Weekly Tally: How I Got Around Last Week

So, we've been without a car for almost a year now.  I still need to go figure out how this all worked out financially, but I've been meaning to start keeping track of how I get around from place to place over the course of a week.  Last week, I finally did it.  I might keep this up for a little while longer, just out of curiosity, though summer vacation is a lot different from the rest of the year.

So, last week, here's how I got around:

Monday: 
walking:  3.5 miles   (walking the dog and getting my son from school gives me 3.5-4 miles a day on foot)
bike:  7 miles


Tuesday:
walking: 4.5 miles
bike:  6.5 miles

Wednesday:
walking:  4 miles
bike:  6 miles

Thursday:
walking:  3.5 miles
bike:  6.5 miles

Friday:
walking:  5 miles
bike:  9.2 miles

Saturday:
walking: 2 miles
T:  lots and lots of miles (I rode for about 4-5 hours, while write a play for the T Plays--a bunch of plays that take place on the T (I even wrote mine on the T)).  They open this Wednesday, produced by the Mill 6 Theatre Collaborative at the Factory Theatre in Boston.
bike:  8 miles

Sunday: 
walking:  1 mile  (It was Father's Day, so I didn't have to walk the dog as much).
bike:  12 miles

Totals:
walking:  23.5 miles
bike:  55 miles
T: 4-5 hours
Car:  0 miles

This was not a typical week for me.  Normally, I'd walk a bit more and ride my bike a lot less.  (I think I usually walk about 30 miles a week and bike about 5-10 miles, but I'm not sure.)  And I'd ride the T a little more.   But I was doing research on book at a library at Harvard and also had rehearsals and read-throughs of my T play, and I got to all of that by bike.  If we'd had a car, I would have driven for at least half of the bike miles, and maybe a few of the walking miles.

It might be worth doing this for a while, just to see how it goes.  I can definitely see that I'm getting plenty of exercise.  (No wonder I fall asleep so easily.)

One of the hard parts

For the most part, getting rid of our car has been a lot easier than I expected.  I don't miss it much at all.  There are a few hard parts.  Getting the kids to doctor's appointments can be a challenge.  And gardening tasks can be tricky without a car.  And I do a lot of gardening.

The trailer helps a lot.  The other day I was able to transport these tomato seedlings to one of my garden projects (a really fun shared backyard garden).  We started these plants under lights in our basement (a little too soon) and grew tall and leggy.  They seemed to handle the ride pretty well.  I rode carefully and none of the plants broke.  I used the cart for pepper seedlings, too.

I had to rent a zipcar pickup truck to haul salt marsh hay bales (for mulch) and also tossed my cucumber seedlings in the truck.  They did not like the pick up ride (or transplanting in general).

Gardening can require a fair amount of hauling of heavy, bulky material, and a car or minivan definitely makes it easier.  Still, we've managed pretty well even without it.  And I'm getting in great shape from riding to all the different gardens (they're pretty close to home--the farthest is about 3.2 miles round trip, but up a pretty big hill on the way there).

Brookline Bike Parade

The Brookline Bicycle Advisory Committee (sounds fancy, doesn't it?) will sponsor their annual Bike Parade this Sunday, May 23rd, along Beacon Street.  They meet at Amory Park in Brookline, with check in starting at 11:30 am and the ride itself starting at 12:30pm.  Noah and I did this last year and had a great time.  I'll be at the Boston Theatre Marathon this Sunday, but I think Tracy might take Noah instead.  If you like to ride and you're in Brookline, definitely check it out.  It's a very fun time!

Progress Report: February

So far, the winter without a car has been going remarkably well.  Part of that probably has to do with the snow drought that we've had since the start of January.  We were supposed to get a big storm this week, but it completely fizzled.  This has meant that it's been easy to keep grocery shopping by bicycle (and trailer) which I adore.  And Tracy's been able to commute to work by bicycle nearly every day so far this winter.  In the past, I always avoided riding in the wintertime at all, even when the roads were dry and clear.  But now it seems absolutely normal.

The cold of winter seems to have much less impact on my ability to get around by bike than I expected. It's pretty easy to bundle up.  It's only the wind that can be a bit of a pain, and that hasn't been a huge factor so far.

