Travel & Transport

I hate to throw away "perfectly good" things even when they're a bit scruffy. Case in point, my road bike. I bought this bike from a friend many years ago and have put quite a few miles on it. After a couple of years I re-painted it and replaced some worn parts. Well, after a decade or so of riding it desperately needed another overhaul. Now I have a friend with powdercoating equipment and I've restored the bike to better than ever.

There is something about the Southwestern landscape that inspires people. Whether it's the mountains and deserts, the distant horizon, or the technicolor sunsets I don't know. But, something about this place sparks people's imagination. Case in point - Aldo Leopold. Something happened while Leopold was in Arizona and New Mexico that drove him to write A Sand County Almanac and to think about conservation in a new way.

Slowly, but surely, electrical vehicle infrastructure is coming to Santa Fe, NM. There are two Level 1 Charging Stations in the Santa Fe Railyard Parking Garage on the first level. They aren't very exciting to look at, but these are the first municipal 'electric refueling' stations in our town.

Our family listens to a lot of public radio and we even have three local stations to choose from. While I'm not a big fan of pledge drives, I understand the need for them. Recently, I've heard public radio (and TV) stations promoting Car Donation programs as another form of listener support. It just happens that we had an older car that was, ahem, 'fully depreciated' and worth almost nothing as a trade-in.

Being an EcoDaddyo, and a cyclist, I bike around our fair city whenever possible. Given the short in-town distances we drive, biking is an easy alternative. Recently, we enrolled our eco-kid in daycare and I'm usually on pick up duty. I was happy to find that this is easy with our new dad-powered, bicycle-pulled kid trailer.

I just gave away a part of my history and I feel great. Often, I hang onto little things that remind me of my past. This was the first mountain bike I bought for myself and it's seen many miles and several crashes. Strangely enough, I didn't mind letting it go. Mostly because I know that it will live on in one or more 'new' bikes.

The Iron Horse (aka. train) shaped much of the modern Western US. Despite that history, most of us now travel long distances by car or plane because of the supposed convenience. I've flown and driven across the country countless times, so I wanted to try something new. For a trip from Santa Fe, NM to Kansas City, MO I traveled by bicycle and passenger train. The trip went smoothly and was much lower carbon than either automobile or passenger jet. I'm now a fan of train travel and hope that train travel in the U.S. can be improved.