Eco-challenge
Serving Lawrence’s bounty
At the beginning of "Plenty: One Man, One Woman and a Raucous Year of Eating Locally," an impromptu dinner party in the Alaskan wilderness prompts the authors to take on the 100-mile diet challenge for one year. It was a dinner party - as authors Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon soon found out - that helped spark a nationwide trend of eating only foods grown or raised nearby.Since embarking on my own 100-mile diet and reading the book, I had images of a similarly warm, festive gathering of friends and local fare. A dinner party - just two days before the self-imposed, eat-local sentence lifted - would be my crowning achievement.Of course I was a tad apprehensive. Over the past month, I had some spectacular cooking failures. There was the cardboard-tasting pasta and stomach-turning cheese popcorn. Regardless, I e-mailed invitations, promising at the very least whole-wheat bread smothered in butter and honey (something I had grown quite attached to in the past several weeks).On the day of the big meal, apprehension deepened to panic when I realized the main course, pork chops simmered in homemade applesauce, was going to be a no-show. Neither The Community Mercantile nor Local Burger (two of my meat-providing constants) sold pork chops from within a 100 miles.Plan B was a roasted chicken. Plan B also required me to dash home from work so said roasted chicken would be quite toasty by the time my guests arrived at 7:30 p.m.So there I was 10 minutes before game time with the chicken just out of the oven. I still had potatoes to mash, squash to chop, eggplant to puree and peaches to peel.It's at this point that I cursed my thoughts of warm, fuzzy dinner parties and blessed my friends who seem quite comfortable nibbling on appetizers, carving the chicken and washing dishes. I never promised them a free meal.Thirty minutes later, the overworked guests were gathered around the living room as I proudly rattled off the origins of the food on their overflowing plates. The eggplant in the baba ghanoush was from Kevin Irick's stand at the Lawrence Farmers' Market. The bread was bought fresh that afternoon from Wheatfields Bakery. The milk in the mashed potatoes was poured from glass bottles provided by Iwig Family Dairy in Tecumseh, and the potatoes themselves came from Hoyland Farm. The Lawrence organic farm also had grown the summer squash (now sauteed) and the gazpacho's mixture of tomatoes and cucumber. The chicken came from Cedar Valley Farms, 53 miles away and owned by the Bauman family. And, the chicken's honey glaze was from Anthony's Beehive just outside of Lawrence. For the finale, there was a warm, bubbling peach cobbler. The peaches were acquired from Mike Garrett's fruit and vegetable stand across the road from the Lawrence Airport. The fruit had been trucked in from St. Joe. The whole-wheat flour was from Lee Quaintance's farm just south of Edgerton.Of course some cheating did occur in the name of culinary correctness. Olive oil was used, as were sesame seed paste and red wine vinegar.However, the meal remained a testament to Lawrence's bounty of local foods. And it showcased my expanding knowledge of where to find them. I could put a face and a name to most of the main ingredients. At the very least, I knew how far each of the items had traveled. The dinner - and its leftovers - proved a growing hunch. While eating local takes far more time and planning and the costs are slightly higher, its toils are well worth it. I won't go so far as to claim that I am now one with my food, but I am one or two steps away from where it is grown. That's far closer than a month ago.That's not to say that far-away foods don't have a place in my cabinets or stomach. In fact, two days later, when the diet expired, I woke up, went straight to La Prima Tazza and ordered a large mocha. Whipped cream and all.
