It has now been officially a week. Here are my numbers:
I am hoping to do a little better this coming week. I have had to drive my car a couple times this past week to get some stuffed moved and delivered.
I have been commuting to work now for a week. Over the week I have been able to cut 10 minutes off my time. One way I have done this is by riding my long board from home to the bus and then from Trax to work. I can cover the same amount of distance in a third of the time. And that is going uphill. Coming down is much faster.
I have really started to enjoy commuting. It has given me some extra time to read and work on some projects that I haven’t had the time to start. I wish that my commute home was a little faster though. It still takes me around an hour and twenty minutes to get home.
One thing that I still need to try is riding my bike. My bike should speed the whole process up. The down side of the bike is that I have to stand and hold it while riding Trax. Right now I can be on my laptop or read while riding Trax. Also, being July, it is hot outside. So riding a bike doesn’t sound like the coolest way to travel.
(Note this picture is of me long boarding in San Diego and not to work. I wish I could ride along the beach each day to work. Well, maybe someday.)
Let me start off by saying how much I love my car. It’s not the car I love it is the ease of having a car that I love. I have always thought it would be a good idea to ride public transportation or my bike, but I have never been able to make myself do it. With the Clear the Air Challenge I thought it would be a good time to start. (You can find out more about this challenge here.)
The last couple of days I have been researching how I was going to get to work. I found out times and locations and what the best way was going to be. I found out that I needed to be at the bus stop at 6:40 am to be to work by 8.
So, it all started at 6:25 this morning when I left my house. I got to the stop early, and it was a good thing I did. The bus arrived 4 minutes early. It was a smooth ride to the Trax(light rail train) station. I am lucky to have a limited stop express bus that I can ride to the Trax station. As the bus was pulling up to the station the train was just leaving, so I got to wait around for 10 or so minutes till the next one.
Trax was great. It was nice to be able to get on the train and not worry about driving. I will be able to get some work done in the morning, read or just listen to some music on the ride. When I got to my stop I had a half mile walk to work but it wasn’t bad.
All in all, it worked pretty well. It took 1 hour and 17 minutes from the time I left home, to the time I got to work. It also took exactly the same time to get home. I arrived to work about 20 minutes early today, so I plan to leave my house a bit later tomorrow; we’ll see how it goes. I will be updating my adventures of not using my car for the month of July.
I came across this press release and thought that it would be a great thing to post. Check out the details below.
Roanoke, VA, Jun 15, 2010 –
Outdoor enthusiasts and gear junkies, get ready to explore!
RoanokeOutside.com – a resource for the Roanoke, Va., region’s outdoors – has teamed with GearJunkie.com, a top outdoors blog and publication, to host a one-day-only Treasure Hunt event in a Roanoke wilderness park on July 11th.
The event will be called “Gear Junkie’s Treasure Hunt: Roanoke.” More than $40,000 in outdoor gear – from backpacks to kayaks – will be given away to an estimated 300 participants.
Additionally, during the run up to the event, GearJunkie.com will hold online contests for its readers. Details including sign-up information and event schedule are available at www.GearJunkie.com/Treasure-Hunt-Roanoke.
“The Treasure Hunt is a first-of-its-kind event,” said Stephen Regenold, founder and editor of GearJunkie.com. “Roanoke provides a great venue for this activity, which will blend elements from adventure racing with a substantial gear scavenger hunt.”
“The Roanoke region is one of the best spots anywhere for outdoor recreation,” says Pete Eshelman with the Roanoke Regional Partnership. “By teaming up with Gear Junkie – a nationally-recognized web site that specializes in outdoor gear – we hope to further solidify our region’s standing.” Visit www.roanokeoutside.com to learn more.
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ABOUT THE ROANOKE REGIONAL PARTNERSHIP The Roanoke Regional Partnership was founded in 1983 as a regional economic development organization for the greater Roanoke area that includes Alleghany, Botetourt, Franklin, and Roanoke counties plus the cities of Roanoke and Salem and the town of Vinton. Its program of work includes image building, asset development, and business recruitment. The Partnership has been involved in business locations and expansions that have created more than 13,600 jobs and $1.3 billion in investment in real estate and equipment. To learn more, please visit www.Roanoke.org.
ABOUT GEARJUNKIE.COM Operated by Monopoint Media LLC of Minneapolis, Minn., GEARJUNKIE.com was founded in 2006. It is an online publication devoted to the outdoors, health, fitness, adventure travel, and all the gear and equipment associated with those pursuits. It is based off a nationally‐syndicated newspaper column of the same name written by freelance journalist Stephen Regenold, a world‐traveling adventurer/journalist with a home base in Minnesota.
I was just going over the 2009 Participation Study by the Outdoor Foundation. It is a interesting report covering what is happening in the outdoors and who is participating. The report showed that there were increases in outdoor activities and that more people were returning to nature. Both hiking and camping showed increases of 9% and 7% respectively. 48.6% of Americans ages 6 and older participated in outdoor recreation and 43% of the outdoor participants are female. One of the sad statistics showed that “43% of outdoor participants get out less than every other week — shedding light on America’s current obesity and inactivity epidemic.”
The report shows that the most popular outdoor activities by participation rate are:
I think the most discouraging statistic is that outdoor participation among youth ages 6 to 17 dropped by 6%. This has been a trend for the last three years. The greatest decline was among the youngest (ages 6-12) surveyed. This shows that it is important for all of us to try and help get children outdoors earlier. Children also said that “fun” was an important part of motivating them to get outdoors. So it is important to remember to take it slow and make it fun for kids will want to do it again and again. I believe as we do this, children will learn to love playing outside and the obesity rate will decline.
There are many programs to help children get outside and play.
This is just a few. There are many more in your local area. If you have would like to read the full report please visit Outdoor Industry Association. Also if you have any great ideas of how to get kids outside, please comment so we can help each other get kids outdoors.
I thought with summer coming, this was a perfect way to start posting again. I have not been as faithful as I should with updating the blog. Smores have evolved into a camping or campfire treat. With our busy schedules we sometimes don’t have a chance to get into the mountains to have a campfire as often as we might like. This little mini smores grill can help keep you sane, as well as satisfy your smore craving when heading to the mountains is out of the question. Please leave a comment if you have any other great ideas on how to bring the outdoors closer to home.