The One Mile Bike

Over the years I've used my bikes for everything from commuting, centuries and adventure riding, bike touring, trail riding, and errands.  But in recent years I've seen a gradual decrease in my use of the bicycle for the errand running that I used to do.  Considering that I live so close to downtown and a variety of other regular stops this is kind of a dumb and lazy on my part.  Using a car for these trips is wasteful, expensive, and just plain unhealthy.  

One of the best pieces of advice I've seen for people trying to lessen their use of the auto and move towards a healthier lifestyle is to take a map of where they live and draw a half, one, or two mile radius circle with their residence as the center.  Anything that falls within the circle that is a destination (groceries, entertainment, coffee shop, bookstore, etc.) then becomes a primarily a place that you choose to walk or bike to rather than hop in the car.  Especially since these short trips in a car are the least economical uses of a motorized vehicle and maybe very well not be any faster in an urban environment.  I've certainly given this advice to others over the years but it seems I need to improve on this myself.

So with that in mind I'm going to add the increase of these short trips to my regular bike riding as a New Year's resolution.  It's not like you need a special bike to do this but I happen to have a perfect choice for this short range type of riding.  It's an old Bridgestone MB-3 I picked up a few years ago from the Reno Bike Project.  Not a bike that I'd actually use for riding offroad but certainly solid mechanically and with no need for special pedal/shoe combinations.  Add to that the semi-slick Specialized Armadillo tires and you've got a bike that is almost bullet proof and will require virtually no maintenance.  For that matter, those tires are so stiff you could practically run them without air and they'd still be rideable. Another bonus is that it's a bike that I never have to really worry about keeping secure.  A little cable is plenty if all I want is to grab a cup of coffee or run into the grocery store.