Errands On Bike; Physical Difficulty: Easy, Psychological Difficulty: Ouch!

Again I find that trying to squeeze as much as I can into the shortest time possible is the besetting fault which hampers a number of my efforts at personal improvement. 

Today, my son "X"*, who has procrastinated his monthly free-reading until the last possible moment, announced that he needed to go to the library immediately to select a book.  While my first thought was: "Failure to Plan Ahead On Your Part Does Not Constitute a Emergency on Mine" (a sign that years ago graced the cubicle of a former co-worker of mine), after some reflection I recognized the inherent "Green Opportunity".

Donning our helmets to make the 0.5 mile (or less) trek  to the local library, I could not help but reckon up the substantial 30 minute difference between going in the car, and going by bike--a realization which I quickly tried to suppress.  After the successful acquisition of a Newberry  Award-winning book with less than 200 pages, for which X had already seen the movie (all important factors, given the impending deadline), it occurred to me that we could easily just zip over to the CVS to pick up a prescription that had come in.  Two Birds with One Stone! YES!!!  NOW we are talking!  FUN! I imagined running errands around town by bike on a regular basis...scooting between bank and Post Office and drug store, without having to spend the time to park or negotiate traffic! Just need a bigger rack. And maybe some saddle-bags...

And in the end, I was able to pass on some valuable bike-riding lore to X.  This too required some suppression of Type A tendencies, the reason for which I still sport two capped front teeth, which I broke twice on bikes--the first time attempting to beat my own no-hands record on my Stingray and the second, multi-tasking while riding.

We carefully walked our bikes across the crosswalks, and I made a point to halt at stop signs and to model looking over my shoulder to monitor rush hour traffic.  We decided how and where to best secure our bikes from theft.  

So perhaps I did not quite overcome my "besetting fault", and rather just worked with it and derived multiple benefits from my single "Green Thing" that have the potential to be leveraged into further good things to come.             

*Note to Reader: "X" is actually the nickname that he goes by, and this is not an attempt at literary anonymity, in which case I would likely have used the more traditional "N".