Putting some pop back in the diet
I'm the first to admit that the 100-mile diet hasn't been much of a diet at all. I've indulged in glass upon glass of milk, slathered on the butter, poured on the honey, and stuffed myself full of peaches, corn and potatoes. Still something was missing. I have since given up pining for coffee and chocolate. Yet right around 3 p.m. or 4 p.m., when the mid-afternoon brain lull settled in, I craved a snack that would bring some excitement to cubicle life. A slice of cantaloupe or a nice big bowl of kale, while delicious, wasn't what I had in mind. I wanted something a little less wholesome.Perhaps some popcorn.Jennifer Kongs, the Kansas University student who spent a month on the 100-mile diet last September, first turned me on to the idea. While interviewing her a few weeks ago, she mentioned that there were several old men who sold vegetables out of their garages in North Lawrence. Among them was one who sold popcorn.I next checked the collective memory or our News Center in hopes of getting closer to my target. Typically this is one of the best places in town for tracking down old men who sell random things. Alas, this time it failed. But my luck turned about a week ago, when I picked up lawrence.com's "Things to do in Lawrence if you're not quite dead" edition. Among the reader submitted suggestions was "Go visit Harry Cross, who lives in the 500-600 block of North Street in North Lawrence."It was the clue that I had been looking for. As it turns out, the address was 530 North Street and the owner was Harry Cook, who just so happened to be in his garage sitting in a lawn chair next to his wife when I pulled up Thursday afternoon. Yes, they sold popcorn, he said. There were a few kinds in fact. And, they sold tomatoes, potatoes, onions and, depending on the day, eggs.For more than 20 years, Harry has been growing and selling popcorn. He had been a regular at the Lawrence Farmers' Market, but now he operates mainly out of his garage, like many in the neighborhood. The couple's hours are when they are there. It's as simple as that. Hanging in the garage are signs just in case they are not home. "Out at noon" and "Running errands, be back soon" they read on white sheets of paper. Harry told me he didn't plant any corn this year. But he had more than a 1,000 pounds from the year before to sell. And, it's a hard job. One variety grows ears no bigger than fingers, five to a stalk. Imagine shelling those, Harry said.I purchased two quart-size bags of popcorn. One was of the small, white, fluffy variety. The other was big and yellow. I also bought a carton of eggs from chickens raised in the backyard. The total came to $7.Now, all I needed was something to pop the corn. It had been years since my popcorn came in anything other than a microwavable, expandable bag. I was hoping to get the old-fashion popcorn popper that Harry showed me. It was a large metal pot that you heated over the stove. So, I was disappointed when all I found at Target was Orville Redenbacher's Hot Air Popper and the Stir Crazy Pop Corn Machine. I went for the Stir-Crazy Pop Corn Machine, a globe shaped device that doubles as a bowl and requires less oil.I popped the kernels just shy of scorching them, went light on the butter and added no salt. After a few bites, I detected a sweetness, but other than that there wasn't much difference from other popcorn I had had over the years.And, yet it was just what I wanted.
Travel leads to vacation from 100-mile diet
I started out with such good intentions. This past weekend, I flew back home to a cousin's wedding in Pennsylvania. For some followers of the 100-mile diet, traveling can be a free pass to eating beyond the confines of food hunted and gathered within a two-hour drive. However, I wasn't going to let a little trip home stand in the way of this challenge. Approaching the four-day, mini-vacation, I didn't think eating locally was going to be all that difficult. My family comes from a long line of farmers and gardeners. My father raises beef cows, my uncle has pigs, our cousins down the road have a dairy farm, my mother tends to a garden and we are surrounded by Amish who grow bushels of cantaloupes and peaches. So, I boarded the plane Friday morning with one Tupperware container of kale that the night before was sauteed in onions and garlic. In another I had fried potatoes mixed with tomatoes so fresh the flavor exploded in your mouth.I was going to Pennsylvania prepared. The first hint that things might not go as smoothly as expected came on the drive home from the airport. My youngest sister had flown in as well. As we were nearing a country roadside store, she reverted to her inner child and started begging my mom to stop for ice cream."Remember, I won't be able to eat it," I protested from the back seat."It's not my fault you're on that diet," she retorted.Clearly, not everyone in my family was going to be supportive. Luckily, the store's ice