Car Free Days

We took the kids to see Santa at University Village yesterday afternoon/evening. It started in the afternoon but ended in the evening but that’s a whole nother story that I’m trying to put behind me. Let’s just say Santa doesn’t have a very good process. The kids enjoyed it all and the four year old got to put in his Santa request for Beef Jerky so all is well.

After the Santa experience, we took the long way home through Candy Cane Lane. Ester is right on - I wouldn’t want all of that traffic clogging up and polluting my street every day for 3 weeks. I’m sure when the tradition started 48 years ago, people walked through the loop to enjoy the lights and decorations. Now, the few hardy walkers are overshadowed by the drivers. We couldn’t help but be annoyed by the drive throughers. They wouldn’t want to get out of their car, would they?

Happy Holidays and keep riding!

 - Anne

We had a great time on the Day-After-Thanksgiving ride from Pike Place Market to Gasworks Park.

Val shot us an email about the first ride of the year. Meet at noon at Greenlake near the basketball court and baseball diamond on the east side of the lake.

We’re planning to be there. This time I don’t think I’ll be able to keep Tim from loading up the bikes with everything we might need to keep us warm and fed. We have the space on the Xtras so why not? Live a little.

 - Anne

You’ve probably seen about a zillion Christmas-Trees-on-Xtracycle photos already this year. I mean, everybody is doin’ it.

Said photos are usually cute and harmless and kind of fun to look at. For our sake, let’s hope that’s true because the CarFreeDay team is making it a zillion and two right here. (more…)

We are lucky enough to live within biking distance to Hardwick’s.

“Hardwick’s is a family-owned and operated hardware store located in the heart of the University District in Seattle, Washington. Passed down through three generations, Hardwick’s is rich in family tradition. Grandfather Charles Dean Hardwick established the business as a secondhand store in 1932 after he lost his real estate company in the market crash. Starting with his own office furniture as the original inventory, Grandfather Hardwick’s business continued to thrive in the Depression era by including factory seconds and damaged freight from the Milwaukee Road and Union Pacific Railroad and by purchasing goods from the public….”

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We parked in the load zone at preschool the other day and our four year old was very concerned we’d been there for longer than 30 minutes. He really didn’t want to get a ticket.

 - Anne

We gave a talk tonight at a company holiday party.  One of the principals was really intrigued by our bike lifestyle and asked us to speak. We have both done our share of presentations for work, but never on a topic we are so passionate about. We really enjoyed pulling the presentation together, not to mention our fifteen minutes. We weren’t sure how we’d be received - It went well and we met some great people who were supportive of our ideas. And we might have inspired a few folks too!

I’m into stats. So I thought I’d do a wrap up of our family transportation stats for the month of November:

Total Number of Car Trips - 5

Number of Miles Driven - 25.5

Number of car-free days - 25

Longest car-free streak for November - 12 days

Family Record (set in September) - 22 days

Number of trips to the gas station - 0

Rainy Days in Seattle (According to the National Weather Service) - 25

Longest Ride with kids - Riding to the Pike Place Market and back the day after Thanksgiving - 12.8 miles

Most memorable ride - To the Arboretum via the center for Urban Horticulture with the kids. Good times. Lots of bird nests spotted.

Ride with the worst weather - Picking up the 4 year old at preschool in a torrential downpour. I couldn’t wait out the rain in my warm, dry house; it was time to get him so I had to go.

Last gas purchase - 8/31/2007

- Anne