The church, Christians and faith in God.

Looking back over my blog the past couple days I can see a thread running through it that I had not realized had been going for so long... 

It seems it started and then tapered off after Glen Eyrie.  I still wonder why so many times working for a Christian organization can serve the purpose to drive people away from God instead of drawing people to him.  I wonder if it is the intense exposure to Christians at there best and worst all the time?

One thing that it is easy to forget I think is that all people who are Christians are still human, they sin, they doubt, they run back to God and they put fish bumper stickers on there car and then drive horribly.  Sometimes I think that do and have forgotten that.  One of the main struggles I have always had is separating Christians the people, from God.  I think most of my struggles with my faith have been related to that. 

Since we are all fallable and broken it makes sense that we will never be perfect...

Over the years the main thing I have had to learn is that my belief in God has to be separated from how his followers act.  It is so much easier to remember the bad then the good and the experiences that I had with people who called themselves followers of Jesus when I worked with the Navigators jaded me for a long time.  I know I had so many wonderful experiences there and made so many life long friends.  Sometimes in the past I failed to realize that.

None of this is to say that it should not drive you crazy when Christians do or say stupid things.  When Christians spout hate in the name of God or express racism in stead of love towards any of our brothers and sisters.

We need to bring Christianity back to its core where it is focused on us showing God's love to others, not focused on what they are doing but what God wants us to do for them.

Even the people who drive me crazy, because I think "How can they do that and still call themselves a Christian"  I need to be showing love to them to.  I am thankful that after the couple years of my doubts having a war with who I knew God was, I am able to say that my eyes are open to both the good and the bad the Christians do, and that to a large extent when I see Christians including my self doing things that are the opposite of what God wants that I can still believe in Him.

writing...

What is it about putting words on paper.

I had forgotten how therapeutic it is and how it lets me work out some of my thoughts that tumble around in my head and never reach a conclusion.  Over the past couple years there have been so many thoughts tumbling end over end in my head and never finding a place to stop.  I think that to an extent the thoughts would be worked out if they were written down and pondered over.

In the past year or two or three I watched TV or a movie or who knows what else instead stimulating my mind.  My reading has gone down hill... the things I ponder all the time do not seem as deep as they once did.

How do I get that deepness of thought back?  Is it through working out my thoughts in a medium such as this blog or a journal or both?  Is it through searching out books to read that stimulate all the dormant brain cells that I haven't used over the past couple years?  Maybe it is also about finding friends who want to have those conversations about life and love and how we should interact with the world as christians.

Local

Local

Lately I have been thinking about how to buy local...

It is not necessarily to support the USA, cause honestly I am not much of a patriot.
It is not to support the local big wigs
It is not to give the local government a much needed cash infusion.
And it doesn't come from a desire to be more green.

Buying locally should be something that all of us support because it means supporting our neighbors and our community.
Buying a couch off craigslist and having it reupholstered by my neighbor Kat
Buying or bartering for seeds to plant my garden next year
Buying coffee from a local roaster

 All these things enable a tighter knit community,by enabling us to get to know the people around us. It gives us opportunities to serve others and get to know them and find out what is going on in their lives! For me the point of buying local is to get to know and support the people around me.

The culture of community strengthens everyone as a whole and helps people to become others centered instead of centered on themselves. I dream of starting a tool library to increase the community in my neighborhood. It has been an ongoing dream and I have not started it yet. I think I will start once I get done with my house. I will start out with my own tools and add tools as needed. I like the West Philly Tool library as an example of what could be done. Minimal fees and great selection. westphillytools.org/ . I would like to include my truck as part of the initial tool library so that anyone who needs it can borrow it.

Community has the potential to make everything it touches better...

Lifting the House

Its has been almost a year and a half since I posted...

Kind've crazy. for a while there I was posting what seemed like every week. I have debated whether it was because I got rid of my laptop and could not sit outside, smoking the hookah and looking at the stars while I wrote a blog post.

Some of the posts in the past were more contemplative and philosophical, I have seen myself move away from that in the past couple years, I think mostly due to watching to much TV and giving into being a couch potato. I didn't really grow up with TV and for some reason I tend to binge on it when I have access to it.

But to move on. I realized I have not wrote anything or blogged or anything else in a long time.

I will mock up ideas I have for designs on CAD but that in terms of creative, that is about the most creative I get.