cream came from a dairy that according to my mom's calculations, was well within a 100 miles. I reasoned it would only be half cheating. So, I indulged.Little did I know that the ice cream would turn out to be the gateway food to much greater straying.I arrived to a tin full of mom's homemade chocolate chip cookies, hoagies from the family's favorite pizza shop and a box of Hartley's Potato Chips. This was the trifecta of culinary homecoming delights. Foods that I only get to devour once or twice a year.Under the most lenient standards, these foods could be considered "local" (the chips were from a company 20 miles away, the pizza shop chain populated just Central Pennsylvania and mom's cookies technically were baked in the very spot that I would be eating them). However, under the strict guidelines I had been following for the past two weeks, these foods were as far away from local as I was from Kansas. I wish I could tell you that I took one look at the tin full of chocolate chip cookies whirled around and headed straight for the garden to pick my supper.On the contrary my willpower took a nose dive. I had all those forbidden foods and more. There were jellybeans, chips and salsa, wedding cake, coffee and stromboli.It turns out, the 100-mile diet is much easier to achieve when you live by yourself, isolated by the temptations of others and fortified by produce bought at the weekly farmers' market.When thrown into a pack of 11, on a tight timetable and at the mercy of others' grocery shopping (much of it done in big-box-buy-it-in-bulk stores), the idealism of the 100-mile diet slowly loses its charm. That being said, there were meals - a good many in fact - where the producers of much of the food were sitting at the table.We had sweet corn picked hours before from my uncle's fields, red-skinned potatoes dug up from my parents' garden, applesauce made from trees that stood for years in their yard and hamburgers from steers that had once grazed on grass 200 yards away.One morning, when I was undertaking efforts to redeem myself from the previous night's dalliances, I cooked three eggs that my dad scrounged up from our Amish neighbors. I threw in a tomato and pepper pulled from the garden.And, on my final night home - with an impromptu gathering of relatives that had us pulling up one chair after another to the kitchen table - we had homemade, hand-churned ice cream. It topped a cobbler made with peaches bought from an orchard not 10 miles away. These were how peaches are supposed to taste. No offense to the lovely species I've found in Oregon, Colorado and even Kansas. But, these were the peaches - melding together sweet and nutty into one juicy bite - of my childhood.So, I left Pennsylvania slightly defeated, but also wiser about the limitations a 100-mile diet poses in even the most rural of locales. When I arrived home Tuesday morning, I threw out my Starbucks cup of coffee, pulled out a loaf of locally made bread, sliced some Alma cheddar cheese and diced a tomato that was still good from last Thursday.No more cheating, I assured myself.
A Saturday in the kitchen: Cardboard-tasting pasta and scrumptious sauce
The day started with the purchase of an innocent-looking flat of tomatoes at Saturday's Lawrence Farmers' Market. And ended with me standing on a stool at 9:30 p.m. kneading dough into small elastic piles of pasta.In between there was me buying four pounds of apples, going on a scavenger hunt across Lawrence for a "Victoria Strainer" and creating some of the best tomato sauce I have ever tasted.This is what the 100-mile diet had turned my life into - my entire Saturday spent in the kitchen. At least, it was a rainy Saturday.That morning just as the clouds where lifting over the Farmers' Market, I eyed some ripe Roma tomatoes. The vendor offered that for just ten bucks I could have an entire flat of them. I looked up to see clouds that had the capacity to keep raining all day. I thought why not. Eventually, in my month-long 100-mile diet quest, I am going to need tomato sauce. After procuring my flat of tomatoes, I strolled over to a nearby table that was full of apples. And that is when things started to snowball. If I am going to spend the day making tomato sauce - I reasoned - why not make applesauce too.' So, I took the leap and bought four pounds of the green, knobby things. Then terror struck. I realized I had nothing to use in actually physically making the apples into sauce. Let's jump ahead to a frantic phone call I made to my mom while sitting in the parking lot of Bed, Bath & Beyond. I am holding a cell phone in one hand and scribbling down directions on the back of an old grocery receipt with the other. Be assured, this is a scene that has been played out many times before.According to mom, what I needed was a Victoria Strainer (at least to make the kind of applesauce I was so fond of as a child). And, she guessed it could be found in just about any store's home section