mr,grumpy 

These are some of the observations that I have made by reading this forum and the posts in it.

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Clearly, these are general observations and not an critique of any one individual's lifestyle. It's anecdotal information gathered over year of envious reading in this forum. It bears out the observations of RobbiRobbi that not every one is equipped physically or emotionally to BE car free. I have and do, wish that it was an option for me. Every so often I try to quit cars as much as I can but then I realize that I have to be on the other side of town in 15 min and BAM back into the car. If I lived 7 or even 8 miles from work I could ditch the car. And never see my daughter who doesn't live with me again. So, that's not an option... I have no where that I need to be that is NOT better served by my car than my bike. I'm not free to roam as I please. I am NOT ORGANIZED ENOUGH to replace car trips with bike trips (for the most part) and (I know that this IS something that I can work to change but, as I said, I don't go enough places or do enough things to make this kind of organizing a habit. It's nice that so many of you are able to pull this off. You are heroic to me. Well done.

tandempower

It is very provocative to frame this thread as observations (accusations) of people who LCF. It would have been better to frame it as "obstacles to LCF" or something to that effect.
Schedules are a weapon used against LCF to push people to drive. They are not used intentionally as weapons, for the most part, but they function in this way. It's the same if you are a professional driver and your route schedule is set in a way that requires constant speeding.


Raising kids LCF is a different paradigm than toting kids around in a minivan everywhere. You choose activities and schools that are bikeable and walkable. You get a bike trailer and bike seats when they're too young to pedal. When they're old enough to ride a trailer bike, that costs another $100 or so. You can find affordable tandems when they get too big/strong for the trailer bike. At a certain age, they can ride on their own.

1. This is prejudicial against transience. If people aren't breaking the law by moving, what right do you have to put them down for it. There are plenty of reasons to stay put in a given residence and/or locality, but avoiding transience for its own sake is not one of them.

Beyond that, there are many places where biking is relatively unimaginable where it is entirely possible. When I visit my parents, it amazes me how unbikeable/unwalkable I viewed those areas when I was younger, whereas now I can bike across the city in an hour or so. To some degree, driving-dependency is a state of mind more than it is a geographical state, though schedules and social/economic obligations can promote the driving-dependent state of mind.

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Y'all live in the city.

1. If you really want to give up driving, there are often ways to do it. Some people just get fed up with the feeling of having to drive so they just get a bike one day and start riding without a paved shoulder and let people honk and slow down to pass because they figure those motorists deserve the irritation for having gone along with the culture of excluding LCF in the first place.

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   Everyone is so rediculously close to their jobs that I would be embarased to post about ANY sort of transportation "quandary".
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   I live THIRTY FOUR miles away from my job. It's less than 1/4 mile off the highway. My house is less than 1/4 mile off the highway. There is NO public transportation option. You were 3 miles away but then you moved (again!) and now you're 6 miles away and you want to know if you can still ride there? Yea. It's OK.

It sounds like you chose your residence and job to take advantage of the highway and driving as a way of getting a better job and/or residence. This is the opposite of going LCF.

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   Y'all are BUSY mo-fos!
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   Long ago I learned the the terms "running errands" and "going slowly broke" are synonymous. In a place on the cycling inter web where people love to brag how "simply" they live, there is a lot of riding to concerts and bars and this store and that store. There's a lot of bragging about hauling this or that giant luxury item that I might have bought one of in 15 years, if at all. I can't afford to live as "simply" as you guys do.
   That's not simple living. It's what I would call liberal LCF. There are people who don't really want to make a break with the liberal consumerist lifestyle, but they want to give up driving to get more time and money to shop and consume even more liberally. This is not my preferred lifestyle, but I can appreciate the fact that they are living the liberal consumerist dream car-free instead of clogging the roads and boosting the automotive paradigm with their lifestyle choices.

Thanks for the compliment. I also see it as heroic when people can aspire to something that is hard for them to achieve and recognize their own weaknesses and obstructions that block them from pursuing their goal. Knowing your hinderances is the first step to overcoming them, so I would say you are on the right path to achieving whatever you choose.

Sad to hear your family life isn't ideal. Many of us deal with divorce and family separation in various ways and it is indeed hard to balance LCF with family obligations. All you can really do is try to think rationally about all your options and overweight benefits, costs, sacrifices, etc. One thing I've always factored into my cost-benefit analysis, however, is the benefit of being a role model for my child by putting extra effort into making principled choices and living responsibly and consciously in various ways. Part of this is being honest when you aren't able to live up to your own ideals even though you'd like to and teaching your children about how to persevere through struggle while maintaining hope for the future.

