Family Alive

(Click the picture to watch Josiah bounce!)

I am home from work early today after bouncing around town on National Bike-to-Work Day. At 6AM this morning, I left to bike into downtown Birmingham to gather with other cyclists and bike commuters for a rally at Five Points South. When I got there, I saw ABC 33/40 broadcasting live and moseyed on up to the front of about 30 people where my racing buddy, Travis, and Faris, one of our Tria-Market / Two Men and a Truck bike team sponsors, were hanging out. After the news reporter stopped broadcasting, she asked for a volunteer to be interviewed. She interviewed Travis first, and Travis didn’t hold back any words about how the city (especially motorists) could do better to facilitate bike commuting — wider roads, shoulders on roads, share the road attitudes, etc… Then Travis said she should talk to me since I commute to work every day on my bike. She asked me if I found it difficult to find safe roads to ride. I told her that where I live is like an island in that I am surrounded by Old Rocky Ridge and Rocky Ridge roads, which are not very safe for cyclists. Once I make it off those roads into the neighborhoods, I can find pretty safe roads to ride on — but there is no easy way to avoid the busier roads.

After the interviews the group of about 30 went on a 7 mile tour that ended up at the Regional Planning Commission, home of CommuteSmart, which sponsored the event. They had all kinds of schwag and I got a cool reflective cover for my backpack straps. Faris and I took off back over the mountain to Homewood and then I biked on into Samford for a nice 20 mile commute into work this morning!

I finished preparing my final exam for my intro to computer science class, gave the exam, and then biked home and it’s just barely 3pm. I took this video of Josiah while Kristine was putting Analise down for a nap.