I just don't find myself thinking, "Oh, if only we had the car," very often, if at all. Even when I have meetings at night, I don't mind riding my bike, even on cold nights, especially since most are within 1-2 miles of home.  Many errands are just as fast to perform by bike as by car.  And I still love getting the exercise, though if I end up walking 4-5 miles a day (my normal day) and also add another few miles of bike riding (6 miles, if I got to MIT and back), I'm pretty tired by the time the evening rolls around.

Soon, I hope to get around to tallying up how much we've spent on transportation since we've been rid of the car and see how much we've saved (if at all).  Our bike expenses have dwindled lately, now that we're mostly geared up, and we've rented Zipcars a bit less than I'd expected.  So I think we're saving some money, as well as gaining many other benefits besides.

Zipcar for the holidays

Visiting family over the holidays is very important for us, and has proven to be one of the main difficulties of not having a car.  Originally, when planning our car-free adventure/life, we'd calculated spending a certain amount on car rentals for trips to Connecticut to visit family--usually we can rent a car for $30-$40/day from the airport over a weekend.  However, as we discovered at Thanksgiving, car rental companies will triple their daily rate over holiday weekends.  So our little three day trip at Thanksgiving cost more than $350 just for rental, plus we had to pay for gas.  It was worth it, but more than we'd expected (by a lot).

Over Christmas, we made another three-day trip to CT, but this time we used Zipcar.  It turns out that you can rent a Zipcar for a maximum of four days.  The daily rate does not change over the holidays.  We rented a Honda Element for $89/day, which is a little less than what we'd have paid from Thrifty or the other big car rental agencies, but all the taxes and gas were included, so we came out about $100 ahead.  And I didn't have to schlep myself over the the airport and back.  Over Thanksgiving, it took me 90 minutes just to pick up the car.  With Zipcar, I just needed to walk 5-10 minutes from home.

There are some cheaper car rental places around, very small companies, but the online reviews of them are pretty scary.  If anyone in the Boston area knows of reputable ones, I'd be interested in hearing about them.  For now, though, it looks like Zipcar will help us out over the holidays.

Pat's Bicycle Life

I love this image that my friend Jonas put this image together for me (thanks, Jonas!). Now that I've got a bike stand (borrowed from my friend, Mike), I feel more fully engaged in the bicycle life than ever.

Reframing our personal map

Without a car, we've started to realize that our personal landscape has shifted in scale and scope. For obvious reasons, we no longer go to grocery stores 7 miles away (yes, I do miss weekly visits to Russo's). It makes a lot more sense to hit the local Trader Joe's and Stop & Shop with the bike and trailer.

I've also noticed that having a car allowed us to be complacent about the professional services we receive. When we first moved to Boston in 2000, it took a while to find a pediatric dentist. My son has some special needs that made finding the right dentist pretty important. Even though we lived in Roxbury, we ended up going to a dentist in Cambridge. Even after we moved to Brookline, we kept going to Cambridge. But we had a car, so it could work. Even though we could have looked for someone closer, we never took the trouble. It's a hassle to change your dentist, doctor, vet, hairdresser. It's much easier to stay in the same routine. But going to professionals outside your neighborhood comes at a cost--there is an environmental impact of the travel, it eats up extra time from your life, and your money supports an office and workers in a town that's not your own.

A couple weeks ago, I had to take the kids to the dentist for checkups. But the appointment was too close to the end of school to effectively get there by bus, so I ended up renting a zipcar. With traffic, it took us almost an hour to get there (it's about 4 miles from home). Going to the dentist ended up consuming three hours and cost $30 in car rental fees. When I had our own car, I wouldn't have noticed the cost (though it was still costing me), and I would have ignored the time spent.

I've since found a new dentist for the kids, one that we can walk or bike to. And all it took was a couple e-mails to other parents at my son's school, and a phone call to the dental offices. I should have made the change years ago, but the convenience of the car allowed the situation to continue (even though it actually was less convenient).

(It turns out that our old dentist is retiring anyway, so we wouldn't have gotten to see him much anymore anyway.)

More and more, we're rethinking how we're accessing life around us and bringing it back closer to home.