Days 4, 5, 6 and 7: Portland to Oakland in a minivan then a few rest days in the Bay Area

Not much to report about our drive from Portland to Oakland except that two tandems and four people really do fit in a minivan. And driving is tiring. And the kids complained more on our 11 hour drive than they did riding in the pouring down rain on the highway for an entire day.

After our 200+ mile ride from Seattle to Portland, we were all pretty sore. And sitting in a car for 11 hours was quite painful. But we made it. And my sister greeted us with a big smile and hugs all around when we arrived long after her family’s bedtime.

We spent the weekend visiting family and friends, relaxing, eating, sleeping, nursing Tim’s cold and his sore knee. We also spent an afternoon in the city. The kids really wanted to go and I was prepared for a long visit. (They were disappointed last year that we didn’t spend more time in the city.) Turns out, all they really wanted to do is stroll through North Beach, eat pizza and look at all of the junk shops in Chinatown. Worked for us. Tim didn’t have a lot of energy and that was all he was really up for.

We spent a night with my friend, Steph, and her family in San Rafael and then back to Oakland for a night.

We got the bikes all packed up on Sunday morning, Father’s Day, planning to take Bart to Daly City and ride to Half Moon Bay and camp near the beach. My brother-in-law offered to accompany us to Bart.

As we were putting the final touches on the bikes and packing our stuff back into panniers and loading them up, Thomas suggested we stay another night. Why not spend the day relaxing at their local pool, drinking beer and watching the kids swim? I wasn’t sure he was serious. It was Father’s Day, did he really want us to hang out? Turns out he did. And it didn’t take long to convince us to stay.

The bikes were rolled back in the garage, fully packed and ready to go in the morning. And we were off to the pool an hour later. Ahhh, it sure was nice to relax! And catch up with Helen and Thomas. And read and nap too. The kids spent the entire day swimming in the pool with their cousins. I’d say we made a good choice.

Off to Half Moon Bay now! Thankfully I padded our schedule so we’d have time and opportunity for fun along the way.

Read our latest installment of our 2013 Pacific Coast Bike tour. Seattle to Portland

 - Anne

We’re taking off again! With a goal of finishing the Pacific Coast bike route, we are picking up where we left off last summer in San Francisco and riding to the Mexican border.

First, we have some some unfinished business, we’re riding to Portland. If you recall, we took the Bolt bus to Portland on our 2012 tour.

The plan is to pedal to Portland where we’ll pick up a rental car and drive to San Francisco. After a few days of visiting friends and family and taking in some tourist sites (we promised the kids we’d see more of San Francisco this time!) we’ll spend two weeks pedaling toward the Mexican border.

This time, we’re bringing a laptop and will do our best to blog and post photos  to our Flickr stream along the way.

You can also follow us on Twitter:

Tim: @oninformation

Anne: @annesavvy 

No time to write more right now, I have to finish packing!

We added a Pacific Coast Bike Tour page to the blog that includes new posts from our 2012 tour!

Cheers!

 - Anne and Tim

I’m an omnivore. And so is my family. For those of you who don’t eat meat or processed food, just know I’m not trying to offend your food sensibilities. Same goes for those of you who can’t imagine bike touring without energy drinks, freeze-dried food and power bars. Sometimes we eat some pretty gross stuff on tours that we wouldn’t consider at home (gas station deviled eggs, 7-11 hot dogs and mystery meat burritos). If the mere idea of any of that makes you ill, you may just want to skip this post!

Kids and food

For all the parents out there: Do you agree that feeding the family is one of the most high maintenance tasks on your daily list? I like to cook but feeding a family day after day quickly turns into a chore.

A few years ago,  I was trying to figure out what to make for dinner one night when I remembered this site a friend had recommended (if you’re swear-averse, don’t click.) They said it was funny and that it would cure my dinner making blues. I ended up procrastinating for quite some time one afternoon clicking links and laughing. F-bombs and dinner resonated with me at that time in my life. It just didn’t get old.

In all seriousness, kids can be such a pain in the ass when it comes to food. They don’t {ahem} like that, or they say they like it but won’t eat it when the time comes. Or they won’t eat vegetables. Or they’ll eat only raw vegetables. Or they’ll only eat white food. The worst is when they tell you that the meal you just slaved over is gross. Ack! Help!

Add bike touring and meal planning gets more difficult

You think feeding two adults and two kids is hard at home? Try feeding them on a bike tour! Three times a day, for 22 days. After pedaling 50-60 miles a day, we all get hungry. And since we’re far from our favorite local organic grocery stores, we have to make do with small town stores that sometimes offend our high-brow-gourmet-food sensibilities.  We might even sink so low that we’ll {gasp} scrounge for anything remotely edible in nasty gas stations! But everyone must eat, so we roll with it.

If you’re interested in family bike touring and food, read on!

