As much as I like walking everywhere I need to go, Portland has so much more to offer than just their downtown hotspots. Recently I have begun to explore east side with my bike and bus routes. Biking was a bit of a challenge because there is some general knowledge required. For being the most bike friendly American city, Portland has a couple confusing junctions where lanes end or switch randomly. I understand that the city was not built for bikes from day one and infastucture has to be flexible but it can get new riders mixed up. Once you understand where the actually safe streets are its a breeze to cruise around in the dingy weather and feel the wind in your hair while passing cars in traffic. I think there needs to be more resources to inform new riders befire they get scared away.

Picking up liter! Rather than completing this in my neighborhood, I actually decided to go pick up liter at a park near where I work. I have always notices little bits trash which tends to accumulate, and I happened to have a trash picker upper so I thought I would start there. Turns out it was quite fun, and good just to be outside on one of the few days when it has been sunny. I hope to make this a regular thing, since I'm usually here and I have easy access to a trash can at my work I can use to dispose of the liter.

So, this is a late in the game post, but it happened about a month ago. My wife and I had decided we wanted to invest in a more renewable method of transportation, mostly because I have a long commute and we were spending about 400 dollars a month in gas. In addition to the cost, we recognized that we simply did not want to burn that much gas. So our research was actually about the incentives available for electric vehicles, of which there are a few. There were three that we found, a 7,000 federal tax credit, 2,500 credit, and a 5,000 Oregon Charge Ahead rebate. The latter credits is something which has to be applied for and is based on income and a first come first served. Even with the first two credits, plus the money we'd be saving in gas, the car payments seemed more than worth it. So we bought a new Nissan Leaf! I love it. :D

For this week's Eco challenge, I've been collecting rainwater for other purposes uses! It can be used to water plants or saved up as water to use in case the plumbing goes out. One example of that is when the pipes aren't powered or working, or if your water system is connected to the electricity box, we would use leftover purified water from outdoors to hold the toilet handle down while we got rid of our waste. That way we could still do the dirty even when the power is out.

For me specifically, I've just been finding plastic containers that are no longer used and putting them in the chicken feed! It's been very rainy the past few days, so having my chickens drink rainwater makes it more convenient for me as I won't have to go outside to refill their water as often. One of the downsides is that the plastic has to be thick, or the chickens will bite around the edges. Many of my mom's reusable flower pots disappeared because of that.

For my eco-challenge 8 I decided to meal prep. For the next seven days, I bought ingredients for burrito bowls, noodle soup jars, tacos, Qionoa salad, Risotto, and a simple breakfast (rice, beans, and eggs). I'm not a very structured person and I get tired of meals fast so I tried to create a variety of meals that have similar ingredients. I usually eat 2 meals a day and snack a lot so I made sure to buy healthy snacks that are satisfying. I just went grocery shopping a few days ago and so far I've had tacos, next I need to prep everything for the burrito bowls and noodle jars. A lot of these recipes I found online or invented myself. It's important that I get all the essential nutrients so I chose recipes that are balanced but easy to make. I'm excited to continue meal prepping, even though the process has spanned over a week.

For my eco-challenge 7, I hosted a craft night with my friends and we watched a documentary. The documentary we watched is called Mad Hot Ballroom, it's about a program that teaches low-income schools in New York ballroom dancing and then they compete. It was really amazing seeing these kids improve and seeing how finding something they were passionate about really changed their lives. It was really sad seeing these elementary school girls talking about boys and their criteria for a boyfriend is that they don't sell drugs. They mentioned in the documentary that some of the boys in the program were going down a bad path in their lives but the program changed them for the better. It was fun seeing the kids dance and rooting for our favorite schools.

I recycled materials according to the Clackamas County guidelines.

https://dochub.clackamas.us/documents/drupal/0fb5b40d-83cc-422e-ad39-575bcbea9cf2

I own a low flow showerhead. I recently learned about Portland's Water Bureau free water conservation kit. If you live in Portland, I would recommend checking it out.

https://www.portland.gov/water/water-efficiency-programs/watersavingkit
https://www.portlandoregon.gov/water/75695

I watched fantastic fungi for the first time. I like everything about mushrooms, so I enjoyed the movie. I am glad that people are paying more attention to fungi. I hope that learning about them will show people the importance of forests and old-growth forests; and that they will be cautious about them too.