If you really want to LCF, you may find a way one day. If you love where you live and don't want to move, you may find a way to make money closer to home. You may be able to start a local business that serves suburban needs so people don't have to drive as much. If you really value LCF, you won't be able to stop your mind from knocking on that inner-door in search of ideas for how to do it. Where there's a will there's a way, even if the path is long and arduous and filled with sacrifice.

B. Carfree

Entertaining screed. I suspect the list has been reinforced extensively by confirmation bias. Anyway, here's how those things describe me:

1. Little kids: My spouse and I reared our offspring while being car-light, meaning we drove once a quarter or less. We now have two adorable grand-daughters age two and three who would be shocked to get into a car with us. Considering the data on injuries and deaths to children inside motor vehicles, we consider putting children into cars to be borderline child abuse.

2. Transients? I lived two decades in the Bay Area, same house for the last dozen of those years. Then I lived two decades near Sacramento, same house for the last fourteen years. Now I've lived nearly two decades in the Willamette Valley, same house for the past decade. I believe the average American moves every five years.

3. City Dweller: I do currently live in a city, albeit a small one that has barely more people than many suburbs. However, Up until a decade ago I lived in either suburbs or out in a rural setting where I was the only person commuting to the city. None of that stopped me from meeting my transportation desires by bicycle.

4. Close to work: Not exactly. My commute distances have varied from ten mile round trips to 100 mile round trips. I must say I was in much better shape when I was commuting 100 miles by bike to work. However, I have found that the middle-ground, about sixty miles round trip, is the real sweet spot. Count yourself lucky to live just about that distance from work; if you ever figure out how to commute by bike you'll understand.

5. Busy? Errands? I don't quite get this. I do have many young friends who spend lots of time at concerts and such, but that's not something I've ever done. The only real errands I do are grocery shopping and trips to get things for home projects.

I wonder if anyone will chime in who confirms your model. I'm particularly interested in seeing who will lay claim to being organized, since that's about the opposite of what I am.

mr,grumpy 

Just observations over time of what people post. I'm glad that a raging exception to every point jumped in to tell me that I'm wrong, but it was never meant to be a study or accusation of any kind.

wolfchild

OPs observations are mostly correct and spot on.

mr,grumpy 

So, you actually "proved"?my point about being car-free with kids: you were already car free BEFORE the kids. It was a natural progression for you.
As far as your commute goes, you would know better than I where you have been and what you have done. Inhale to tell you, at the 100 mile end it's a tough pill to swallow that you would ride for 6 hours or more every day on top of your work day. On the other hand ten miles ROUND TRIP. You should be ashamed to even mention that.

HOWEVER

Given the child-rearing, suburb cycling and hours and hours and hours that you spent getting back and forth to work I can truly tell you that I think it's utter hogwash that you claim to NOT ne organized! There's no way.

wphamilton

I don't agree that his points were all spot on. We didn't match many of them the five years or so that we were car-free.

It is reasonable though that car-free folks would tend to live in areas that are more bike-friendly and close to their employment. Not necessarily all of them, but a preponderance.

baldilocks

Not everyone can be car free. If you believe it is a good thing, then aspire to it. Encourage those who can't do it with your example. If I can be car free 3 or 4 days a week, then my life is that much better. Not because I hate the truck, but because I love the bike. I'm not car free, but I'm not dead yet either.

Roody

Then what the heck was it meant to be? A love letter? I found it to be offensive and hurtful as well as untrue.

Machka 

You got it!

When I was car free ...

1) Yep, no kids.

2) Transient ... not while I was car free. I remained in one place during those years.
I don't think being car free or light and moving a lot is necessarily related. In fact, from my observations here, most of the people who claim to be car free stay in one spot and don't venture out of their 5 mile radius. They even seem quite proud of that. Interestingly, they will, however, tell people to move.
But personally, yes, I do move a lot. I can't imagine living in just one spot my whole life.

3) Live in a place conducive to being car free ... yep. It helps. In fact, if you're going to be car free, that is one of the things you should probably to be willing to do ... position yourself near stuff. If you don't live close to stuff, it is so much more difficult to be car free. Not impossible, but difficult. However, some of us are aware that not everyone can live close to stuff and that's OK. Not everyone can be car free.

