Day 30!

We did it! I can't believe it. We are done with 30 days!

This has likely been the craziest thing I've ever done in my life.

This and marrying my obviously equally crazy husband.

Of course, our last day fell on a Sunday which meant one more 20-mile round-trip ride to church. Fortunately we had a new toy to lighten our load. Well, at least lighten my load and maybe just add to Nathan's load.

I have this uncle. He tinkers. He was basically the king of recycling and reusing materials long before it was fashionable. He has saved many treasures from a long painful death in the junkyard. He recently made a bike trailer from an old wheelchair, a milk crate and some scrap metal. Impressive.

We loaded up the trailer with my backpack and Nathan's bag of clothes for church. It connects to the bike essentially the same way as a children's cart does. This time, Nathan took his road bike so he was able to carry the cargo load. It fit all of our stuff in there pretty snuggly.

We stopped for lunch at Whole Foods on the way home and bought some milk and bread.

Here is my mom helping me get my groceries into the trailer. And making sure I was warm enough. Thanks, Mom.
Now, I'll admit, we did get a few strange stares and did quite a bit of head-turning as people realized that we actually were pulling part of a wheelchair behind a bike.

We are grown-up about it though. We can handle it. Heck, people have been looking at us funny all month. And it doesn't even matter how many weird looks I get as long as I don't have to shove a container of milk into my backpack.

It was actually one of the first times I've ridden without a backpack. I now realize how much that was hurting my back. It was so much more enjoyable without it.


As we were getting closer to our destination this morning, I asked Nathan what he thought of it, pulling some extra weight and all. I expected him to say something like "Well, it slows me down some," or "My legs are hurting pretty bad." Instead, he says "I think this trailer helps to even us out pretty well." Meaning "You're pretty slow. So having this extra 30 pounds behind me at least gives you a fighting chance of keeping up with me."
I tried not to take it too personally.
We are pretty pleased with my uncle's cart. Our only modification right now will be to tape up some of the metal pieces since it clangs around a bit.

But we are finished with our 30-day experiment. And just in the nick of time. Another snow storm is rolling into town tonight with another 3-6 inches of snow. And cold- more cold.

We'll be writing a few more posts over the next couple of days, drawing some conclusions about our adventure. We'll also be giving our muscles of few days off. And hoping our car actually starts in the morning.

Kristin