Our first snow of the year!

Well it looks like winter is here! We started getting snow yesterday and so far it seems to be sticking around. England overall is getting hit fairly hard with the Gatwick International Airport shutting down due to the snow.

Here in Lewes we only have about an inch but its still enough to make everything all white. I took a walk today down to the store. I was going to bike but decided that bike + snow = bad. I'm happy that I decided to just walk as I got a ton of great pictures of the Lewes area in the snow.

It was really magical walking around in the snow. At one point I was up on a small terrace just watching three squirrels having a blast chasing each other around the tree and sending up plumes of snow as they turned and darted of twittering the whole time. The whole time a bunch of song birds kept fluttering around adding their own voices into the mix. It seemed like all of nature was celebrating the fresh snow.

Human society though seemed a little less happy with the snow. While the kids were screaming with delight at school being canceled the adults were a little bit grumpy with it all. The rail system got heavily delayed and while I was at the store there were signs up on various isles saying that the daily shipment had not made it due to the "adverse weather conditions."

Especially hard hit seemed to be the bread and dairy isles. Both of those were basically picked clean with people scrounging around for anything that was left. Really made me think about how little back up food supplies we actually have any more.

Well overall its been fun seeing the snow. Have to see how the winter goes but so far its apparently much snowier then the UK is used to. Scotland received over a foot of snow from this storm!

*UPDATE: We are getting dumped on tonight! In the last 2 hours we have gotten about 4 inches of snow and could get 10+ inches tonight!

Pictures of Lewes in the snow after the break:

My Awesome Commuters Bike

I have decided that I never want to have my own car. For me its just not worth it and with Peak Oil around the corner (or already here) its not the sort of investment that I really want to make. So where does that leave me for getting around?

Well of course there is mass transit such as buses, trains, ect... But I still like having my own personal transportation device. So for that I have a bike. But not your traditional bike. My bike is designed to make commuting easy and comfortable.

What makes my new bike so awesome for commuting is that it has small design tweaks and extras that really help out.

There and back again... on a bike!

I just had to make a reference to The Hobbit aka There and Back Again by J.R.R Tolkien. I still have not read The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings trilogy but I did just add them all to my Kindle and my goal is to read all four books while Michaela and I are in the UK. Should be awesome reading these books in the country where they were written!

But anyways, onto the point of this post. I just hit a couple days ago the one month mark at my job as Volunteer Coordinator for the Campaign to Re-Elect Bonnie Mager! During this time I have managed to put a little over 400 miles on my bike.

Not sure if there is enough time left but I really want to try to hit the big 1k mark on my bike before Michaela and I head off to the UK.

With gas prices averaging around $3 a gallon and the average US car getting 20ish miles per gallon I have saved $60! Of course that is not taking into account the cost of car insurance. Plus this is only for one month.

Basically biking is awesome and I encourage you all to bike at least some of the time!

One, two, three flat tires

Well today I thought I was going to be writing a follow up to my post about the blob. But life decided to take a different path today so that post will have to wait.

As you might as guessed from the title and the image my bike got a flat tire today. What is really upsetting about this is that this was the third time my back tire got a flat in the last couple weeks.

The first was my own fault I had let the air pressure in the back tire get low which allowed the tire to go flat when I tried to jump over a curb.

Biking to work

(Pics at the bottom) Friday was my first day biking to work and my first day on the new job. I started working as the Campaign Volunteer Coordinator for the campaign to reelect Bonnie Mager. Since Michaela needs the car for her job and I have been wanting to break away from the use of cars I decided that I would bike to work each day instead of driving or taking the bus... that is if its not raining too hard.

The ride to work is really enjoyable. A new north south freeway is being built and it is actually being built correctly. That is they are building a bike/pedestrian path that follows the freeway. Its not completed but it still allows me to get into Spokane from Mead.