Food on the road

Way back in 2009, Kent Peterson wrote a post the dietary truths of long distance cyclists. The first time I read that post, I was long-distance-cycling ignorant. Yeah, I’d toured a bit. Weekend trips to the San Juans and one longer trip to New Zealand in the 1990′s. But even in New Zealand, daily saddle time was brief, and stores plentiful. I was never far away from the next food source.

Because of my long-distance-biking-naiveté, I’ll admit that I might have snickered about the lack of nutritional value in the food Kent described in that post. Candy bars and sugary energy drinks? Nasty! 7-11 hot dogs that roll around for hours on that spinny grill? Ewww. Who would eat that crap?

Well, as it turns out, I would. After a long day pedaling and sweating in 90 degree heat, one of those salty fatty 7-11 weenies tastes pretty good. Sugar? And candy bars? Give me more!

Day 1 lesson: leave your dogma at home

The real truth about nutrition on extended bike tours, when survival and making it to the next food source is your goal, dogma is quickly left on the side of the road.

I remembered that lesson this past summer, as each 50 mile day passed. I must admit, I thought of Kent every time I found myself in a remote gas station perusing the shelves for something to feed the family. Who cares about your values when the whole family is starving and the only available food source does more business in gas and lottery tickets than anything edible. After a sixty-five mile plus day in the saddle, I’ll eat pretty much anything. Candy bars, mystery meat and leathery crusty burritos? Questionable deviled eggs? Give me one of each. That sounds tasty.

Bike touring rules! We eat candy and drink coke before dinner!

This lesson sunk in on day two of our 22 day journey last summer. After a day pedaling in hot sun, sometimes you chuck the dogma and have a little sugar.

On that particular day, after pedaling sixty-eight miles starting in Oregon’s Willamette Valley on a hot July day, we learned not to be picky about food. We spent the day plodding up climb after hot climb and we emerged from the Nestucca River Valley around dinner time. We had planned to eat dinner and camp in Pacific City, OR. But the ride took longer than expected and our arrival time stretched beyond the dinner hour. With 8 miles to go, and an empty food pannier, we admitted a quick “food” stop was in order.

Even though the stop violated my no snacking before dinner rule, I gave in any way. The map showed a couple of towns between the valley and the coast, so we thought for sure we’d find an open store along the way. But as it goes, most of these small town stores were closed. You mean stores don’t stay open all night like they do in the big city? No, they don’t. We put all of our hopes in one last little town, and pushed forward, praying the store would still be open by the time we arrived. And we just made it, rolling up a few minutes before they closed.

One of the kids ran in with Tim while I stayed outside with the bikes. I wasn’t prepared for the scene that unfolded a few minutes later. A kid ran out, grinning from ear to ear and talking excitedly. Something along the lines of, “Dad bought candy bars! And Coke! and Dr Pepper, I can’t believe this is happening! I love bike touring“! Because when carb-averse dad buys and drinks a glug of coke, you know something weird is happening.

Carfreedays top 21 foods while bike touring

Turns out, day 2 was just a blip on the 22 day journey. Before long we figured out how to better plan our meals. We figured out the foods everyone would eat and settled on a formula we could accept. Our touring routine included better meal planning in general: scoping out towns on the map that had grocery stores and always taking stock of what we needed before leaving a town with a real grocery store.

We also learned that small town stores can get expensive  Sometimes eating in a restaurant was cheaper than grocery shopping!

In general food had to fall within these general guidelines: lightweight, won’t spoil, minimal bulky packaging, and as fresh as possible.

