Saturday, October 15
So far so good; I need to go fill a prescription, and will trot out the bike right after the delayed Yu-Gi-Oh game with the kids and run up the hill. Its a 15 minute bike drive, a ten minute car ride. But the morning is crisp and bright, the air clean from last night's brief rain.
________
Oops. The wife wants to run to the store. It's all of a mile and a half away. She offers to take the baby with her, leaving the big kids and I only. I want to suggest that she can leave baby and ride her bike (which she has been able to do very little, what with being pregnant and then often having the wee-one along). But the experiment is to see how we can do without my nagging, so I opt for a baby-free couple of hours. Might she have walked with the baby in the stroller? Yes, but the immediate reaction from me is that that would keep her away an extra 45 minutes or so, and we have a lot to do here today. Bravo for the rationalization!
Perhaps Spencer (the 10-year-old) and I will take the recycling to the collection center on the tandem later.
____________
Later
Ooooh. The rain has begun. Intensely! So much for picking up the prescription. No tandem riding. I will put it on hold until the rain lets up.
Sunday, October 16, 2005
The day begins with more Yu-Gi-Oh, intense rain, thunder and lightening. We are simply staying put for the rest of the weekend.
Carfree Weekend Score:
Car Trips Transferred to Other Modes: 0
Car Trips Avoided: 1
Car Trips / Miles: 1/1.5
Not a good test, but a low mileage weekend given the far flung nature of our families and partsof our lives.
A Change
For the future, the "Journal" type entries have mostly been moved to ezgreenjournal.blogspot.com, which will include general observations on events like this; Easy Green will be focused more on publication style -- if not quality -- first person explorations of "Being Green, Easy."
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2 comments:
Easy way to have a car free weekend: be a university student who spends all his freakin' time this weekend doing research and writing essays so he doesnt step outside the apartment or library more than twice much less drive anywhere! (This weekend was a tough one...).
Sersiously though, props to you for making a serious effort to cut out driving from your weekend. It's easy for me living right across the street and in easy walking distance from all my classes/library/etc. but it can be much harder for most people.
But of course, that is part of the point. Many people make it harder on themsleves because of the unconscious and auto-centric assumptions they make about where to live and where to work and how that gap will be crossed.
Later we will talk about how the average citizen can change the cityscape where they live, by changing local zoning and planning outlooks.
For example, Pasadena is five miles wide, and surrounded by other towns, but it would be easily possible to never own a car, work at many different jobs, live, shop, "recreate" give birth and die, all right here.
Indeed, I often refer to the Pasadena campus, because that is the thinking mode I want to project on planners and residents when considering our walkable little town.
Have a peak at www.americawalks.org for resources and even local ped groups in your area!
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