Embracing the Challenge

In the last two days (Friday and Saturday):

1. I paid my last parking ticket. (I forgot to move my car for the city's Thursday street cleaning operation.)

2. Thanks to a Bucky Book coupon (the book compliments of Madison Property Management), I aquired a stick bike pump with guage, a patch kit with tire levers, and an inner tube along with my purchase of a rear folding basket at Machinery Row Bicycles.

Maintaining and adding to my bike is therapeutic. With the basket addition, however, I've been forgetting to avoid tripping over it. A change of pace is in order--from "full speed ahead" to a safer, more sustainable, considerately casual "taking it easy."

3. Short on sleep, I recognize that transitioning to car-free living is a spiritual leap of faith. Humility is the first character improvement that I'm noticing. I expect to gain other such strengths as I face challenges implicit in forgoing the option of gasoline as a source of energy.

4. My trip to the nearby Williamson Street Grocery Cooperative demonstrated that many of my like-minded neighbors possess a collective preference for (pricey) organic and locally-sourced foods, a taste that I haven't aquired yet. Possibly due to false assumptions or misinformation, I don't value the strict practice of organic consumption. (My belief is that modern methods of growing and harvesting are necessary in order to sustain our population that may very well be in excess of Earth's carrying capacity.) As a student, I simply can't afford to let my grocery budget grow out of proportion to my income and efforts to be thrifty, wherever practical.  (See: "Update: Willy Street Coop")