Another "Change of address is a moving experience" experience

Not my own address, but Andy Dyson's.

Andy is the Executive Director of Bicycling for Louisville, the local not-for-profit agency that advises and advocates at the local and state level for continuation of bicycle access to roadways, bicycling education and more. He and his wife, Moira, recently moved to Louisville when she accepted a job teaching at Bellarmine University.

They started off renting a house near Shelby Park, but found and bought a house in the Schnitzelburg area of Louisville. The buzz among the utility cycling crowd built around plans to move all their stuff by bicycle. In January. Just to prove it could be done.

Of course, the weather cooperated nicely. It was cool to cold in the morning, with temperature in the low- or mid-thirties when folks started gathering. It got pretty warm, though--up to fifty or sixty degrees, depending on which thermometer one believed.

Jenn and I rode to Andy's old house, pulling our two trailers. Since the Burley trailer won't connect to my Vanguard, I wound up riding my Raleigh. It would have been fun to have both Vanguards involved, but I'm okay with how things turned out.

There were something like twenty folks involved, most with some form of trailer and/or large panniers or baskets. Those who didn't have lots of hauling capacity did a lot of moving boxes into or out of the new or old houses, as appropriate, then hauled what they could in the last couple of rounds.

It would have been fun to see an overview of all those bikes moving up and down Shelby Street, carrying stuff southbound and dead-heading back to the Shelby Park area for another load. I had occasion to do a little hardware store shopping (Jenn's bike lost some seat attachment hardware somehow), and the staff at the store was marveling at the number of bikes they were seeing hauling all manner of stuff. There were a couple people using video cameras, so maybe some good videos will be online soon. There is a group pool of images on flickr already, with possibility for more shots added as folks have time.

The party part of the move was just getting underway when Jenn and I had to leave. Her nephew was having a birthday party, and we were supposed to be there. We were only half an hour late.

Total bike miles for the day was 35, over the course of about three hours of riding.