I have decided (and this is not a new years resolution) that I will limit myself to at most 1 hr of time wasted in front of Netflix or Hulu everyday. I live in such amazing country and have no excuse to take advantage of it. Hiking trails start within a block of my house and you can hear one of the waterfalls when you sit on the back patio.

Lately, I have stayed inside and watched a TV show vs. getting out and hiking or writing or drawing or something besides vegging out.

I got on the blog to start documenting my thought process on restoring the foundation on my house. I researched all different kinds of ways to repair the foundation and level the house cause it is a scary prospect. Then for some reason I started thinking about all the thoughts that started brewing inside my head about 3 weeks ago as I set in front of the computer watching hulu and had the little warning pop up saying that I had watched it for 3 hrs and did I want to take a break.

So here it goes... Now if it would not bother my neighbours when I use my circular saw after 9 it would be even easier to start the process of de-vegging. As a preview, the first picture is how my house looked to begin with, and how it will look once the process is done. I am kind've in the middle right now.

Just as a point of reference the area to the left of the futon is what the first picture is showing. In the model below the kitchen is moved to the opposite side of the house and the column in the middle will hold cabinets, all the home theater equipment including the projector and then will have indirect light coming out the top and bouncing off the ceiling. Takes some imagination though...

Epic Biking...

Today was a great day...

I may have destroyed a helmet, cracked a rib and ended up with lots of scrapes, but the riding was worth it.

I mountain biked the Monarch Crest Trail with my friend Roland today and the trail was amazing as always. Lots of fast, flowing riding combined with views that beat most other trails I have been on.

I don't think I mountain bike enough. Even as I am growing to love other forms of biking, the mountains and thin curving trails are always calling. I need to work on finding a balance between commuting and mountain biking.

In other news. I am still working on a Bighorn sheep made out of bottles, cans and bicycle rims. The epoxy is setting on the bottles now, more pictures to come once it is put together.

Biking, Biking, Biking

It has been far to long.

I got the creativity back about sept. 2009 but that definitely did not translate to blogging more. I could use the excuse that my computer took a dump soon after that but it would not be true.

I have had a couple adventures since I last posted, biking in Arkansas, finally buying a car, getting more into bike camping.

All of those adventures have come together to just give me a hunger to bike more and help others bike more and I wonder where that will lead.

I always said I was a mountain biker and not a road biker, but I am even moving away from that. I am realizing that I love the adventure. If it is on the road is great, if it is on a small path winding through the mountains even better. If I meet up with other random bicyclist as the adventure progresses that is the best thing of all.

What is even more crazy, is that for the last 5ish years most of my big adventures have involved a motorcycle. I think that might be changing. Is it another chapter in my life or just a gradual move to what I have always loved?

I have even been considering selling my car, but then I think about the state of public transport and all the friends I have been able to go and see during the winter since I got it and I realize that I might want to keep it for trips. Biking is awesome but seeing good friends is much better.

I pushed past the first barrier to really having amazing trips on bicycles. I actually road from Colorado Springs to Breckenridge. On a cargo bike even...

About 2/3 of the way there I met up with some guys doing the Colorado Trail Race. And I kept up with them on my big massive cargo bike. It was kind've exciting. I got to have dinner with them and meet some very cool people.

I rode about 5 hrs a day every day and discovered the secret to riding longer distances as I pushed through the wall that would come up every day. Walls are not pushed through in my life. Normally they are skirted around. Pushing through the wall gave me the confidence to start pushing through a couple other walls in my life such as starting to look at where I really want my life to end up. Working for a corporation is not where I want to be the rest of my life. I want to work in a place where I see the same people and build relationships and friendships. Not a place where I am locked away at a desk all day!

Hopefully more to come. But of course I said that last September...

Finally...

I think that the creative bug finally came back!!!

I took most of the month of August off work to bike the Colorado Trail.

Only part of the Colorado Trail was biked. I rode most of the sections between Breckenridge and Denver with my little brother. We camped out a couple nights and I realized that inbetween both of us being in much worse shape then we thought and lots of little things going wrong that the week with my brother would be better spent staying at my aunt's house and biking with my brother up there. Luckily I was right and biked a lot and cooked alot. And got some really quality time together. After he left I headed back out on the Colorado Trail made through one section and realized two things.

