This year, I finally decided to take the plunge. My husband, Ian, (yes, that Ian Thomas, ED of Pednet) pretty much LIVES the Low Car Diet Challenge, and I bike for lots of stuff, like about half of my commutes, doing the grocery shopping, various errands, etc, but I have made it a policy to avoid wet weather, and I do lots of driving for the kids. So the first thing I had to do was talk to the family. For Ian, my doing the LCDC would mean MORE driving than usual, which he was okay with to give me a chance to try car-free living. Our daughter, Emily, a 15-year-old sophomore at RBHS asked, "can I still ride with other people?" When told she could, she said no problem. Jack is 14 and a 9th grader at West. He said, "What difference will it make? I already ride my bike to everything anyway," which is partially true.
In fact, I have been tracking car trips for the family for about the last year. We average a little over one car journey per day, with over half being kid-activity-related, especially Emily, who is in lots of stuff before and after school, a fair number related to my work, and the rest miscellaneous. I do about 90 percent of the driving. I chose the Whoa! level because I really need to have a car on my on-call days at work. Luckily for me, this month was a major anomaly, with only one call day.
So I did a little preparation: Got the bike tuned up, of course, and bought some of the heavy/bulky stuff I know we will need, like 80 lbs of dog food, 50 pounds of chicken feed, and 2 hay bales. The rest was about attitude adjustment: I AM going to do this, even if it means leaving for work in the rain at 6:30 in the morning!
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