MoAlpha

Call girls.

indyfabz

Lplo

indyfabz

I cured a LPLO to post the same thing.

sal

For me there are few wastes of money in biking, now that my kids are older and out of the house, they ask..."Hey dad what do you want for your birthday...Christmas....Father's Day?" Some may consider it a return on investment.

mschwett 

not to make this into a car-free thread, but hundreds of millions of people with kids live amazing car free lives, even in north america! (although it’s much less common here.)

using a 4,000lb vehicle to transport a 10-80lb child is one of the modern world’s great ironies. i have two kids. we drive very, very rarely. no sacrifices whatsoever.

prj71

I just bought a cheap cycling jersey on e-bay!!!! $13.72 for a Tenn Cycling Jersey!!!!

Maelochs

yeah .... except .... when you have two or three kids, and one needs to go to daycare, and the other two to two different schools, and you have to be to work, all between the hours of 7:30 and 9 a.m. you aren't likely going to be able to do all that on a bike.

I wouldn't trailer my kids anyway ... since I don't have kids, but also for perceived (imagined) safety issues----but try to cross town in rush-hour traffic to drop off one kid, then come home, get the other two, take them across town in two different directions, and then get to work, all in 90 minutes ... when the ride to work alone is 45 minutes.

It is like being vegan or even vegetarian .... not everybody can. Some people have a hard time just getting enough calories of any kind. It is great to tell the world how much better off we would all be if we stopped raising animals and slaughtering them for food---we could eat the food they eat, much more efficient---but for some people there simply isn't easy daily access to healthy food at all. Being vegan in particular is only a valid option for a very privileged few (as a lifelong vegetarian who knows about nutrition and fitness, I know what I am talking about, so don't bother arguing (well, bickering ... if you have real information from personal experience i will read it.)

Even in urban America, there are "food deserts," where the only food options are fast food ... grocery stores are too far for non-driving people or people with multiple jobs trying to raise multiple kids ... I am not saying poor life choices might not be involved, but I cannot look a t a ten-year-old and say "You cannot have enough protein for your brain or body to work because your mother partied too much before you were born." (And I can be pretty cold, but .... )

So yes, it is possible to raise kids car-free ... and to be vegan, and all sorts of other stuff, but the actual, lived, on-the-ground reality which I have experienced is that for most people with very limited income, (which is what we were talking about---not the people who can rent a car or truck at will, or have a car "for emergencies" but people who cannot really afford a car but also cannot afford not to have one) yeah, the car-free option is not an option.

There are people who can run 100 meters in under ten seconds, people who can play multiple games of chess blindfolded, people who can do all kinds of things .... but for most poor people who I have actually met, going car-free while raising kids was not an option.

Explain how a single mother can do three 45-minute bike trips, two while hauling children, in 90 minutes, and we might talk further on the topic.

prj71

Yeah sounds good in theory when you live somewhere that is warm all the time. Try transporting a child to school or wherever when it's 20 below zero, blowing snow and the wind makes the wind chill 40 to 50 below zero. It's all fun and game until someone gets frostbite.

I use 6,000 lb vehicle to drive myself 2 miles to work each day. It's like sitting on the couch and watching the trees go by.

This was January 26th this year where I live. You can go be car free all you want in this crap.

mschwett 

hehe no thanks! i agree that riding a bike in that kind of weather is an unlikely choice. we all make choices!

mschwett 

well, of course, if you concoct a lifestyle which requires a car.... it requires a car. that's not a particularly compelling argument. very cold climates, very large families, very low population densities, all these things make being car-free harder or impossible, no doubt.

that said, schools tend to be near where people live. children often (usually?) have two parents. there are school buses, public transport, feet, bikes, etc. we grew up in the suburbs and frankly i don't ever recall my mother driving us to school. my wife and i have two kids (4 and 11) and she doesn't drive. ever. we both work, more than full time. i think i drove my older daughter to school once as a novelty. we don't pay some insane amount of money for housing or for schools (well, we don't pay anything directly for schools, since they're public schools lol.)

i agree that most americans have made lifestyle choices (whether by necessity or pure choice) that make it more difficult to live without a car, but there are also tens of millions who made or are making different choices. and to get back on topic, things like electric cargo bikes (very affordable to buy and operate compared to cars!) can expand the possible range of those choices greatly. the cost savings vs the actual total cost of driving are enormous!

tomato coupe

I think it's more accurate to say you're concocting a lifestyle that does not require a car.

prj71

You don't get out much or must be city folk.