for under $20.Clearly the last time she bought one was right after I was born. Bed, Bath & Beyond didn't have one, not even at their warehouse. Neither did the downtown kitchen boutique store Bay Leaf or the canning section of Cottin's Hardware. It was at the last stop where I found my lead. Ernst & Son Hardware might have one, the salesman said.With it's old attic-smell, creak of hard wood floors and rows of cubbyhole drawers, the store on Massachusetts Street is just the place to find something as antiquated as a Victoria Strainer. And, I did find one, or at least something close to it.Perhaps a common trait for items with the name Victoria in the title, I had romanticized the Victoria Strainer of my youth. It had a large white funnel at the top, a metal tray for shooting out the unwanted skin and seeds and - most fun for a six-year-old kid - a crank to turn the apples through the press.What I got was half the size and bright red. And it came in a box with directions written in five different languages, none of which were English. The cost (written on top of the dusty cover with a pencil) was close to $30.Having tracked down the needed equipment, I headed for home to start the cooking frenzy. Piping hot, the homemade applesauce was delicious - even without the half of cup of sugar I usually douse on it. And with just boiling water and cut up apples, it was easy to make.I moved on to my next challenge: tomato sauce.And, this is where I confess to my first instance of cheating on the 100-mile diet. When I started out last week, I was certain if I cheated it would be with something decadent, like a full-fat mocha, whip cream and all. So I was a little taken back when the thing that broke me was a lack of olive oil. I don't have an ounce of Italian in me, and still I couldn't bring myself to make tomato sauce without olive oil or a nice full-bodied red wine. So, I broke my vow and I threw both into a pot of local garlic, basil and onions.I am glad I did because the sauce was amazing. So good in fact that I decided - as I tested my third spoonful - I had to have pasta to go with it. I mean had to have it ... as in that night.So after several unanswered phone calls to my mom, sister and aunt, I pulled out the slightly-dull-but-trusty culinary bible, the Joy of Cooking. On page 303, was all that I needed to know. Making pasta isn't much harder than making a pie crust. Halfway through as I was rolling the dough, then stretching it out and then rolling the dough out again, I wondered why more people didn't do this.It turns out, there are very good reasons for that.Primarily, it tasted awful. At least, my version did. I am pretty sure gnawing on cardboard would require less chewing and have more flavor.Secondly, it took a heck of lot of work. The mixing, the kneading, the rolling, the cutting, the drying. This is no simple process for something that turns out to be less than a delight to the taste buds.Despite the disappointment in the pasta department, I went to bed happy and full.Two out of three isn't bad.
Got Milk?
Got Milk?Yesterday afternoon, I pulled out an ice-cold, honest-to-goodness glass bottle of milk from my refrigerator.It was something I hadn't done since I was ten years old. And, I am not exaggerating when I say it was the best glass of milk I have ever had.Sometime between heading off to college and winding up here in Lawrence, I stopped that wholesome tradition of drinking milk with every meal. In fact, if I didn't take cream with my coffee, I wouldn't buy it all. So, on Day 3 of my 100-mile diet, I was shocked by just how good this glass of milk tasted. I am not sure if it was the freshness, my delirium from lack of caffeine or the wave of nostalgia induced by the glass container, but I found myself pouring glass after glass of this creamy, white goodness.My grandmother used to have similar, ice-cold bottles of milk in her refrigerator. She purchased it from my uncle, who was a dairy farmer down the road. But over the years - whether it was the concern generated by unpasteurized milk, an attempt to cut down on fat with skim milk or that she was just too busy to bother with that extra stop to the dairy farm on the way home - those glass bottles were replaced with plastic ones from the store.So it was a serendipity when I walked past the dairy case at The Community Mercantile and discovered that, yes, they did sell milk that comes within a 100 miles of Lawrence. And, even better it comes in fancy glass containers. The milk is from Iwig Family Dairy in Tecumseh. And, according to the back of the bottle, the third generation family farm produces and processes all the milk, which is free of hormones and antibiotics. Granted the milk isn't cheap. For 1.89 liters, I forked over $3.49 plus $2.75 for a bottle deposit (which I get back if I return the bottle). All told it's more than six bucks for a bottle of milk. But, I as gulped down glass number three, I decided it was totally worth it.
