NyoGoat

So i'm struggling here.

We recently relocated to be closer to family. We were a one car family in the las vegas area and I was able to ride my bike year round without any problems and pretty much everything was within a 5 mile radius. Now we live in a much larger urban sprawl area in a different city, and in the move I came to see that my biking was more tolerated than supported by my wife. In choosing a place to live the higher priority was to get closer to family (her sister). I am now 13 miles from work, but there is a bike path and bike lane almost all the way from my house to my workplace. I still try to commute on bike but it costs a little bit more time. I then shot myself in the foot with regards to bike commuting by starting a masters degree program with classes taught a few miles in the opposite direction, so I have a much longer commute to handle by bike. I don't mind it but it takes time, and that is hard on the family.

My wife is interested in biking. I have almost bought an Xtracycle a few times to help us not have excuses for grocery shopping. But on the priority list the time for biking is too expensive.

So I guess I have two questions:
1- How to I convert the family to make it a higher priority
2- Do I uproot and move again to position myself better to enjoy the bicycling lifestyle more? I'm a lot more gung ho about that idea but for peace I think i'm going to have to figure out how to just integrate it into my life around the family

FedericoMena

Would a folding bike help you? It has helped me a lot. Some patterns of transport that it lets me do:

- Put it in the car; drive to the edge of downtown (little traffic), park, hop into the bike and do errands in the normally-gridlocked downtown.

- Catch up with my wife, who has the car, at some restaurant. Get back home in the car, with the bike in the trunk.

- Wife drops me off somewhere and we go our separate ways - get back home on the bike.

- Bike to the nearest town to see a friend, a good hour's spirited ride; get back on the bus with the folded bike.

If your work-to-class route lets you take public transit (or catch a ride with someone) and folding bike, it may just work out. Good luck!

Roytoy

What's an Xtracycle?

NyoGoat

an Xtracycle is a brand of longtail cargo bikes. I'm very interested in selling all our cars and I want to take away all road blocks but I don't feasibly see it happening.

Unfortunately my route takes me around the outside edge of town and all public transport is directed in and out, not around. I like the idea of a folding bike but I don't see that as feasible either.

I know i'm being a whiny pants about situations that I have set up and that's not where i'm trying to take this. I've been trying to figure out how to integrate bikes into daily more and without the family priority things end up happening that keep making it harder. I don't see solutions so I guess this is mostly just an open to the world frustrated whine though

B. Carfree

You could just train and ride faster. Alternatively, you could get an electric assist, either a complete bike or a conversion, and then you would ride faster without being any stronger. There's an older conversion for an Xtracycle that was called a stoker something or other. Of course no electric assist comes cheap, unless you compare it to a car.

You're looking at 30 miles a day or so. On an e-bike or as a fit rider (sorry, you're not going to be able to do this on an upright bike), this can be done in less than 80 minutes. If you try to do it at a casual pace on an upright bike, it could be up to three hours in the saddle.

NyoGoat

More clarity on the situation: I have a CAAD10 105 that I purchased when I moved to my new city, with the thought that it would make my commute faster and more manageable. So I have that for the long rides. I've debated getting the cargo bike for weekend grocery store trips and to help my wife have a method to make cycling with kids to school more manageable, thus make it happen. There is interest there on her part, but I don't know if the cost would be justified or not. I'm not sitting around with cash to blow on any bike I want, and before I bought the race bike I seriously considered getting the cargo bike instead. I felt the race bike would get used more because I could use it on my daily commute. I can and do ride it to work, but now i've added the longer ride on the other side that has complicated things.

I-Like-To-Bike

If you cannot reasonably integrate bicycle commuting into your life around the family, you just might have to make a decision about altering your priorities, perhaps setting your family ahead of your gung-ho fascination with living the so-called "bicycling lifestyle".

Walter S

I guess you're trying to be helpful huh? As though he never thought of that and started this thread looking for alternatives to limiting his bicycling?

mel2012

Your post is missing some potentially relevant information:
(1) Did you already buy or are you considering buying a second car;
(2) How old are your kids;
(3) If you bought a cargo bike, could your wife use it during the day if you took the car;
(4) How long will your master's program last and is it every night;
(5) If you drove, rather than biked, would you have more time with your family (be able to stop home for dinner, for instance)?

If you have young kids, and your daily biking is coming at the expense of family time, I think you need to find an alternate solution that allows you to spend more time with your family on weeknights. I personally wouldn't invest in a cargo bike to use it once a week for errands. For getting groceries on a weekend, I would just buy a trailer.

I-Like-To-Bike

If he thought of that there would have been no OP.

You really think anyone who gave serious thought about his own priorities concerning his family relationships would ask for advice from total strangers on the Internet, especially a crew of political ideologues and dogmatists whose posts demonstrate a lack of empathy for anyone with family responsibilities.

It appears to me that at least several regular posters to this list never demonstrate that they have a thought that other people may have family responsibilities that could possibly impact on the importance of leading the so-called "bicycling lifestyle."

