Convenience

With all the madness of back-to-school, and starting work full-force again, convenience has really been on my mind. For example:

Walking/biking to school
Why do so many parents drive their kids to school? My kids walk or bike with their dad every morning. The school is very close to our house and it would be ridiculous to drive. But there are other parents who live nearby who drop their kids off with a car. Why? I guess because it seems more convenient.

Maybe they are on the way to work and school is on the way. The problem here is that it's not just a quick drop-off. The traffic around the school is INSANE.

My kids don't walk by themselves because they're little, but older elementary school kids should be able to walk a quarter mile by themselves (I think) unless they have to cross a busy road. What I have noticed is that despite the insane traffic (slow, but lots of distracted drivers), there are only crossing guards right at the school. Our road is a little ways from the school, and although many kids walk up our road, there is no crossing guard.

One solution might be to walk the kids to the point at which it would be safe for them to walk on their own (and where they meet the surge of other kids and start to ignore their parents anyway).

But then I thought about my youngest child......

I drop her off at day care every morning and I don't have time to walk her to the school (which is within walking distance) and walk back home to get my scooter. So, I have ended up driving her to day care 2 days out of the week and then driving to work from there. And I have found that I like listening to NPR in the car on the way to work. It's the only time in the whole week that I get to hear the news without interruption.

So, here I am.... I can either:

• Walk her to daycare, drop her off, walk back, scoot to work (total of about 45 minutes, no NPR, but good exercise) OR

• Drive her to daycare and continue on to work (total of about 25 minutes with NPR and killing the environment).

Grrr....

I don't think I'm the only one facing these kinds of decisions.

What's interesting is that she HATES riding in the car and shrieks like a banshee, so in the afternoon I come home, leave the scooter or car, and then walk or ride my bike to pick her up.

Maybe when it's not in the 90s I'll be in a better position to ride my bike to work, but right now I'm a little daunted by the 4 or 5 mile hilly ride.... (Any thoughts on electric bikes to assist on the hills and not get to work a sweaty blob?)