4) Live close to your work ... again, yep. It helps. But again, some of us realise this might be impossible.
It is in Rowan's and my current situation. Our jobs are about 40 km apart. So we either live close to my work, or close to his work, or in between. We've opted for in between because that's where we acquired the best housing. But it means that Rowan drives. That's life. At least we live in a nice area.

5) As for busy ... my impression is that very few of the car free people here actually do anything other than go to and from work, grocery store, and home.
I post that Rowan and I go places (we travel, go to concerts and events, etc. etc.), but I haven't actually seen that anyone else does. We don't want to live simply ... we like to live life! And yes, even when I was car free, I did all this too ... one of my motivations for being car free was so that I could afford to live life! Life is too short to be sitting around home all the time.

B. Carfree

Some of us just define living it up differently than you. You enjoy travel by means other than bikes and going to concerts. I'd rather spend my free time with my wife riding around our local coast range (always more to find) than getting on a plane and riding elsewhere. I'd rather read a book than go to a concert. We can't eat out, but we wouldn't if we could; we prefer to go for walks along the river and work in our gardens. Perhaps that's living simply, but we enjoy it immensely as do our many friends who join us. One thing we don't do is sit around at home, other than when we are reading in the early evening (which isn't every night). There are way too many things that need doing to sit about for more than very short time periods.

To each his and her own, hopefully with joy.

tandempower

I traveled enough when I was younger to realize that everywhere is home and it's how you experience what you do that makes life rich. I love simplicity because it gives you a chance to really focus in on certain things, like taking a walk or a bike ride and examining common plants and trees closely to appreciate the nuances of how their bodies have been uniquely shaped by their individual growth process. It's amazing when you think about the billions of molecules and the myriad complex processes that go into forming even the smallest and simplest things.

Walter S

Then some of us love riding our bicycles so much we choose to live 20 miles away from work and commute by bicycle for multiple decades. Fancy that on BF. It's all about where the joy and self nourishement in life comes from for you personally. Whatever that is hopefully you can then express that with where your energy goes (and also where it comes from).

Life from the seat of the bicycle is a daily adventure, sometimes tempered by usually slight but interesting weather events. Every mile is a confirmation that consistent significant distances become what I do almost every day, so they're easy or hard as I'm feeling like that day. It's an emotional choice. It's a launching pad for bicycle tours that I don't "train for".

I did the same commute in a car for nearly 10 years. I would frequently ride 25 miles on my bicycle and then drive to work in a car and sit in traffic jams pissed off. Duh.

I-Like-To-Bike

I think your impression MAYBE right that very few of the car free people here actually do anything other than go to and from work, grocery store, and home; then again, MAYBE NOT.

Other posters live their life as they see fit and perhaps even have as exciting a life as they like, and theymay not consider it necessary or even desirable to post blogs all about their personal life details on the Internet, let alone the LCF list; some might even have heard about this thing called Facebook and perhaps find it a more suitable place for posting about all the exciting events in their lives.

mr,grumpy 

Distance=time. If you're dedicating the time any way then you're right. Going somewhere is better than going nowhere in particular. Having an extra two or three hours at the beginning or end of a work day is quite a luxury! However, reading about people who agonize about what to wear or what size tires are needed to peddle 4-5 miles each way is.... not compelling content. Clearly, every one on this forum has a certain effection for the bicycle. Many people don't have the time (or athleticism) to appreciate it as much as they would like.

Walter S

I'm dedicated to physical health and fitness and recreation and that does take time. But when I road my bike before driving to work, my average ride was around 1.5 hours. Then driving to work would average an hour. It varied a whole lot though and was much worse if there were traffic accidents etc.

Riding the bicycle to work is a bit longer at 1:20 or so on average. But it's really amazingly consistent. Even when I feel like a slug it hardly registers on the time. But for the most part I've bumped up my bicycle time tremendously by giving up driving and done so with a moderate decrease in my "personal" time (the time I'm dedicated to exercise and commuting in total). In other words I now have MORE time for my family etc than I did while driving but not getting my exercise during that block of time.

Before, I spent 1.5 hours cycling and then 1 driving to work, 1 returning, for a total of 3.5.
Now, I spend 1.3 hours riding my bicycle to work, 1.3 home for a total of 2.6 LCF

As to the "extra" morning time you refer to, that comes from getting up at 4 a.m. when that time is for the taking while the rest of the house is asleep.

cooker

Others see this forum as a place to actually post content that might be of interest, and not as a place to do nothing but continually criticize other people's posts.

