Don’t like Plan B? Try Plan C.

In light of the recent federal activity about Plan B, the emergency birth control pill and the moral back-and-forth about its use, it is probably not by too surprising that I found this fantastic article on the Atlantic about an alternative method for reducing teenage pregnancy.

Hooray for bicycling!!

Because it’s warming up into spring and summer, I’ve started cycling again. Some of my favorite memories from childhood, and something I still love doing, it riding my bike.  I remember one summer… there was a small building in a parking lot near my house, and my goal that summer was to cycle around the whole building without having to grab the handlebars. I got so good that I could do several laps around the building “without hands.”

Working with the homeless, this is a time that our clients list shrinks.  It’s dark humor, but my colleagues and I joke about setting an annual calendar to the whether the clients are consistent with their requirements. Right now, it’s warm and there isn’t so strong an incentive for people (who may not want to make changes) to try to change.  Watch when it gets super hot and humid in a few months – they’ll be back.

We have a few clients who own bikes, and actually, now that I think about it, they are among those who are still coming right now. The one who do have bikes are, like, rich. It’s a status symbol. It means the same thing to them that it meant to me as a kid – independence.  For me, I didn’t need my mom to drive me to the library.  For them, there are more job possibilities or services they can access because they’re not just walking or depending on the bus, which costs $3.00. There is also a possibility for them to build their own business with it (as one of my clients did with a pedi-cab service for the downtown area).

As both a therapeutic and wealth-building tool, bikes are quite useful.