1. I was not having a lot of fun cause of the bike I had.

2. I was in much worse shape then I thought and the Colorado Trail was much harder biking wise then I had expected.

The night I decided to bail out, I sat on a log for 2-3 hours and thought about my thought process and how overly optimistic I tend to be about accomplishing goals. In the end I realized that I would have to ride the whole trail some other trip. So I rode back to Breck and got a ride back to the Springs.

I arrived back in the springs and fixed up the Kaboom and started biking as I waited for my motorcycle to get fixed. The Kaboom was such a revelation. To prepare for the Colorado Trail I had set aside the single speed and rode a full suspension. The purity and the simplicity of the Kaboom was amazing. I fell back in love with mountain biking. As I rode instead of concentrating on getting somewhere I just felt the flow of the trail and actually took the time to notice the scenery. When I was on the Colorado Trail I focused on getting to the top of the next hill or to the end of the next segment. The scenery and the trip are so much more important the accomplishing the goal.

I planned to head out to Durango a couple days after I got back to the Springs, but fate intervened and my motorcycle decided to need a little bit of TLC the day before I was going to leave. As I was waiting for parts I rode the Kaboom everytime I got the chance and realized once again that I do not want to live my life in an office. I want to interact with people in person, and I want to work with my hands, I want to create.

After my motorcycle was fixed I headed out to Crested Butte which is one of the coolest mountain towns I have been to yet. I rode all kinds of cool trails around the town and heard all kinds of amazing music. All the tourists were gone because school had already started in most of the country so I got to hang out with all kinds of local Crested Butte people every night at the locals bars. I think that there tend to be a higher ratio of people I really connect with in mountain towns then on the Springs...

On the way back home I rode one of my favourite trails in Colorado. It is called the Monarch Crest trail and if you ever get the chance you must ride it. It runs right above tree line for most of the trail and all the views are amazing. Plus it flows like nothing else.

Ever since I came back to the springs, I been restless, but that restlessness has led to more biking and also more drive to create instead of sitting around. Right now I am working on turning my porch into a small bedroom plus redoing the bike rack to be cool looking at fit in with the house better, and adding recycle bins into the bike rack (pictures soon to come). I can tell I am out of practice writing, it does not flow quite as easy as before.

Biking, Biking, Biking and more Biking

It has been way to long since I sat down to write anything.

I think, ponder and then go to write the ideas down and get carried away on a rabbit trail or just being lazy.

The past 2 months have actually been amazing months. I finally started to get into the groove of biking multiple times a week to work. I was finally able to sell a friend's motorcycle and since mine was broken and I have been spending all my extra money on bike parts, it forced me to ride my bicycle to work more often. I had wanted to get started but it is so easy to put it off when another means of tranportation is available in the morning.

The best thing that happened was that I was able to get 3 weeks off work this summer to ride the Colorado Trail. And what makes it even better is that my brother gets to ride the portion from Denver to Breckenridge this summer before he starts school.

So far it has been alot easier motivate myself to ride the bike to work, the store, the trailhead, and the recycling place since I found out. I definitely strayed to far from my love of bicycling and oddly enough I can trace that to the purchase of my first motorcycle in 2004. I rode the motobike more and the bicycle less.

As I ride my bike more and more I realize why I love it so much and riding the motobike is a secondary love! Riding in the snow tomorrow will be a blast!!

100 items I would take with me to class

My friend Elizabeth got me thinking about what I would take with me if I was bringing 100 items somewhere?

I've been pondering it over in my mind, the first couple are easy but what comes after.

1 Kona Kaboom (The single speed)
1 Samoa the Traveler (to right)
1 iBook
1 Earphone
1 Bob Trailer
1 4,5,6mm wrenches
1 Chain tool
1 digital Camera
1 Colorado Recreational Map
1 lb. Raven's Nest Coffee
1 Aeropress (cool little coffee maker)
3 mechanical pencil
1 sketch pad
1 cigarette lighter
1 Beanie
1 Cilantro Plant
1 Timbuk2 bag
1 Bike work stand
1 Dwell Magazine
1 Mountain Flyer Magazine
6 bottles Pipeline Porter
1 carton OJ
1 almond joy bar
13 Jelly Bellies
1 book Landscape as Spirit
1 Knog Light + 1 vegas tail lamp (so I don't get run over wherever I am going)

1 Hookah with 1 mango and 1 double apple box of shisha
2 theater chairs from Glen Eyrie (that sit in my living room)
7 bananas
1 pair chacos