Eating within range
The thing about a diet (and I should know because I have been on more than a few) is when you first start one, you never think about all the food you can have. Instead, my mind is driven - obsessively so - to what is forbidden. I mean Monday wasn't so bad. For breakfast, I had whole-wheat toast with a layer of honey and butter. For lunch it was a sandwich of fresh tomatoes, basil and cucumbers topped off with side of cantaloupe. Alma cheese curds were my mid-afternoon snack. And, in the evening I dined on stuffed eggplant. Trust me, I've kicked-off diets eating much worse. And, yet all I really want - to the point of almost going mad - is a nice non-fat grande latte with one sugar. Please. At this point (with what appears to be a major headache coming on) I would even go for a plain old cup of Folgers, with or without the cream. But really, I shouldn't be complaining. I really couldn't pick a better month to start eating locally than August or a better land for a virtual cornucopia of fruits, vegetables and grains than Kansas. And I have a refrigerator full of local meats and dairy products. In fact, in the weeks leading up to Monday's nosedive into local food consumption, I had gathered more than enough food for three of me. So, why at 9 p.m. with a full and happy stomach, do I still want coffee?Welcome to phase two of the eco-challenge: the 100-mile diet. Last week I tried to see what life was like without a car. By the end, I had gotten drenched on my way to work, acquired a desk draw full of high-heeled shoes and managed to make it to Kansas City and back on a Friday night. In an attempt at full-disclosure, I must reveal that on Sunday - the very last day of the challenge - I slipped into my car, turned on the engine and roared off to Kansas City for a beach volleyball game. Sorry, there was no way around it and my teammates were depending on me. But that was all sooooo last week. Today is all about the 100-mile diet. And, this time around I am going to try it for a month because - in the words of my editor: "Anyone can do almost anything for a week. A month, now that is a challenge."For those who haven't read one of the hundreds of books or Web sites dedicated to the eat local movement, the 100-mile diet restricts you to food that is grown within a 100-mile radius of your home.It's the kind of diet that hasn't caught on in Hollywood, but is a huge hit in San Francisco. And the focus isn't to lose weight. In fact, it goes beyond just eating healthy. It's about living healthier, building healthier communities and leaving a healthier planet behind.At it's root is reconnecting the food on the plate to that in the soil - a bond that has grown thin over the past half century.While I don't expect to lose weight, I fully intend to bake bread, concoct some kind of yogurt in my kitchen and boil down chicken bone to make soup. It will require dusting off some old family recipes, mooching off the proceeds of others' vegetable gardens and searching North Lawrence for "that guy who sells popcorn out of his garage." In the end, I hope to uncover under appreciated food that has been grown practically in my backyard for years and to let go of those far away foods that have turned into staples. Coffee included.
To KC and back
It took three buses, a $9 taxi ride, one train and a bit of cheating. But, I did it. I managed to get to Kansas City ([Westport's Ernie Biggs Dueling Piano Bar to be exact][1]) on a Friday night and return the same day -- without driving. Well, not exactly on the same day, but close enough.The Amtrak train pulled into the Lawrence station a little past 12:30 a.m. This was the part of my no-car week that had given me the most pause.The event was a must-attend. One of my friends had won an office party at Ernie Biggs. That meant free food, free drinks and no cover charge. The only problem was it started at 6 p.m., which even on a good newsroom day would be difficult to make. During the week when I had traded my four wheels for my two legs, it seemed impossible.But these are the challenges one must face in life (or in my case the blogosphere). For the past two weeks, I had been planning for the night. First I would take the K-10 Connector from Lawrence to Johnson County Community College. Then, I would catch a bus downtown and from there to Westport. With a quick call to [The JO (short for Johnson County Transit)][2], I had all the routes and stops mapped out.Because the K-10 Connector doesn't run late Friday evenings or at all during the weekend, I had to find another way home.The idea of a 50-mile bike ride back to Lawrence the next day was one that appealed to me. However, my bike-shop friends informed me that the city of De Soto was less than friendly to bicyclists.For a day, I thought I was either going to have to break my vow of carlessness or miss out on the fun. Then genius struck (or a co-worker gave me a good suggestion. I can't remember.)What about the train?As luck would have it, once every day Amtrak leaves Kansas City traveling West and passing through Lawrence. And, it just so happens to be at 10:55 p.m. And, I could buy a ticket for $17. My plan was foolproof. Until 3:03 p.m. Friday.That's when I realized if I wanted to catch the bus from downtown Lawrence to Haskell Indian Nations University to meet the K-10 Connector, I had to be at the bus stop in exactly one minute. I was nowhere close.I was defeated before my first step. I roamed the News Center asking anyone I saw -- reporters, photographers, editors -- if they were by chance heading toward Haskell in the next 20 minutes or so. I had a taker. Well, technically, he was going to the downtown courthouse. And, that technically was cheating. But, I had a larger plan to consider. When we pulled up to Haskell, there were no signs as to where the bus might stop. No signs, except for a college-age man talking on his cell phone and milling about in the north parking lot. I took a chance and decided to wait nearby. The bus pulled up on time. Because it was declared a high-ozone-level day in Kansas City, the fare was reduced to 50 cents. The ride over was one of pure pleasure. I leaned back, pulled out a book and didn't once worry