Going green with Greenie

A year ago in November, my bicycle (Greenie, in case you were curious about its name) was in an accident that scratched its paint job, ripped a small hole in its seat, and disconnected its front brake line. I was content to leave the cosmetic damage as-is (though, now that I think about it, I should probably cover up the holes in the paint before they rust...), and, not being a hardcore biker, I was also content to let the front brake line flap in the breeze. The back brakes worked fine, and I just never could work up the motivation to take it to a shop!

Then everything changed! I joined this biking promotion thingy which I'll tell you about in a minute, and then I received a coupon for 20% off any REI product, and I thought, "Now is the time to take advantage of this coupon to buy a new brake cable, so I can ride my bike more and better to make the best use of my biking promotion thingy!"

So today I grabbed my REI card and my purse and a pair of pliers, and pulled Greenie out of the shed so that I could take off the old, broken brake cable to bring to REI as a guide for buying a new one. Upon some examination, I realized the brake cable wasn't actually broken at all--part of it had just slipped out of its notch. It took me 10 seconds to put it back together.

Oops. I spent a year and a half riding a bike with no front brake when I could have fixed it in 10 seconds. Well, the good thing is my coupon for 20% ended up saving me 100%! What a bargain!

Now, are you curious about this mysterious biking promotion thingy?

Consider this. 40% of urban travel is within 2 miles, and 90% of those trips are by car! 25% of the US carbon dioxide emissions come from motor vehicles! I had no clue about these statistics until I lifted them from the promotion thingy website – and I will probably forget them tomorrow, since numbers go in one of my eyes and out the other – but I can comprehend this little equation:
 
More bike travel + less car travel = happier planet!  See? -->

So how do we achieve this end? By riding our bikes instead of driving on our day-to-day travels? You betcha! And there's a certain biking promotion thingy that will make it easy and fun and will not only make the earth smile, but will also support your favorite bike-related nonprofit!

It's the Clif 2-Mile Challenge! If you have a bike, I encourage you to register and join a team (I'm on the Gold Team)! If you don't have a bike, they even have a tool that will help you custom-make one of your own! Get cracking now! It will encourage me not to get distracted by other things. Later on, when I don't have a vacation to get ready for (and assuming I don't get distracted with other things), I might even send you a challenge.

It will be fun!