We're in

So, we're technically moved in. The church as it turns out had a spare couch from when they moved so... we have that (actually it's a couch and 2 wingback chairs) now. Unfortunately I now need to get rid of the old couch. So, what do you do when you don't seem to have a local freecycle or craigslist? I'm considering putting it on the curb and seeing if someone picks it up.

So far the town seems pretty cycle-able. I took the kids way further into town than I intended the other day and didn't have any real problems short of one middle aged white guy in a sports car listening to booty music. I mean seriously, roll up the windows and watch where you're going Mr. Midlife Crisis. Even that wasn't all that bad. There are A LOT of cyclists here! Unfortunately very few of them wear helmets which I find kind of sad. Is your brain worth $20? I think it is.

I would actually be off riding down to the Hardware Store right now, except that someone has to be home so that Verizon can install a phone jack INSIDE the house. Yes, I specified INSIDE. Meaning that the current phone jack is OUTSIDE! Who puts the phone jack outside!?

Pictures to come soon!

My Couch Dilema

So, we're moving to a very pretty, very old house in Virginia (pictured above). It's nearly twice the house we have now and it has these awesome Technicolor walls inside. So, I'm scrounging around for furniture to fill up all of this extra space that we're going to have. A lot of it, okay all of it, is used but really nice stuff. I'll finally be able to have all of my little antique pieces of furniture and set them up someplace nice. We're all finally out of college and now perhaps we can stop looking like we live in a dorm room... except.... We have this couch:

I just don't know what to do with it. The cushions were shredded when it came from my mom's house so she had started to replace them with this big sheet of foam which I cut into cushions and attempted rather unsuccessfully to find something that kind of matched to cover them in. As you can see my quick and dirty recovering job which was never completely finished (I didn't get around to installing the zippers in the covers because I couldn't find any long enough) is kind of a moot point. This couch SO cannot go into my new house looking like this. I've thought about just freecycling it and getting the sleeper sofa out of my mom's basement but then I would have to get that thing to Virginia, and my memory of what the couch looks like and what it actually looks like are most likely not very similar.

So, do I try to recover this thing with mismatched fabric (not enough money to buy new fabric), staples, and glue? Do I keep a watch on Freecycle and see what pops up on there? Do I just take the green 1970's sleeper sofa from my mom's house that may have fleas? *sigh* I know it's a little thing but it's just ugly...

First Ride

So, we're having a yard sale this weekend to get ready for the move and I talked to Rhys about putting his Walmart-special bike in it because he's never ridden it more than a few feet. Today, as i was getting my wheel back on my bike and hooking up the trailer he decided that he was going to ride. Well, he got on and it was tough going at first, we had to go inside and change his shoes and he would just kind of fall over rather than stopping the bike. However, he made it most of the way around the block and didn't whine or cry despite knocking himself over several times. After his first fall I made a big deal about falling being normal and took a picture. He had a little trouble getting up the hill on the other side of the block but I think that he would have been fine had he not been distracted by a couple of vehicles coming down the street, there's no sidewalk on the backside of the block and he was very concerned about getting hit so he stopped - in the middle of the right hand lane, and would not move.

He's decided to keep the bike rather than waiting to get a Trek for his birthday. I think that we may get him a trail-a-bike instead so that he can go longer distances more comfortably. We surprised Daddy when we got home and then MaLew by showing off how well Rhys rides. He seemed to get up the hill just fine when showing MaLew so hopefully he's got it down now. Next, we work on the rules of the road!

A $5 fix

We're finally back in town, the majority of hubby's thesis work is completed, it looks like he's just got a couple of edits to do and then the defense. Yea! We found a house in Emporia to rent, it's big and gorgeous and scary. It's a 1910 Victorian with Technicolor walls. Hubby is going to sell his car and we're planning on living predominantly using the bikes. We will have to use the car to get to church because an LDS chapel is the only thing that we don't have close by. However, there are church members nearby so that's nice.

I'm in the process of making up a couple of bike purses to sell. I'm going to sew some and do a couple on the knitting machine. I've been carrying it even when I'm not on the bike and it gets rave reviews everywhere from cyclists and those who aren't fortunate enough to like cycling yet.

Hubby took my rim in to the Bike Shop yesterday and got it fixed. Happily, Billy was able to just straiten it out. So, that's a $5 fix rather than replacing the rim! Yea! I'm getting out on the bike today, I have really needed the stress relief and it's been quite hard to not fall back on stress eating this month.

Fuming

Grrrrr.....
On the drive home from Fathers Day weekend, in addition to some drama that happened over the weekend that I don't wish to discuss here, we hit a bump and now the rim on my bike is bent. To add insult to injury the rear view mirror fell off too (this is my second, the first broke at church and now this one has ether been stolen or fell off in transit). So, I'm grounded. I DID head over to my Mother in Law's house and pick up my street bike but I don't like riding it all that much and it doesn't have a hitch for the kids trailer or a rack for my bag. So, all in all I am not a happy camper. I'm just fuming over my bike.

We are moving though! Hubby got a job in VA and he starts this fall. Yipee! The town seems relatively cyclist friendly too, so that's nice.

