Tim Flores has been living car-free for a decade. So when he needs to move, does he borrow a friend’s pick up? Nah. He goes by bike.
The mere thought of hauling a sofa, a dinette set, a bed and a bed frame down a flight of stairs and into a moving truck is enough for some of us to break a sweat.
Now imagine hauling all of that five miles across town, by bike.
Oh, and also bringing along everything else you own. Basically in one trip.
Grueling might be an understatement.
For Tim Flores, it was part of a personal challenge. Flores, a self-described minimalist, has been living car-free for more than 10 years, and he’s no stranger to moving without a moving van.
But he’s never done it in one fell swoop.
On Tuesday evening, March 27, Flores recruited a few friends and acquaintances who offered to bring a ton of his things – literally, he estimated it weighed about one ton, in all – from the outskirts of northwest Bellingham to the Puget neighborhood.
After a morning practice run, Flores and Caleb Brown, a coworker at the downtown Comnunity Food Co-op, loaded about 600 pounds of stuff onto two bikes and bike trailers.
By 5 p.m., eight more bikers had arrived at his apartment complex at 915 Mahogany Ave. to help with the move, using only their cycles, trailers, bungee cords and backpacks.
Tim is the son of an Episcopal priest in Wyoming who says: “Tim is the one pulling the sofa –
has big round glasses that look like fly eyes in some of the pictures. He laughs at the designation of minimalist – he is not big into stuff, but he does have stuff.”