Congrats Kip, and thanks for this inspiring post. You touch on part of the issue with becoming car-free for so many people: they live too far away from work. It's kind of a self- fulfilling type thing that has become part of our culture. Around here it seems normal to have an 45 minute or 1 hour commute (one-way) by car, and once you have that, it becomes nearly impossible to conceive of riding a bicycle to work. It's a tough problem. Millions of people moving closer to work (or finding work closer to home) is not a likely scenario, and yet that's exactly what is needed to address some of the massive individual fuel consumption in our economy/lifestyle.
On Mar 11, 3:18 pm, Kip Otteson <kip.otte...@gmail.com> wrote: > Just wanted to post thoughts about being 7 months and car free. I'm > liking my past car use to addiction and it was truly that. I used to > commute for 75 miles on a round trip to work. The drive took between > 26 minutes and hours depending on the weather, accidents, road kill, > etc. The Colorado mountains are beautiful, but if you have a daily > job it's a killer. You need a reliable car that is warm which means > it's most likely expensive and requires payments. In the winter we > had to walk two miles to the road to get to our car towing our son in > a sled with the trash. Headlights at 5 am in blowing snow. All to > get to work in our car. Beautiful at times but not sustainable. > > Moving to Thailand was driven by our desire to reduce our commute time > with the ability to do it our bikes. We now ride five minutes to work > with the kids. I can take my kids on our Yuba Mundo and my wife rides > her Heron. We wake up at a reasonable hour, have our morning coffee/ > chat, get the kids up and roll. Easy. > > With our bikes we now can travel with the family anywhere within 15 km > with no problems. We feel better physically. We eat what we want > without guilt. I'm not consistently pissed/stressed like I was > before. No worries about mechanical difficulties because I can fix > most things on the fly. Not constantly looking out for cops because > I'm speeding because I'm late. Just much less stress. > > Traffic is heavy here and we often arrive just 5 minutes behind our > friends who drove, had to fight traffic, had to find a parking spot, > etc. > > I used to call myself a cyclist, but in America it was just > posturing. The most I could reasonably fit in was two rides a week > and many of those I drove to because of time restrictions. I had the > clothes and the gear but if I wanted a label I should have called > myself a "driver." > > I feel like a real cyclist now as I get places on my bike under my own > power. No car with a roof rack. No car. > > Kip Otteson > Chiang Mai, Thailand -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bu...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch?hl=en.