I'm abandoning my bandana

Well, there's been a lot going on since my last blog... tons of trips, a wedding (our good friend JT finally got hitched)... and it's looking to be a VERY busy summer.

Derek is finishing up his thesis, yea! Hopefully it will be completely finished soon. The kids and I have been losing our time on the Wii, at the park, and in the garden. I've also been dreaming up all kinds of clothing designs AND we've started our Christmas crafting about a month early. Normally I don't even think about it until July but darn that JoAnnes.... we got a new one in Augusta and we got sucked in. I'm also working on a wall of family photos for the living room.

At any rate...
We took a trip out Memorial Day weekend to the big park for Rhys to fly his toy airplane. Al found some tracks in the grass from teenagers doing dough nuts in wet grass to run around in. He insisted that he has his own track team. We've also discovered that the computer that Derek and the kids got me for the bike for Mothers Day (there's GOT to be a better way to say that) might not be accurate. Derek's computer consistently registers 1.5 MPH faster so perhaps I'm not quite as slow as I though I was.




I've also discovered that the smaller park closer to home has been cleaned up. It has much more toddler friendly climbing equipment AND as a bonus friendlier parents! If I keep going we may actually start some meaningful friendships in this town. The kids were occupied enough that I could actually work on my socks.





And now to the title. It is officially summer! I've been wearing a bandanna under my helmet or shortly after riding to soak up the copious amounts of sweat pouring off of my head. However, I've discovered that my neck warmer from this winter actually works better to keep me cool. It's one of the gauge swatches I made from baby acrylic yarn on the machine joined into a tube. The acrylic actually wicks the sweat off of my head and cools me down faster. Yea cheap acrylic! So, I think that I may knit some headbands out of this stuff.


I'm also still loving my bike purse. I added a zipper but so far so good, no major modifications other than that.

My Newfound Celebrity Status

I am apparently a local celebrity these days. I took the kids to the Pine Tree Festival last weekend on school day (since Derek's graduation was on Saturday) and got stopped everywhere. And it's not just there.... Everywhere I go these days I hear "aw.... looks there's babies in there!" or people stop me to ask me where to get a trailer, how to hook one up, if it's safe, how old kids need to be to ride in one.... It happens every time I go out.

Only time will tell if I have started a trend or not. I hope that I start seeing other moms around town with their trailers happily pulling their kids. The way that gas is going I'm sure that more people will be looking at leaving their huge pick up trucks (with Hemi's) at home and go for smaller more economical transportation but I'm hoping that I can get more people using human power to get around. Who knows maybe I can make a difference in this car crazed status crazy town.

So far, one of our friends from church has picked himself up a good bike and has been cycling around town (they live in the next town over). They're looking at getting a bike for the wife soon too. One of my sisters in law has apparently hooked her trailer back up too! Another lady from church is considering cycling on her commute she lives pretty far out and is looking at getting a bike from the pawn shop though so I'm not sure if that will last. The bikes that we get in pawn shops here are usually WalMart specials that have already been run into the ground.



Speaking of WalMart.... I braved WalMart on the bike last week! I had to chain the bike and trailer to a signpost but it WAS still there when I got back. I did like a silly girl leave my reflective ankle strap ON the cart and I had to hang out for 1/2 hour for the cart to come back through to get it back. I would have considered going on without it but.... I was wearing really wide jeans. At any rate, I ran into one of the cyclists I met at the Pine Tree Breeze there. We talked shop for a few minutes and he seemed truly interested in 1W2W. Another guy checked out my trailer and declared that one could actually do the shopping with it. Now if only I had someplace to put both kids and groceries I'd be set.... I have been seeing another bike parked up at the evil empire on my weekly run lately (I know I know they're evil and as soon as we're not living off of student loan money I will shop at Harveys for everything but Nutella - which they refuse to carry). I think that it belongs to an employee because it's there on a semi regular schedule and is always there for really long periods of time... AND it has no rack or basket, which tells me that someone isn't getting groceries.







I also took the kids to the park where I answered a couple of questions about the trailer. For the first time I didn't get tired getting to and from the park - yippee!








As for the actual Pine Tree Festival it was a three and a half mile ride out but I made it. The few hills in our little town happen to be between here and there one of which stopped me for a minute or two because I just couldn't make it up. It's been a while since that's happened to me but I stopped, drank some water, caught my breath and I DID NOT walk the bike up. I got back on and pedaled like there was no tomorrow! I made it there and made it back no problems! Yea me! I got to "drive" right into the festival and just secured the bike and removed the trailer to use it as a stroller for the rest of the day. I have to say that even though we didn't get to see most of the festival because we came during set up it was a lot of fun. There's a playground on the grounds and we got to see part of the lumberjack show. BTW - lumberjack shows ROCK! We also got to see the forestry service helicopter demonstrate a water drop over the forest which was a hit with the kids.









One of the ladies who stopped me at the festival has an 18 month old and is seriously looking into a trailer for cycling with her older kids. So, I ran her through the basics. She was really concerned with the legality of bike trailers. I had to try to not stare at her blankly... legality? Of course it's legal. Gosh I'd have been picked up long ago.