Snow Covered

When I came out of the office yesterday, the snow had already started.  I rode in the snow to the gym anyway.  Then the snow kept falling and I had to ride home.  I forgot a plastic bag for my bike seat, but luckily, the seat on my Canondale Quick is pretty waterproof and doesn't absorb water. 

 

 

It was really coming down as I went to carry my bike into the house. 

As I opened the door, my husband came to me and asked what I needed.  I replied with, "towels".  I wiped my bike off best I could outside (it was still totally covered in snow except the seat) and then brought it in. 

As the snow dripped off my bike onto the floor, we put down towels and mats.  However, this morning as we shoveled out the car, I started drafting a "snow emergency plan".  Hopefully this will allow us to be better prepared in the event of inclement weather. 

1.) Keep old towels near the front door. We were gifted new towels as a housewarming present, so this will be easy. 
2.) Get a second door mat that is super absorbent for the back door to put boots and the snow shovel on. 
3.) Flip wiper blades up so that they do not freeze to the car and then have to be dug out. 
4.) Clear the drying rack so that we can put dripping winter clothes on it. 

 

5.) Stock up on hot cocoa. 

My instinct is to buy All The Mats and put them everywhere, but I have to consider where we would store them.  We have discussed getting a runner that goes all the way under the gravity stand and will absorb the dripping from the rack.  I think we will be making that happen soon. 

Any other suggestions? What is your snow emergency plan?

 

 

Outside

Our house is a bit lacking in curb appeal. 

It doesn't have that planter next to the door anymore, so it's even more lacking in curb appeal.  I would like to add some big window boxes and maybe decorative shutters at some point, but the big question is what to do with the space to the left of the steps.  Some of our neighbors have planter beds and some of them have benches.  I proposed the idea of a bike rack sometime early on, since sometimes I lock my bike to the front steps if I'm just running in to grab something.  A bike rack out front would also give our friends a place to lock up when they come visit, but it's somewhat lacking in....taste?
These would be the two styles we might go with:

(source)

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These are obviously not the fanciest things we could have outside our house.  I'm not even sure if we could get a permit, if we need one, to install our own residential bike rack.  The alternative is a nice bench that we can lock our bikes too, but those are more challenging to mount into the ground and can be a bigger target for vandals.

(available here)

This woodwind bench is my current favorite, because bikes could be locked to either end easily, but it's pretty expensive and does look a little too modern to go with our 100 year old house.

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  We could also get a bike rack shaped like something, but those are pricy and I probably want this one, which is 100% awesome and about $6800 more than I had planned for this project.  



Unsustainable

We are bike commuters. And while we required a basement in a house to store our other four bikes, we weren't able to find one with outside access.  Which means that keeping the commuter bikes in the basement isn't really an option.  We have a mudroom, but it only fits one bike right now.  So we need to solve this problem immediately.  The problem is that all the indoor bike storage suggestions on the internet pretty much look like this:

 

(source)

 

Things like this aren't usually an option for my bike because it has a step through frame - this, which hangs from the seat, is the first I've seen that would accommodate one.  We don't really have the wall space to store the bikes on the wall anyway, especially when you consider we have two. 

 

Pretty much my only suggestion for indoor storage is a bike closet. 

The problem with our house is it still doesn't have a lot of room for something like this. Also you have to take the wheels off to make it work. 

 

So we turned to outdoor options.  There is a small corner of the parking pad that hopefully has just enough room to fit this 4ft square bike shed option. 

 

We should be able to get this project done on Saturday while we await our new mattress.  We will be making the modular version that comes apart for easy transport, in case we need to move again someday.  The biggest issue is going to be, with something small and portable, how do we make sure our bikes are secure and the shed itself doesn't wander off with our bikes in it? 

 

Most importantly, what color do I paint it when it's done?