I am at 61 and am kind've running out of stuff. but I think I can go on

4 Laus Tacos... One Mahi Mahi, one shrimp, one veggie, and one chicken
1 bowl of my mom's amazing japanese curry
1 blue nalgene full of good water
3 kiwis
1 australian shepherd
1 block pepper jack cheese
12 postcards
1 black gel pen

I am up to 85 and this is definitely bringing back memories of a book that I remember reading when I was a kid where you got to count lots of things. It almost seems like a Richard Scarry book so in that case

1 Dr Suess book, maybe Horton Hears a Who
1 Richard Scarry book
1 writing pad
12 stamps for postcards

I am still amazed at how hard it is to come up with 100 items to bring somewhere. The nostalgia is definitely flowing though. I feel like I am a little kid counting stuff. It's fun!!!

Maybe this is supposed to be an experiment in details and I am not very good at focusing on details of life. I am much better at the big picture.

Oh well...

2009 Goals

So I was at my small group last week and we went over our goals for 2009. I had not really thought about them in depth until then but it was definitely a good thing. Here they are.

SPIRITUAL

1. Spend 1 hr every week focused on God

LEARNING

1. Read 1 Book per week

2. Learn how to weld

3. Learn to cook 1 new dish per week

FINANCIAL

1. Pay of all Debt

2. Save up down payment for land for yurt and funds to build yurt.

3. Save money to buy my sister computer for high school graduation

PHYSICAL

1. Commute 60 miles per week

2. MTB twice a week

3. Compete solo in 12 hrs of snowmass

RELATIONAL

1. Talk to my brother and sister at least once a week

2. Invite friends over for dinner at least once a month

RECREATIONAL

1. Go on at least 2 trips out of colorado and 1 trip out of the country this year (surfing in baja?)

2. Volunteer with Glen Eyrie Garden Society at least once a month during spring, fall, summer.

Somewhat mundane but at the same time I think very attainable.

Eyes

A common saying is that eyes are windows to the soul.

As I was looking into someone's eyes yesterday I was thinking... This is an awful lot of fun, what makes it so. technically you are just looking through a lenses at someones retina and they are doing the same thing to you.

What adds meaning to an experience??

Is it what we are told to think??

I wonder if I would have come up with the idea that eyes are a window to the soul on my own or just some version of it or if I did not have preconceived ideas and notions what would I come up with when I look into another persons eyes?

Snow

I see flakes breezing past me in straight lines as the tires tear up the peaceful surface. The flakes are mesmerizing.

It is incredibly quiet for being in the middle of the city. The quietness makes it easy to think that I am the only one outside today, even as I see the beasts flying past at a frenetic pace.

Is there an ice patch hiding under the surface? Yep, and here comes a concrete wall... hope I have an easy landing.

I am on the road with the beasts and one of the people trapped inside yells out the window because the beast that he lives in causes him to live in a state of constant hurry.

I end up at my destination and the snow is no longer peaceful. It has been torn up by the huge evil beasts of burden who serve only man, only destroying not helping or creating. The only purpose these beasts serve is to put man inside a cocoon and keep him from the outside where he can experience life. Serving as a coffin of his own making.

The snow is now brown and ugly. The people are afraid of it from inside these beasts. They are afraid for me. They think that I will be hurt or cold. Little do they realize the wonder and the joy, the sounds, the smells, the textures they miss being inside the beast. All they can think about it safety, warmth, comfort. They cannot think outside of their boxes to the world that lies outside.

The people who get the chance to experience these wonders are thought of as crazy or eccentric, but your life is dead without taking chances and pursuing passions and hopefully in the process getting others to see the truth. How long will it take until the masses are jarred outside of there little boxes and are willing to take action to get rid of the beasts.

Someday the snow will be peaceful and undisturbed by the beast. The people will realize that the beast's only purpose is to serve as a coffin, that shields them from the wonders of the world. Someday all the beasts will be gone and there will be a better world for all to enjoy.

Trying to get inspired.....

I just took a test at work and finally feel free now that is over to think creatively again but as I sit on my front porch (which is usually a breeding ground for the blog) I seem to have writers blog.

I guess I could blog about getting pulled over today for having no license plate or turn signals on the motobike but that is just a downer but I guess one way to look at it is that I was weaving through traffic at about 15 mph above the speed limit and even though they said that wasn't a good idea I only got a ticket for having no turn signals... oh well.

