pedaling home I mused about how “long” my shopping trip took, having gone out for one item and needing to hit two stores to find it. At only 2.3 miles my trip wouldn’t have been any quicker by car, and navigating between side-by-side strip malls is probably quicker by bike than car, but it all felt painfully slow. But then, why shouldn’t it? In this age with everything available at the click of a button to be delivered to our doorsteps while we busy ourselves with other stuff, we’ve no desire to think about the time and resources spent packaging up our items, or the van drivers speeding to illegally park and toss them at our doors. I’m going to try to be more patient and appreciative of my slow trips to select Nutella and squirrel corn in the neighborhood.

The day wasn’t all shopping and parking, though! I’m lucky to live close to Maria, queen of the hill killerz, and sometimes I get to join her on her hill. So that’s what I did for lunch today. I realized last week that I need a better method of counting my five repeats. I always doubt my count at the top of the hill and think I should do an extra climb just in case, but once I’m at the bottom with the climb looming the feeling magically goes away. I’ve started saving my hills as private Strava recordings so I can verify my reps after the fact, but that’s not good enough. I think I’ll trust my counting one last time while recording my efforts as a ride on Ride with GPS and then turn that into a route to follow in the future. Problem solved!

Today’s miles: 8
Total April miles: 260.4