As frugal people, we at Consumer of None are fans of DIY. When it comes to food preparation, home maintenance, laundry, and cleaning, DIY is where it's at. However, if you live in a small space and don't have a garage, certain DIY tasks - like car and bike maintenance - become more difficult.
As I was biking home today, I popped my back tire (and possibly my front - to be determined). Luckily, I was about a 20 minute walk from home, so I was able to just make my way by foot. In the past, Mr. C of N has fixed broken tubes for me. Unfortunately, this week he's studying hard for an exam and we have visitors coming for the weekend, so he won't have time to fix it for me. And even if he (or, yes, I could fix it if I watched some youtube videos...) could do so, it's the back tire, so it's going to be a big greasy mess...in the middle of our 600 square foot condo. Good thing we took out the carpet! So I looked up some bike shops, and it turns out MEC will do it for $12/tire + the cost of the new tube ($5-7 bucks). If we had a house and a garage, we could put together a sweet setup and do the change ourselves. Nice, 12 bucks saved every time you get a flat! But buying a house would cost us at least two hundred thousand more than our current condo. Suddenly, paying the guys at MEC seems like a pretty good deal. When it comes to things you can DIY in your current space - cooking your own food, doing your own housework - DIY is always going to be cheaper. But buying a bigger space so you can work on your bike or car? The math just doesn't add up.
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You may remember how I switched jobs this winter, which resulted in me taking on a car commute (puke). Well, great news - I am officially back to bike commuting. I think this is a great example of how you can often bike commute to places that seem unbikeable with a bit of planning. Some backstory: The day I started my job was incredibly cold. So cold that the locks on my car malfunctioned. Bike commuting is obviously not an option when it's -30 outside, but the weather soon improved and I was itching to get out of the driver's seat. I had initial doubts. My work is in an industrial area of town that is decidedly not bike-friendly. Actually, there used to be bike lanes there, which the city decided to remove for incomprehensible reasons. Things weren't looking good, but Mr. Consumer of None and I did a lot of digging around on Google Maps and found what looked like a potential route. Then we did a test run. Side note - I always recommend doing a test run before your first commute to work, unless you work somewhere you're already familiar with biking to. On this test run I got totally lost and ended up wasting a good 20 minutes, which would have been really stressful if I was trying to get to work on time. Also, it's really nice to have time to wander a bit. You can often find a route that's way better than what Google sets up for you just by exploring. After some trial and error, it turns out there's a beautiful route that's mostly on protected lanes, and even takes me through 3 km of paved trail through a ravine. Unfortunately I do have to bike through the industrial area, but it's only about 1 km and the road is wide enough that cars tend to give me a large birth (tend to being the operative word. I'm talking to you, minivans that pass me with half a foot of space). The total route is 10 km, which was intimidating at first, but has turned out to be awesome. I've been absolutely loving my commute, and I can't believe anyone would choose driving over how fun this is. So, if you've been thinking about bike commuting, now is the time! We're at the peak of almost-summer-not-too-hot weather, so get out there and test out a route this weekend! |
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May 2019
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