Now that weddings are over and the motobike is running again I am also feeling the need to get back to biking to work... but of course have to see how that goes

Hopefully I will get inspired soon have to see

Community

Community is the essence of what a good life is I think.

Whether the community is based around a church or an organization or just a bunch of people who share a common interest in building a life together.

One really cool example is right behind the coffee shop I am sitting in right now.

It is a community that was built with the intentional purpose of building a neighborhood where people will naturally interact together. It has community Gardens and a public workshop and all the houses face towards the center common area. Also the Garages are not attached so that people have to go out their front door and walk past all the other houses so they will see their neighbors frequently.

My mind keeps twisting and turning around the idea of community...

Thinking what is the point of having a church if you do not have a community surrounding it. Why do people develop churches with the purpose of attracting people from all over the city instead of developing pocket churches in different parts of town so that people will be staying in their communities instead of going out of them to go to church.

One of my friends said this weekend that in reality you should be able to walk to the church you go to or at the most take a little jaunt on a bike to get there. Church is not about the message or the doctrine as it is about the relationship you form with the other people there.

People who are not already in church will be attracted by the community they see, not by a perfect message or a stellar building (well maybe but the community will get them to stay.)

I have talked to people before about Christian communities but really it should be about people investing in the community that we live in and then building a community of people of all creeds not hiding away from the world.

God

Listening to the neighbors fight and watching apple smoke rise up in to the air.

My thoughts drifted to my life and if I am actually more satisfied with it when I can see the hand of God in it or whether my life would be any different if it was God focused instead of me focused.

I am at the point where I feel like I could be just as satisfied with it whether God is in it or not, traveling around, making friends, seeing the world and experiencing nature.

I can pull off making people think that I am at least somewhat focused on what God might want for my life and how I can serve him, but do I really care???

Are the people who I know who are Christians really any happier, any more joyful, anymore driven towards anything. I almost feel like the majority of people look to God in there life because

1. It will make them feel like better people.

2. It is what they have always done.

3. They feel like it is the best place to get a sense of community and not feel alone in the world.

I really do not know if any of this is true, but I know that when I am involved in a church or seeking to know God better at the root of it all is the desire to be living in a community of other people. Where people are sharing everything and being willing to sacrifice what they have for other people.

Sometimes I see this in the church, but many times I see it in other places.

The desire to know and to be truly known by other people. To be accepted for who you are without regard to your faults.

True community is hard to find and I feel that I rarely see it in the church.

I admit in this that there are a number of people that I have no desire to get to know or to be known by. I tend to be judgmental of people who seek after status and riches or who think that they have to have the best when really they should be able to be happy with much much less. Maybe some of these people are seeking to replace relationships in their lives with these things, I guess I do not really know.

One of the things that has meaning to me and makes me feel that my life is worth something is being creative, building things, bringing ideas to life, but this can never replace the relationships I have with people.

Can it replace a relationship with God??

I think so...

But I am still trying to determine where that fits in my life and if it is really true. I always feel more satisfied with my life when I am being creative and have community in my life regardless whether I am seeking after God or not.

Does it really matter???

The Greenest of the All

This weekend I went to my Grandma's birthday party.


I sat reminiscing with my family about my Grandma and as I sat there I realized my Grandma is the most environmentally responsible person I know.

What is ironic about this is that my Grandma is not at all focused on or interested in environmentalism.

She reuses everything and rarely buys anything new. She even reuses the cartons she gets meat in...

She grows most of her own vegetables or buys them locally.

Instead of buying new Christmas presents for us she would go to the thrift store and buy us books she thought we would like.

Even though my Grandma can be seen as tight she may be a great example of what an environmentalist really needs to be like.

the smooth motion of the city

I sit on my back porch, contemplating my life as I smoke the hookah and listen to the sounds of downtown with a little bit of Zero 7 in the background at least for a little while.

I am inspired but at the same time distracted as I watch the smoke cascade out of my lungs up into the night air. I wonder how my dreams for what my life will become will come to pass.

I realize that even as I sit hear another second of my life has passed by and I think of all the ideas I've had and wonder why I have never really followed any of my dreams before this year.

I think that the last time I followed a dream was when I came out to Colorado in 2001 to work at Eagle Lake as a bike camp director. Actually maybe not, I think that going to Baja was following through with a dream.