When I had kids at home we lived out in the country by choice (because living in the city sucks) and it was 6 miles to the nearest school. Not everyone lives on Wisteria Lane.

prj71

Yes. I make the choice to fire up my truck and hit the switch for the heated seats and heated steering wheel and have a nice comfy ride to work.

indyfabz

I have only been driving about 3,000/year, but I love my heated seats.

I am also starting to think Mr. Choices is a "Trustafarian."

Maelochs

I am all for going car-free .... but a careful reading of his posts shows that Mr. "We all make choices" chooses to own a car---at least one (I bet his wife has one as well, but no matter.)

That is how it is---people who can choose When to go car-free think it is all rosy and easy.

Yeah, when your kids gets a deep gash on his or her head, or a 104 degree fever on a cold, rainy night ... toss the kid ion the trailer and truck on out to the hospital.

When I say I was car-free, I mean I had Zero car. No emergency back-up. Which means that when i was sick and coughing/sneezing/leaking gallons of mucus ... i rode to work and to class in 40-degree rain. When i was fighting th flu and it was below freezing, I rode to work in the cold. When it was 99 degrees and 99 percent humidity, i rode. Rush hour, drunk hour (about 1:30 to 3 am in most states ion Friday and Saturday nights (Sunday mornings) when the bars kick out the unlucky die-hards .... way worse than rush hour.) It means when I wanted to go somewhere 50 miles away, I needed to leave five hours early .... so if your kids get on the traveling team of their sports, they don't have their parents to support them.

And if you think everyone lives in a two-parent/two kid home where everyone has enough money to do everything conveniently, school is within walking distance and it is safe to walk there, there are three grocery stores within walking distance (a Whole Foods and a Trader Joe's, right?) well .... there might be millions for which that applies, but there are 280 million to which it does not.

Car-free is either a luxury or an unpleasant but enforced choice for most people .... and if you have a car ("We hardly ever use it") then you have no clue .... because the few times "we just Had to use the car" I did it on my bike or a walked, or limped, or suffered.

Tell me again how you brought your wife to the hospital on your bike in the freezing rain when her water broke?

Alright now.

wolfchild

They live car-free out of necessity and not by choice, usually because they don't make enough money to cover the cost of vehicle ownership...Many years ago I did a car-free experiment which lasted 4 years. I didn't even use public transit and never rented a car during that time, every trip I made was made by bike all year round in all weather conditions. I was on my bike 365 days per year during those 4 years.. The first 2 years were fun and exciting but after that it just started to become daily grind which wasn't fun at all. Car-free lifestyle just isn't very practical for majority of people here in North America / Canada.

PeteHski

Unfortunately for most people going car-free would involve very significant "sacrifices". It certainly would for us for all sorts of reasons. But I'm all for the principle of reducing car dependency where practical. If it works for you that's great.
The best we can do right now is drive more efficient EVs. They still pollute indirectly, but not as much as equivalent fossil cars.

Branko D

Unfortunately, car free is difficult in my city which doesn't have very well thought out public transport. If I lived in the capital of my country which is more compact and dense (which is a key thing for making cities less car centric) and has tram lines which get you around faster than cars do anywhere close to the center of it, it'd be a whole lot more practical. We'd own one car instead of two and the mileage would be drastically lower.

However, I do use my bike to commute as often as I can, which realistically isn't as much as I'd like, but 500km a year of commuting is 500km of less car use, and we got an EV recently and that's also a fair bit cleaner. I expect to be able to commute by bike a lot more when the kids grow bigger.

prj71

We have one 4x4 full size truck and a two 4x4 SUVs. The truck and one of the SUVs we average 20,000/year.

2018 truck has 76k on it now. 2016 SUV has 150k on it now.

The other SUV is just a back up in case one has to go into the shop for maintenance.

adlai

Phone mounts.

​​​​​while I do use my phone while bicycling, I do so to look at the maps while at an intersection or to change the music or something. No need to have a phone mounts. Also road bumpiness makes it both useless and dangerous.

​​​​

rsbob 

I am right in being so wrong about my opinions. Or is it the other way around??? There. Now we almost have one person.

rsbob 

The subject is the biggest waste of money in cycling. Just EXACTLY what kind of cycling do you do? ​​​​​​​

MoAlpha

​​​​​​​You had to be there.

indyfabz

I am guessing that you missed the rash of spam threads in General yesterday. The threads were advertising call girls from Dubai or wherever it was. The mods took care of them pretty quickly.

tomato coupe

The girls or the threads?