My family and I live in Eugene, Oregon and I think it is an intelligent city. Would millions and millions of dollars help our community? I think so. We could use better schools, a safer community for our friends and neighbors, less theft and vandalism, more people with good jobs and thriving businesses. If more people in Eugene realized the value to the community of keeping our money local, I think it would make a dramatic, positive impact. There is research to back this up ( Time magazine’s article). But in an article from GRIST (click on grahic) the thinking goes into how much money ends up going into ‘our cars’, thus taking that portion of our dollars away from our neighbors, our town, our state and even our country. When we use our bodies to get around we meet more people. We build relationships and grow to care more for our public assets like our streets and paths. Our food becomes our fuel with improved air quality and increased safety.
This notion helped me and my family to follow through on selling our motor vehicle in 2007. We choose to buy local when we can. We shop closer to home than further away. And we use the internet to research the larger companies so that when or if we spend our money with them, we know that our money will be used with better intention.

The triples came out yesterday and we aired up the tires. We had to raise everyone’s seats — pretty cool to see how much the kids have grown just since last summer.

On our shake down trip we rode over to Gateway Movie 12 for a cheap night out. One the ride there we were cruising along when I heard a chain popping sound just after a little blip in the pedal feedback. Interesting, but Dare’s Van’s shoes got caught up in the triple chain and that caused it to get too tight… and it just broke apart. We sat there for a minute wondering if we had a chain tool with us. We did not. I have everything else, but no chain tool.

The back chain from Torrent’s spot to the rear wheels was still working. So he alone pedaled the whole rig. Me, Dare and Sanguine were all just sitting in as Torrent stood up and pounded us up and over the I-5 Bridge to Gateway. Once we were there we went on in and starting looking for a tool at Cabela’s and Target, but no luck. We ended up having a meal out then watching the movie. As the movie ended, we loaded up – with a bit of re-distribution – and headed back home with Torrent again powering us as I just sat back and steered.

On the way home, We asked everyone we saw if they had a chain tool. Finally on Coburg Rd. just under the I-105 overpass, we found some kids that had a chain tool. Within minutes I removed the a link from the rear chain and had the timing chain tied back together. We were on our way. Torrent was proud of himself for using hiss trength to help the whole family.

We made it home without another incident. We will not leave the chain tool home again on any triple rides from here on out.

We just made our plan to pedal to Portland. As a family we will ride two Bike Friday Triples from Eugene north for roughly 150 miles along the Willamette River. We’ll be camping each night and searching for the smoothest pavement with the least car traffic each day. It will be the first multi-day tour since we had two new additions to the family 5 years ago.

Monica and I have done a few long distance tour in our time, and we even did a few when we had two kids riding trailer bikes and in Burley trailers. Now, with 4 kids – ages 10, 8 and twins at 5 – we are ready to give it a go again.

We’ll be biking along the Willamette Valley Scenic Bikeway for much of the way, then a finding good route from Champoeg State Park to Portland. We are hoping to catch a Portland Timbers Soccer game when we get there. Then we’ll take a day in Portland for fun, and jump on the Amtrak back to Portland. The kids are already getting excited.

So we will be blogging and posting about our trip as we go. The trip begins Jul7 27th.

This is a nice little slideshow that Noah Dewitt put together after a few rides with us to school and to the grocery store.