about those jerk-of-a-drivers in front of me. We made it to Johnson County before I finished the first ten pages of my book. I was now ready to take on The JO.A bit unfamiliar with Kansas City and completely new to it's bus system, I was the bus driver's worst nightmare -- shuffling through my purse for the exact change, asking if this was the bus that would take me downtown and then checking every couple stops to see if I needed to get off. Though annoying, it's a tactic that works. And, I successfully exited that bus to wait for the next one. And that was where error number two was made. It wasn't until after I boarded the next bus and was headed toward sky scrappers that I realized something wasn't right. When everyone else got off -- including the driver -- I knew something had gone terribly wrong. It turned out, I should have crossed the street when I transferred buses. Fortunately, the driver informed me that after he took a short bathroom break he would be headed in the direction I needed to go. The mistake resulted in a 20 minute detour. But, soon enough [I found myself in Westport][3]. Start to finish, it was a three hour journey that cost $1. The way back was a little more expensive. Around 9:40 p.m., I ventured out of Ernie Biggs and to the side of Broadway. According to the nice man I called at The JO, the bus I needed to be on would arrive at 9:54 p.m.It did arrive -- on the other side of the street. My failing sense of direction was getting embarrassing. Not sure when the next bus would come and knowing I had just one chance back to Lawrence that night, I panicked and hailed a cab. It was a $9 ride to Union Station. As it turned out the train was delayed and I had a good 30 minutes to burn. So, I called my sister, chatted to the nice gentlemen next to me and did some highly-entertaining people watching.This was my first Amtrak experience and even at 11 p.m. I wanted to soak it all in. When we boarded, I was surprised by how big and comfy the seats were. The leg room was well beyond the first-class standards of airplanes. If it wasn't for the constant wailing of the train horn, I might have fallen asleep. Just before the train reached Lawrence, an attendant made sure I was awake and ready to depart. When the doors opened it was to an empty sidewalk and a dark night. This was a part of Lawrence, I had never seen before. It took me a few seconds and several circles before I spotted the lights from downtown just four blocks away. My eyes burned and my feet hurt, as I walked the last part of my journey. When I reached home, the light by my front door had never looked so welcoming. The trip back to Lawrence took 3 hours 20 minutes and $26. [1]: http://kansascity.erniebiggs.com/ [2]: http://www.thejo.com/ [3]: http://www.westportkc.com/
On someone else’s timetable
Trains don't wait. It was among my grandmother's favorite sayings and a line her father - a conductor for the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad Line - had passed down to her.The words ran through my head as I was running toward the bus stop at 6th and Maine streets.I wasn't late, exactly. I had a good five minutes between the time I left my house and when The T was scheduled to arrive a block and half away. Call it neurotic, but when it comes to public transportation I have this deeply rooted fear that the very thing I am headed toward will start pulling away from the curb just seconds before my arrival.And I can attest to the hard-learned truth that along with trains - buses, planes and ferries don't wait either.This time, it turned out, I had allowed plenty of cushion. It was Wednesday evening, day three of my no-car week; and I was taking the bus to do some much needed grocery shopping at Hy-Vee. That morning, I met with Emily Lubliner, a public relations specialist at Lawrence Transit System. (I might add, I walked 13 blocks in the rain to do so). We sat down with the bus schedule laid out before us and mapped out my routes.It's a service that is available to anyone. And, for those who are particularly public-transportation challenged, a T official will even go on a trial bus run.The two of us determined that I would have plenty of time to do the weekly grocery getting if I picked up the 6:48 p.m. bus at 6th and Maine. With my return trip starting at 7:50 p.m., I would get home just minutes before The T shut down for the evening.But the funny thing about grocery shopping is that it's one of those things I really don't have any concept of how long it takes. And, with my car typically waiting patiently outside in the parking lot, timing such an excursion has never been much of an issue. On someone else's timetable, it's a different story.Which is how I found myself sitting at the bus stop at the corner of 6th Street and Kasold Drive with 30 minutes to spare. Having nothing to do but wait, I scarfed down my dinner of fried chicken and mashed potatoes and did my best to avoid eye contact from passing motorists for fear I might know one of them. Beside me was my bag of groceries and inside it a carton of melting ice cream. Boy, had I timed this wrong.Luckily I came somewhat prepared, purchasing the latest celebrity gossip magazine on the way through the checkout line (a mindless luxury I typically only avail myself of while traveling through airports). After about a million impatient glances down 6th Street, the bus arrived and made an uneventful journey back to 6th and Maine.When I got home, I checked my voice mail on a slightly damp cell phone that had been stashed at the bottom of my grocery bag.It turns out, I had been spotted. Among the calls was one from a co-worker who had caught sight of me outside of Hy-Vee. As he drove by, he wanted to know if it would be cheating if he gave me a lift home. Since I wasn't answering the cell phone, he proceeded to wonder if I had decided to give up electronic communication as well.For a second, I was tempted to call back to inform him I was trying to go green, not Amish. And, for the record - just in case he caught me chowing down fried chicken at Kasold and 6th - I wasn't completely nuts.But, I thought it would be more fun to leave him guessing. And, for the record, yes it would be cheating.
