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?)

Save Money on Gas

Pretty much every time I ride my scooter, someone makes a comment about how much I must be saving on gas. True. We've figured out that it gets between 75-80 mpg. Pretty awesome. Today I had to fill up the tank (around 4 dollars) and it was very fun to be right next to a Suburban at the pump. :)

But this post is about natural gas. In our new place, the water heater runs on natural gas. We also have gas cooking. At our old place, we had on-site maintenance (yeah!) but no access to the water heater. Here, any maintenance requires a written request, which for some reason has been very difficult to turn in.... I just can't seem to make myself get three kids into the car to bring a piece of paper over to the management company. I could fax it, but I don't want to unpack the fax. I could probably e-mail it.... anyway. I haven't done it.

What does this have to do with saving gas? Our water heater is broken, and we can't have hot water until it's fixed. Thus, we're saving a bunch of money :)

It's actually not too bad. We only really use hot water in the shower (and then, it's only 3 out of the 5 of us), but it's so stinking hot that it's not a TOTAL necessity.

I looked at the water heater, and it's rated very low on efficiency. It's exciting to see that I can turn the temperature down (I wasn't allowed to in the old place). According to the Department of Energy, each 10 degree temperature reduction saves 3-5% in energy. When we do get it fixed, I plan to buy it an insulating blanket. (This should save another 5-9%, although installation is apparently more complicated on gas water heaters.) We are also considering turning off the water heater for most of the day, but I would like to do calculations to see how much gas this really saves. Does anybody know if turning off the water heater for 20 hours or so saves gas? Or does all the difference get used up in heating the tank of cold water? How long does it take to warm up?

This site says that it's worthwhile to turn the water heater off when leaving town. It also says you can use a timer for an electric water heater. How about gas? If you go out to the garage and manually turn it on and off, will that work?

Bus/Bike to Work -- I did it!

I just got back from work and I feel totally triumphant -- I bus/biked to work and back home. This is a pretty big deal for me because last week I rode the scooter, but because of the scary traffic, I feared for my life. It also took me about 30-35 minutes each way. Blah.

Today, it took about 45 minutes each way. I rode about 1/2 mile on the way there (between bus stops) and about 3 miles on the way back. So, about 10 minutes more than by scooter. The nice thing, however, was that I was able to spend about 20-25 minutes of that time grading. Productive time. So nice, and so desperately needed now that I am home with the kids all day and teaching at night.

Something I am trying to figure out... how do I go to the grocery store to get the massive amounts of food that we need... with the kids? It just seems SOOO painful without the car.

Austin update: There is a new bike pathway -- the Lance Armstrong Bikeway. It is really nice. It is open from Lamar at Cesar Chavez all the way to Austin High. It is a nice way to stay out of the traffic. It feels so civilized and is faster than riding on the trail. It's also great at night, because you don't have to worry about traffic not seeing you and you don't have to worry about obstacles in the road.

I do have a problem with this bikeway, though, in that it runs parallel to a bike trail. I think there's a lot of other things they could have spent the money on to make cycling nicer in Austin. When it is complete, however, it will connect all the way to the east side of town, which is sorely needed.

Additional update: If you are interested in bike commuting and have a job downtown, Lance Armstrong's new bike shop Mellow Johnny's has showers and a coffee shop. It's right by the farmer's market. It's worth checking out. (I have only looked in the window -- I haven't checked out the facilities.)

5 Car Free Days

My car broke down on Tuesday. C went to "rescue" it and bring it to the shop. We have been car-less for 5 days. And it has been nice. It's been no problem.

How did I get to work?
I rode my scooter. If I had someone to watch the little one, I would have ridden the bus or bike/bussed because I'm a little scared to ride my scooter to work because of the traffic. I'm trying to address that problem for next week.

How did C get to work?
He rode his bike.

How did we get the kids to camp? (The two big ones had camp this week)
J rode his bike and N rode the trail-a-bike behind C's bike.

How did I take E to the park?
On the bike with the trailer. It was fun :)

How did we get groceries?
We only had to pick up a few things. We did it on the bike to the Expensive Mart down the street.

C and I had a date night. What did we do?
My MIL took the bus to our house to watch the kids. We rode our bikes to the springs and then downtown to have a nice dinner. We rode about 6 miles total, which helped cancel out the cake I had for dessert :)

We dropped my MIL off at work at 5 am. How did that work?
Normally, we would have driven her. Instead, she rode on the back of the scooter with my husband. They both wore helmets. It was so cute.

Speaking of, my MIL is the best. She's been car-free her WHOLE LIFE. That's right. She doesn't drive. She doesn't own a car. She doesn't even have a driver's license. Sometimes this is a big pain, but usually it is not a problem. Which is kind of surprising considering that she does not really live within easy walking distance of many things. She can walk to the bank and.... that's about it. If she wants to go to the grocery store, she asks someone to take her. If she goes in early to work, (5 am! No bus runs that early) she either calls a cab or gets a ride with a co-worker. For just about everything else, she takes the bus.

