BICYCLING BACK TO THE BASICS

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My friends Jim and Randy and I had spent years struggling to save enough money to purchase our own piece of land . . . blindly following the popular notion that "hard work will get you where you want to go". But, although that truism certainly represents a worthwhile code of ethics, it seemed like labor alone just wouldn't ever let us make our dream come true!

In fact, in two years of scrimping, we had managed to put away only $800. No matter how diligently the three of us toiled, our paychecks barely covered our living expenses, and precious little cash was left to put into savings.

Still, Jim, Randy, and I were terribly eager to become homesteaders. We were determined to simplify our lives, but we found, with each passing year, that our goal was slipping further and further away.

CUTTING BACK

It soon became obvious that the only way to save our dream would be to pare down our basic living expenses. So, for a start, the three of us invested our $800 in a 20-year-old, 8' X 40' mobile home. Although the structure looked less like our dream cabin than had many of the houses we'd previously lived in, we knew that the money we'd save on monthly rent would enable us to move onto our own acreage.

A trailer park in Weare, New Hampshire (where we were living at the time) leased us a lovely spot by a stream for only $45 a month (a far cry from the $350 in rent we'd been paying elsewhere!). And, as an added plus, we felt we could repaint and repair our trailer and sell it at a profit later on.

We next decided to give up our automobiles. Gasoline prices alone were becoming higher than we could afford, and we were also being battered by the never-ending procession of other car-related expenses . . . license plates, registration fees, taxes, repairs, inspections, and outrageous insurance premiums.

Of course, in order to do without automobiles we had to come up with an alternative form of transportation. (Our lifestyles involved too much travel to allow us to simply walk everywhere we had to go.) And it seemed to make perfect sense to turn our three gas-guzzlers into cash . . . and use some of the money to buy a trio of ten-speed bicycles!

PEDAL POWER

My job site was 15 miles from our trailer, but I was too thrilled with our new austere budget to let that fact bother me. I quickly conditioned myself to long-distance bicycling . . . a process that took some 30 days of hard-headed perseverance. Before long I realized that pedaling to and from work had become, well, a breeze.

Furthermore, throughout my first New Hampshire winter—during which temperatures dropped to as low as 4°F—I never missed a day's work . . . I was never late . . . and I usually "felt like a million" by the time I arrived! There were only two occasions—both during blizzards—when I was forced to ask a friend for a ride to my job site.

And, just two years—and eight beauti ful seasons of biking—later, my friends and I had jointly accrued $12,000. So, in the spring of 1978, we sold everything that couldn't be carried on a bicycle, and took off—pedaling—to find our place in the country!

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