Dealing with the baggage
The cup of coffee fit perfectly in the bottle holder of my road bike. Even better, most of it remained inside the cup as I pedaled from one side of downtown to the other.I know, it's a small achievement. But after being drenched on my walk to work Monday, I chalked this trip up as a major victory of my no-car week.Today, I decided to test the bike commute. My challenge was finding a way to get a laptop, a change of clothes, my shoes, my lunch, enough bagels to feed 10 hungry reporters and - most important of all - a cup of coffee to work using a bike. Clearly, my stylish blue leather satchel wasn't going to get the job done.I left the house with the bag crammed to the max, barely fitting over my shoulder. On the cruise down 7th Street, I kept glancing behind me to make sure a wayward shoe hadn't fallen to the pavement. My first stop downtown was the [News Center][1] where I dropped off my laptop, clothes, shoes and lunch. Then I headed to the far end of downtown to pick-up [the all-important bagels.][2]And that is where I was greeted with my triumph. The coffee I ordered fit snugly into the bottle holder and barely bubbled over the top when I headed back to the News Center. Yes, I was slightly sweaty and the notes I left inside my bag were badly crumpled, but this biking-to-work thing seemed easy enough. And, it didn't take much longer than driving. I do have a confession. On my way home from work tonight, I just may swing by [Sunflower Outdoor & Bike Shop][3] to check out those fancy looking messenger bags I spotted at the [Sidewalk Sale][4].I have this sneaking suspicion, however, that the purchase would negate the money I am saving on gas this week. [1]: http://www.kpalliance.org/images/2004/LawrencePO.jpg [2]: http://www.einsteinbros.com/ [3]: http://sunfloweroutdoorandbike.com/ [4]: http://www2.ljworld.com/photos/galler...
Carless commuter discovers hazards of two-legged travel
_Editor's note: Over the next couple of weeks, reporter Christine Metz is undertaking an eco-challenge of her own design. In a quest to live a greener lifestyle, she has set out to go one week without a car, spend a month eating only locally grown food and track how much waste a person produces in a single week. Follow along as she blogs about the highs and lows of the average car-driving, coffee-drinking, trash-dumping girl trying to go green._The commute to the office was supposed to be the easy part.At least that is what I told my friends and co-workers as I was prepping for the challenge of going one week without once starting the car.It was my social life - not work - that was going to involve the temptation to drive. I scoured bus routes, community carpool message boards and even the Amtrak schedule to find a way to get from Lawrence to Kansas City for a Sunday afternoon volleyball game. And I had plotted an across-town bike route so I could attend a Tuesday evening jewelry party.But the 10-block walk to work I had down. I'd done it countless times, high heels and all. It was going to be a breeze. That was before 7 a.m.As I woke to the rumblings of thunder, I realized I might have been a tad overconfident.Yet my optimism remained mostly intact when I peeked outside to see an overcast sky but no rain. I decided to leave the raincoat at home and grabbed the umbrella just in case.Halfway between my house and the office, the clouds broke loose. When I hit Watson Park, I was wet around the edges. My legs had gotten the worst of it. They were soaked from an unsuspecting sprinkler at the corner of Louisiana and Seventh streets.Downtown, as I was heading toward much-needed coffee at La Prima Tazza, the wind flipped my umbrella upside down and the rain turned from a steady stream to a downpour. I cursed myself for putting "walking to work" and "breeze" in the same sentence. By the time I reached the News Center, I was questioning why I would want to give up my car in the first place. I hadn't even walked in the door, and already my enthusiasm for a week sans car and another month of eco-challenges had, shall we say, dampened.Perhaps tomorrow I'll bring the raincoat.
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