Roody

Excellent point. Riding for fitness AND transportation kills two birds with one stone... Three birds if you're also having fun (recreation) and four birds if you're riding with the family.

Walter S

And together, we're all part of one big happy family of people clicking away about stuff that probably doesn't matter all that much . Pretty soon we're all dust in the wind...all the cars too

cooker

Talking about biking with families... We were discussing in another thread whether carrying your bike in your car to ride somewhere, is actually part of living car-light/car-free, and of course it is not, except to the degree that it supports reduced car usage. So, for example, if you drive part way and bike the rest, you are a little closer to "car-free" than if you drove all the way.

Apropos of that, I had planned to try to do a little over a metric century this year, more or less solo, by biking to the charity Ride for Heart, riding the 75 km route, and biking home (about 105 km total). However my son and his girlfriend (now wife) expressed an interest in doing the charity event with me, but she hasn't cycled a lot. We don't have a car rack that carries three bikes, so to accommodate her, the night before the event we three biked to my office, which is close to the event, and locked our bikes up overnight and took public transit home. In the morning we drove down and just did the 50 km ride. Then we locked two bikes up at my office and drove home with one in the car. Over the next two days I took the bus to work in the morning and biked home in the evening, getting my son's and my bike home that way (he lives near me).

However my daughter-in-law was so pumped up by the event that she wants to do the whole round trip by bike next year (probably the 50 km charity route, so a total of about 80 km).

So doing the car/bike thing this year, may turn out to be the stepping stone to a fully car-independent event next year.

Walter S

Mixing some non-bike into a bike trip can enable lots of destinations that would be difficult or impossible. That might be a car but it could be anything. Lots of times I take my bike on the MARTA train to North Springs and make that my launchpad for a weekend of camping. Suddenly I'm well outside of Atlanta. It turns a 70 mile ride to my campsite into a 45 mile ride. That leaves plenty of time for enjoying the camping instead of just riding the whole way and then getting up and riding home.

wolfchild

Yes I was very busy commuting and running errands but I also did a lot of recreational riding all year round while I was car-free...I had this really nice route 168 KM long which I did regularly on Sundays.... Also every time I needed to go anywhere far to get something it turned out to be a fitness ride because of a distance. I remember one time I rode my bike 110 km roundtrip just to visit a bike store in a different city and pick up some spokes and nipples for my wheelbuilding project... I would also regularly visit MEC store which is an 85 km roundtrip for me. One time I rode 65km roundtrip just to visit a certain store and buy a new backpack. The only reason I quit doing long distance rides is because I have different goals and priorities in my life right now and not because I hate doing long distance.


But I think you're right . Most LCF people live in large dense urban areas where there aren't any opportunities for doing long distance recreational rides... And most transportational cyclists don't have enough interest, enough fitness, enough motivation and energy for doing 100 mile centuries on the weekends after riding in city traffic all week long. It's all about priorities and what's important to you as an individual.

FXjohn

right. you commuted by bike 100 miles per day. sure you did

wolfchild

A 100 mile ride takes anywhere from 5-7 hours depending on the terrain, weather condition, wind direction...100 miles would take a lot longer then 5-7 hours if there are a lot of stops and red lights involved..How do you manage to spend 5-7 hours on a bike, work all day and still have time for family responsibilities and other responsibilities ??

Machka 

I enjoy ...
-- travelling by various means
-- going to the symphony and various other events*
-- cycling ... lots of cycling and cycling in a variety of locations
-- walking to the beach with Rowan after work
-- other activities/sports like hiking, canoeing, swimming, snowshoeing, cross-country skiing, running on the treadmill at the gym, rowing at the gym, weight lifting ...
-- dabbling in photography
-- taking further education
-- reading books ... mysteries are my favourites
-- listening to music


Lots of things! Just to name a few.




*Regarding other events ... we'll do things like participating in Hobart's Open House Day to check out the architecture and history of the buildings here. And rather than driving between venues, we cycle.
https://www.facebook.com/openhousehobart

We've got the Antarctic Festival coming up in a couple weeks and are booked to tour two of the ships. Our plan is to park in a central location, go to the festival, go cycling, and then go to a symphony in the evening. Make a day of it!
Australian Antarctic Festival - Celebrating our Antarctic Heritage!