Rubber Side Down: July 2011

Weird Dana's backstory

At the end of the 20th Century, I had a 2-hour commute in Seattle, which I hated but that was the way it was. Then I got a job in the Olympia area and, because I'd hated that long Seattle commute so much, bought a house about a mile away from my new office. A mile is a little farther than I want to walk, but a ridiculous distance to drive on a nice day, so I bought a bike for $17 at Goodwill, had it fixed up a little, and started riding to work on nice days because it was ecological. It also made me healthier, so when I ended up in a new job with an 8-mile commute and a Hill, well, I needed a better bike.

You gotta understand, I grew up riding a hand-me-down 2-speed with pedal brakes and shifter both, so just braking with my hands was strange to me, and that whole remembering to shift BEFORE stopping... well, it wasn't happening much, and I never did figure out the whole 2-derailleur thing.

So anyway, shortly after the job change (2007? 2008?), I came into a bit of money and went shopping for a nice commuter bike. I ended up with a Breezer: internally-geared hub (shifts best when stopped), just one set of "speeds", all kinds of fancy extras. Could -- and did -- go just about anywhere on that bike.

Shortly after that, it became my life's ambition to dump my car entirely. Well, I'd already been dreaming of it, but it started to seem achievable. And in 2016, I finally did sell the car. Olympia has a great bus system, you see, and between that and the downtown parking situation, I really wasn't driving much.

Then in 2018, I hooked up with Walk N Roll, where I started to learn about fixing bikes (and a lot about the maintenance I ought to have been doing all along). Between their, and the BCC's, encouragement and a small improvement in my health, I finished my first month of bike-only transportation, including getting up hills to both Tumwater and West Olympia (via Tumwater; still working on getting up from 5th/4th), in the 2019 BCC.

Of course, with the transit issues of 2020, I've ended up a bit limited in range and carry capacity, but pretty much everything's closed anyway...

Rubber Side Down

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