Ekdog

Trying to be helpful? He's trolling, as ever.

Ekdog

Folders are the answer to so many car-free dilemmas.

I-Like-To-Bike

Your habit of hurling invective at me for not meeting your standard of sanctimony and group think is tiresome but apparently is considered acceptable posting behavior for LCF.

Walter S

I knew that. My fingers got away from me.

Roody

Well, I'm going under the assumption that if the OP had wanted a car solution, he would not have posted on a car forum, not on a carfree forum. So to really be helpful, I want to take it from there.

I'm wondering about the need to live close to your sister-in-law. Are most visits with her done by bike or car? If they are done by car, it would make sense to live a little farther from her home, and a little closer to your work and/or school. I'm also going to assume that she does her fair share of the travel, so that you and your wife only have to make roughly half the trips to see her. It might make sense to co-ordinate plans better to make it a little less time-consuming for you guys to visit her, especially while you're in grad school. After all, you moved hundreds of miles to be close to her, so I'm hoping that she puts herself out some to make these visits happen.

jfowler85

If your wife is supportive of it, then just do it if you are so inclined. I rotate through 1st, 2nd, and 3rd shifts at work throughout the month and my position is such that I cannot take days off without advanced notice. I have a 3-year-old son, one on the way, and am a 3/4 time grad student. On my off hours tours at work I have my off time during the day when my family is awake and squeeze homework, paper writing, etc in wherever I can. I would say my life is somewhat busy, but not hectic. Granted, I commute less than 13 miles one-way, but I think you could manage this move. It's good for the family because you will leave them with a vehicle, and it's good for your medical and mental health to get some outdoor exercise in regularly.

Rob_E

I don't know that I believe in conversion. At best, you can make it clear how important it is to you.

As for moving, if your work and school are in opposite directions, would a move be at all helpful? If so, I think it's worth considering. Of course if the point was to like close to your sister-in-law, then suggesting you move away from your sister-in-law would be a non-starter.

For my part, I spent my first three years in this city making sure that my home and my work were close enough for me to be able to do without my car. Then when my wife and I first moved in together, we moved into her place, on the edge of town, and I had a car commute for the first time in years. It was unpleasant and, for the most part, unnecessary. It's one thing to make sacrifices for the good of the family, but there was no "good." We both lived several miles away from our jobs. We both had to drive, not just to work but literally everywhere. So I proposed that we move, and that's what we did. Now we're down to one car, much to my wife's chagrin, but, other than that one move, there hasn't been a lot of problems. I would say that one point of contention is taking the dogs to the vet. But really, this is a task that has always fallen to her, partly because she is the "dog person" in the family, but mainly because she is the person with a day off during the week. But I can see, by extrapolation, where having an actual family to ferry around would be more of a challenge. In that situation it's probably going to be a lot better if you look at ways to limit car use, or at least travel time, for the entire family, not just for you. If moving means you can bike to work, but now school is a longer drive, you've really just shifted the responsibility to someone else, which could be problematic. Likewise, if you don't live close enough to school, a bike that can haul kids won't be that helpful.

So my thinking is, all things being equal, living closer to work and school would be great. But only you and your family know how equal things are. My personal feeling is that having a work and home close enough to bike between enhances my life greatly. But it's not just your life, so that has to figure in as well.

tandempower

Any area that's not bike-friendly should be designated for single people only to prevent subjecting families to economic exploitation by automotive businesses.

Walter S

Dream big.

wolfchild

This is exactly a type of reply and ideology which promotes fanaticism and makes LCF'ers look like a bunch of kooks.

tandempower

Whenever LCFers claim that their freedom to live without driving is undermined by sprawling geographical layouts of economic regions, we are told that driving is a choice and a privilege, not a requirement, right, or necessity. Yet if I say that an area has to be bike/pedestrian/transit friendly or else it's economically exploitative, the response is that it's a fanatical dream to expect economic regions to be viably LCF friendly or be shut down.

It sort of reminds me of the endless debate over affirmative action, where one side keeps insisting that people are free to work for whatever they want while the other side insists that there must be structural barriers preventing full economic integration from happening or else it would have already.

The fact is that if an area is all but impossible to live LCF, it allows automotive businesses to exploit people because they don't have any real freedom to choose not to drive. This is a problem in a free market.

Machka 

No.

wolfchild

This is a free country and every individual person or family has a choice of where to live and how to live...Automotive businesses aren't exploiting anybody, automotive businesses actually create jobs and keep people employed and help to keep the economic engine running...If somebody doesn't like living in an area which makes bike commuting impossible, then they are free to move to a different area which is more bike friendly and has a better walking score. Automotive businesses aren't holding anybody hostage and prevent them from moving to an area where they are free to practice their
religion of LCF.

Walter S

+1. Auto businesses are there for the same reason as any business in a capitalist society. The size and number are defined by the size of the market. You can bet that if a lot of people give up cars that will change. Not necessarily before that.

Machka 

+1