Things That Can Be Carried on a Bike (#367), Why You Should Ride Your Bike to the Store, and a Few Things I Saw Today

What I carried on the bike: A gym bag full of wet clothes, a 4.4lb. bag of dog food, a tin of pinto beans, 3 liters of red wine.

Why you should ride your bike to the store: Well, this is pretty obvious for many reasons, especially if you,re a regular reader of this blog. But I was prompted to include this in tonight's post when I came across this article on the NPR website. It discusses the positive effects on a person's health--as studied by researchers at the University of Wisconsin--when a bike was used even for just small jaunts to replace the car. Here's an excerpt.

They found that if the Midwesterners ran half of their short-distance errands by bike rather than by car, 1,100 deaths would be avoided each year, and $7 billion would be saved in reduced health-care costs. The trips were 2.5 miles one way; less than a 25-minute bike ride, the researchers figure.

Click here to read the full story. 

And finally, here's a few things that I saw today while traveling within my miniscule daily circumference on my bike (and this is still within the same vain that a person sees and experiences so much more of their environment when traveling by bike, click here, here, or here for previous posts on the topic...or just to see more pictures).