Today is my first official day of not going to work. I feel a bit disoriented. I have a lot of stuff to do around the house, but I tire very easily so I doubt I will get any of it done.

The weather is starting to feel like fall and the streets around the house today were clogged with people dropping their kids off to school. Since I probably won’t be biking for much longer, I thought now would be a good time to do a quick wrap-up of my cycling experiment from this summer. The point of my experiment was to see how many trips I can do with the bike and from there to guess about my future bike usage.

The longest utilitarian trip I made was to Bushtukah on Hazeldean. The trip was just under 6 km and with only Owen on the bike it took me about 20 minutes to get there. The route was comfortable except for the tiny stretch of Hazeldean from Castlefrank to Terry Fox that does not have a bike lane. Going south, the path was mostly uphill, but at least it became more comfortable on the way back.

The longest recreational trip was to Andrew Haydon park, again with Owen. It is a bit over 10km one way and it took me a bit over half an hour to get there. The route was almost entirely on the paths.

Over the course of the summer I put above 300 km on the mamachari bike. That is nothing compared to 3000 km that, I am sure, Chris and Dan put on their bikes this summer, but you will excuse me if I carry bit more cargo.

Though I dearly love my mamachari bike, it does have some frustrating limitations. One is that it is slow and clunky when I ride alone and the other that it can only fit two kids and almost no groceries. I am looking into purchasing two other bikes for next year (or year after, not much biking predicted for next year), but it will really depend on circumstances. One would be a proper cargo bike, possibly this one as it is the only model readily available in Ottawa. The other one would probably be a vintage mixte with updated parts that one of our biking friend’s son builds. I have been looking at new bikes that might suit me, but I have to found anything currently sold in Ottawa that would do exactly what I want.

My car is slowly getting ready for the trip to the glue factory and it is only a matter of time that we decide to no longer keep fixing it. It is a good car but I am not sure it will make it though its twelvth winter (though I hope it will). Because it is highly unlikely that we will buy a new car before I get back to work next August, it would be interesting to see how we do as a five-people-one-car family. Though I have no doubt a new car will be bought soon, I am very curious to see how long we can last with just one. A factor that will make it easier with just one car is the new bus route 93 that goes between Owen’s daycare to my office every 10 minutes. Also, the bus 65 has survived the cut. While it is not feasible for Chris to use it on regular basis, it is there if we need it. I am probably not going to be able to use the bus 93 to go to work as, at this time, plan is for Markus (are we sticking this that name???) to go to home daycare in Morgan’s Grant until he is two and eligible for the local daycare. However, after that, the bus 93 is perfect for me.

One thing that I did not expect from my bike experiment this summer is that I did not save a lot on gas. Because my distances this year were so short and I rarely rode to work, I only conserved less than one tank of gas through the whole summer. That only covers the cost of half the repairs and maintenance on my bike this year. Once I am able to bike to work on daily basis (three years from now…) I hope that will improve, but then again I am not sure it will be enough to cover the cost of the “new” mixte.

One final thought for this post is that Bushtukah in Kanata is collecting old bikes for charity this Saturday in exchange for a $50 coupon. Since this is more than our bikes could fetch at the bike exchange or garage sale, it seems like a great opportunity to clean out the garage.