My MIL is in her late 50s, so if she can do it, other people can do it. She's in great shape, probably from all the walking to and from the bus stop. She owns her own house on a very moderate income, and I'm pretty sure that if she had the expense of owning and maintaining a car, affording a house would not be a possibility. Plus, she avoids a lot of danger. About 6 or 7 years ago, her kids (C included) tried to teach her to drive. This resulted in 2 accidents: crashing through the garage door and totaling the washer and dryer, and side-swiping an 18 wheeler. I love her, but we're all probably better off with her not driving.

An added advantage to not driving? If you live in Austin (and this probably is true for other places too) you can have the Transportation Fee on your electric bill removed if you don't own a car. Pretty cool.

Be prepared!

Maybe because I was never a scout, I seem to be having trouble learning this lesson: Be Prepared.

I drove the little one to the Children's Museum today. Why? Because it was hot and the trailer was hooked up to a wimpy bike. It's actually a pleasant bike ride, so I really should have ridden the bike. Alternatively, I could have taken the bus, but that (of course) would have required some planning.

So what happened? I drove E to the museum, and the car broke down. I had to push it into a safe place and C had to rescue it after work. What a pain. And I ended up taking the bus home anyway (which was very pleasant).

So now the car's broken, and it will be a few days (at least) until it's fixed. Time to experiment with being car-free.

I scooted to work this evening. Blech! The traffic is awful, and it's much worse sitting in the humidity and heat, breathing in exhaust than sitting fresh in my car listening to NPR. It threatened rain, but did not rain after all, although I was prepared with a big rain coat and a change of clothes. I'd feel much safer taking the bus. I checked out the schedule and it might be doable.

Driving Decisions

C has a job that is pretty far away (maybe 12 miles?). He really hates to drive (especially since last month, when he "divorced" the car, but sometimes they have to get together again). It's hard to bike/bus sometimes because, depending on the shift that he works, he gets out very late.

On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I can't take the bus or bike to work because I wouldn't make it home in time to meet the kids.

So.... what do we do? A couple of years ago, we sold our second car and bought a scooter. When we both need to "motor" somewhere, the person who needs to go farther takes the scooter so that we can save gas. Of course, this does not ALWAYS work because the scooter can't go over 35, so we have to be able to take slower roads, but in the case of us both going to work on a Tuesday, it works out fine. I drive about 8 miles in the car roundtrip, versus about 24 for C. It also saves money. The gas prices are killing me -- it actually cost over $4.00 to fill up my scooter -- that's insane! (Don't you love that I can complain about a $4.00 fill-up?) But I'm being serious. Filling up the car costs a bundle, so we're really trying not to drive.

How much do you think gas will need to cost for people to cut down on driving? Is the price making you reduce your driving? Do you ever think about how much a trip will cost?

It's an important calculation to make. For example, the other day I needed parmesan cheese (okay... maybe not a total necessity, but spaghetti is just not the same without it.) I can get it at ExpensiveMart for about .60 more than at the regular grocery story. But the grocery store is at least 10 miles round trip. I can walk to ExpensiveMart. Hmmmmm....

Two bags down...

Today I was going around the house, looking for things I don't need in my goal to unclutter this week. I found some random toys, a crossword puzzle book (where did this come from?), and was just about to despair when -- jackpot! -- I found a whole bag of clothes that I had ready to donate to Goodwill already. Is this cheating? Nah! They've been clogging up my closet for months now and pretty soon I'll need that space for the worms.

That's right. The worms, or at least their house, is on the way. I watched a bunch of youtube videos on worm farming last night (just to be sure that Sustainable Dave is not making it look too easy). I figured that if Dave "wimped out" as he says on the video, then so can I. We opted for a Worm Factory, and as soon as it arrives I'll get the worms because I don't want to have a bunch of worms with no place to live.

So today was a pretty good day, green-wise. Here's the progress I made :)
-Worm Factory on the way
- Planted about 1/4 of my plot in the community garden with lettuce and squash. Hope it's not too late for the lettuce. Maybe it will just be baby lettuce, which will atleast be something. This was actually a major triumph because I can't find the key to get in the garden, so I had to climb the fence and have my husband throw the compost over. I'm a mess.
-One more bag of stuff gone (that's two so far). They're big bags, too.

What I'd like to work on is driving to work. Two days out of the week I drive about 10 miles round trip to work. I can't really ride my bike because I wouldn't be back home in time to meet the kids off the schoolbus. I guess the next best thing is to ride my scooter. Next semester I'll try to plan my classes better so that I can ride my bike or take the bus.
According to fueleconomy.gov, my car gets 21 mpg in the city. That's shockingly bad. It doesn't seem like it's that low. I will have to look into that further. My scooter gets about 70 mpg. I can't find a reliable source that says exactly what the mileage is right now, but averages on various sites seem to be around 70. Obviously, the best solution here is to ride the scooter. Today was rainy and windy though, and I'm afraid I'll blow over. But after looking at the numbers, I'll be sure to ride the scooter if I won't blow over or at least combine an errand if I have to drive (as the grocery store is on my way to work).