Making it through the winter

Just before the snow melted off the paths

This winter has been a challenge for me in terms of living car lite.  I haven't been able to ride the kids to school as often as I want.  Last winter it was just my daughter that I took and her school at the time was on the way home from work for my wife so it was easy for her to grab the bus if it was snowy.  I was free to either bring my daughter in the trailer or not depending on my whim.  True, I was stuck with the trailer for the rest of the day but that's a small price to pay really.

I've kind of struggled with how to reduce my car use ever since the cold and snow came.  I was convinced this fall that selling our second vehicle and buying a Bakfeits was not only the smartest thing to do but the only sensible solution to family bike travel.  Now I'm not so sure.  Would I be riding the kids to school more if we had one?  No.  Would we ride more in the summer?  Probably.  Kind of a hard sell for $3k in bike.  Is this all about bikes or is it about riding?  Hard for me to tease those two apart sometimes.  Is it so bad to use the car to get the kids to school and ride from there?  Not really.  Is it possible to live without a car?  Of course.  Will we ever do it?  Probably not anytime soon.

We lived one summer car free.  It wasn't intentional.  My wife had gone back to school in preparation for a graduate program and we sold our "good" car because it wasn't paid for.  The other one was.  Unfortunately the other one dies a week or so after the sale.  I bought a used bike trailer on the cheap and we used it to lug our laundry and groceries back and forth.  We borrowed a car to go camping for a week and that was that.  When fall came and graduate school started we found a cheap corolla and things worked out fine.  I don't know that we would have done things that way if we had had kids at the time.  It was summer which made it easier.  So, driving the kids to school isn't such a bad thing I guess.  In my heart of hearts I'd love to figure out a way to make living car free work but as a collaborative unit (i.e. a family of 4) my vote is only 25% of the equation. When it's -15 I'm grateful for the car to take the kids to school.  When the winds gust 75mph, ditto.  When it's 70 and sunny on a spring day with the trees a budding and the tulips shining in dewy brilliance I'm happy we live on the bike when we can. Winter is a big part of our climate here but the truly un-bike-commutable days are few compared to the whole

In the end I'm grateful for every minute I get on the bike.  On the bike life's dramas play themselves out.  There is struggle and elation. Moments where the tears in your eyes aren't just from the wind.  Times when the moment stretches into eternity and you hold on to that feeling and bring it out and dust it off for motivation  when times off the bike get hard.  Flashes of brilliance occur within the steady beat of the pedals.  Flashes that pass on once the bike is parked but you know they happened and that sustains me.