Now the dreams I have of creating and building have begun to take over my life in the past couple months. I have to figure out how to put my ideas and my creativity into action or I think eventually part of my soul will dye.

So many of my decisions in the past have been reacting to what has happened in my life not really being motivated by any driving force besides the flow of life around me.

Now I am driven, not by the job that I have just to pay off debt or the guilt that I sometimes let drive me to distraction but by the need to let the creativity I have inside of me come out, to take every idea that I have and work it through and not let it go dormant. Dormancy and floating through life are not a way to live...

I must let the dreams I have for my life flow out of me and not be held back by circumstances or the expectations of others.

Freedom is just around the corner!!!!

Samoa has a friend

Finally after all the months of waiting Samoa has a friend.

He joined the house about 2 weeks ago and has made a permanent dent in the closet floor. His greeness the Green Demon is slowly getting to the point where he can roll again on his own and is not being carried around by a groaning, struggling master anymore.

He is still heavy and somewhat ungainly but he is coming together.

Samoa will be happy to have a friend!! =)

The Dark Side

Dexter's Laboratory is one of my favorite cartoons on TV. We don't have cable so I turned to the internet to download a couple episodes to watch in my free time. Little did I know that there are two shows with the name Dexter. Of course I downloaded the non-cartoon show by accident. Out of curiosity I watched it. It was kind've freaky and weird but intriguing.

The second Dexter is a show that aired on Showtime last year about a forensic blood specialist at a Miami police department. Sounds like another CSI copy or something like that, right??? It has a little twist Dexter happens to be a serial killer. In many ways, the classic anti-hero. He is a nice guy and He only kills the bad guys... Guys who are murdering innocent people.

All the previous things made the show interesting, but that is not what really drew me. Dexter hides the inner killer inside him from everyone around him. He lets no one see who he really is. He puts on a facade to hide the darkness in his soul. He is afraid the world will reject him if they know who he really is.

I think that most people in the world want to be loved by someone. I also think that most people in the world hide a darkness in their soul from everyone around them. I know I do. I put such extreme boundaries around certain areas of my life that it has effected the way I relate to people.

When I look back at the past 6-7 years I can see the wall around the darkness in my soul building higher and higher. I even remeber the first day the wall started going up between God, me and other people around me. I was so ashamed of what was in my heart that I did not want anyone to see it. (Regardless of the fact that I knew God would see it) I dissauded myself to the point where I built a wall so high that I figured it was easier to just drop any desire i had for God then to tear down the wall.

Last night it clicked that one of the reasons I harbored no desire to get close to God was because I did not want to let him see behind the wall. Actually, I should rephrase the previous statement. I desired God, but I would no let him inside the wall. I acknowledged parts of the wall to some of my friends. I asked God to help me stop the actions that resulted from the darkness in my heart without inviting him to see behind the wall and to help me beat down the darkness in my soul and turn it into light.

I wrote about simplifying my life in the past couple posts. I think that more then anything else I could do to simplify me life; tearing down the wall around the darkness in my heart and letting God see it and help me with it would simplify my life more then anything else.

No Car, No Loft but a simpler life

Last month I was looking at buying a loft up in Victor, Colorado...
The lofts were beautiful, well designed and the views were awe inspiring, but I went up to aunt and uncles house after I looked at the lofts. As i was sitting around watching TV that night i realized that the lofts went against a couple of the goals i have for my life.

The first goal was to simplify my life. Not to take away any of the fun I have or cool experiences , but to take things out of my life that I have just because I am supposed to have them... For instance a car to get to work in the winter or a yard that has actual grass in it.

The second goal was to get rid of my car and all the extra bikes I had. I drove my car a total of about 20 miles in August. I am still working on the bikes. I gave my bike rack away to clint, a friend who just moved to New Mexico. I am going to sell a couple frames and parts of bike racks on craig's list also.

I realized that 95% of the time, The Traveler and single speed mountain bike are all I need.

I really need a car about 3 days a month at the most and I can rent a car for those days.

The third goal was to use my bikes for everything except for a couple trips to work and when I travel out of town. I think that that goal is also totally possible.

To bring all this to a point... Buying the loft in victor, no matter how cool, goes against all that.

It is not that I am some crazy environmentalist or anything, but if I do not need to drive a car 60 miles each way and I can help out little by riding my bike to work why not. I guess now that I am selling my car I will see how the experiment works.