So here you go, the list of our favorite foods

1. Beer: Bike tourists like beer at the end of the day. If we were touring by ourselves, without kids, we would probably just stop at a pub or bar for a beer at the end of the day. But pubs don’t always allow kids. So we settled for beers around the fire at the campsite. If we found groceries before heading to camp, we’d get at least one 24 oz bottle, maybe two to split between the two of us in front of the fire.
2. Coffee: To keep our camping gear minimal, we skimped on cooking supplies. We left coffee-making supplies at home. Instead we settled for Starbucks Via packets. Easy, lightweight and don’t taste too bad.
3. Beef Jerky: Tim and the boy like it the most, but I also think salty beef tastes good on a bike.
4. Dark Chocolate: Tim lives on 85% to 90% chocolate, I prefer Milk but will eat dark if you twist my arm.
5. Low-end gummy candy: Our kids are motivated by gummy candy. They’ll pedal a few more miles, or 10 if you give them a few gummy worms or sour cherries. On bike tours I say, what ever works, throw some of that junk in the cart.
6. Macadamia Nuts: High fat nuts will get you to the next real meal, enough said.
7. Smoked salmon: See # 2. the boy loves smoked salmon. Salty fish mmmm.
8. Cheese: I’ve lived in France, I love cheese, the fattier the better. My family likes it too.
9. Pistachios in the shell: Great on-bike snack.
10. Dried cherries: See #5, just like candy.
11. Big salads and crudites: Eat your veggies! You can make a meal out of a salad if you add enough stuff to it. Start with leafy greens and add canned beets, slivered almonds, canned tuna for any other fat and protein you like. Use your imagination  Yum. Our kids don’t like salad but will eat peppers, cucumbers and carrots for their veggie fix.
12. Steak on the fire: If we’re lucky enough to find a good grocery right before heading to camp, we’d choose steaks every night. Most campgrounds have grills attached to the fire pits. I used to think these grills were kind of nasty. I couldn’t chase away unpleasant images of all of the various meat that has been cooked on these grills in the past. But I changed my mind the first time we went bike touring. Just get the fire really hot and heat the grill to sterilize it. Then find something in the campsite to substitute for a grill brush and go for it.
13. Hard salami: No refrigeration needed, good on the bike and off.
14. Annie’s Mac n Cheese: Occasional quick meal for the kids only, parents don’t ahem like it.
15. Cocoa: Lure the kids out of the tent with promises of cocoa every morning.
16. Heavy whipping cream: Fat is where it’s at! Sticks with you longer than carbs. Paired with Via, makes a tasty and calorie laden cup of morning coffee. Tim even drinks it straight out of the carton.
17. Toaster pastries: For breakfast or an on-bike snack. Kids love them. Tim doesn’t eat them, but I do on occasion. Artificial sugar? Why not.
18. Fudgecicles: Yum! You can find these at most gas stations and small town stores.
19. Spinach/Roast Beef wraps: Tim skips the traditional wrap materials like tortillas and just wraps the roast beef up in a spinach leaf.
20. Eggs and Bacon: Only on mornings when we made a food stop right before heading to a campground. Bacon smells are guaranteed to get the boy out of the tent.
21. Hot Dogs: Julian introduced the kids to swirly dogs when he met us at Beverly Beach for a night and made some tasty dinner (ready when we arrived). He made us steaks, corn on the cob and swirly dogs. The kids demanded swirls with their dogs after that. btw, I actually never did eat a 7-11 hot dog. But I wouldn’t turn my nose up at one if I was hungry enough

One last tip: improvise a cooler with a Mylar reflective bubble wrap bag. Before we left, Tim grabbed one from our Amazon Fresh delivery and stuffed it in his pannier. It turns out, the bag fit perfectly in an Ortlib pannier. Paired with a bag of ice from the grocery store pop machine, it makes an instant cooler. Even keeps beer cold enough for a few miles.

If you’re looking for more gourmet food options, check out this post. That food looks tasty! I’m not sure I could keep up that level of perfection for an extended tour, but for a quick weekend trip, I’d definitely make some of those meals.

How about you? Have any yummy bike touring foods to suggest? Or anything that’s pretty gross, but you’ll eat it when you’re far from home? We’re always up for trying new things!

 -Anne

1977 Cadillac Sedan Deville from The Hartford Guy on Flickr

When I was in high school, my dad was well aware of this fact. I think that’s why he’d bribe me with rides to school in his 1978 Cadillac DeVille (or “the boat” as we called it in the family). Even today I can still hear the “thunk” of the automatic door locks engaging as dad backed this giant, baby-blue, swank sedan out of the driveway.

That “thunk” nearly always triggered teenage-cheek-flush and upper-lip-sweat as I realized I was trapped in the car with dad. On the surface it was a luxury ride, but in reality I was merely being held for uninterrupted questioning.

My 15-year-old brain swirled with thoughts of outsmarting him:

“Crap, it’s just dad and me, no one else to distract him or run interference, he can talk about anything he wants. I can’t escape, I have to answer his questions. Maybe if I just look out the window and feign boredom, he won’t try to talk to me.”

But my sweaty, flushed flight response of my lizard brain knew better.

He always asked questions. So many questions. And I eventually had to answer.

Who could blame dad for wanting to know what was going on. The man had five daughters! Including three teenage girls at one time! Imagine the stress that caused (yes, I’ve heard ALL the dad-with-shotgun jokes). He had to figure out some way to get his daughters to talk. And trapping us in the car was his way.

To say he had a lot on his mind is a complete understatement. I still remember looking over from my front-seat-passenger position and watching him clench and un-clench his jaw. Bottled up stress plus no time to himself, much less time to spend with each of his daughters one-on-one, caused a teeth grinding habit that endured long after his kids left home.

Honestly that whole automotive Q&A wasn’t as bad as the teenager in me remembered. Those car rides enabled dad and me to catch up. In the car, we talked. Free from stressful job distractions or interruptions from one of my four sisters or my mom, dad/daughter car time became rare father-daughter time.

Those sometimes stressful car rides carried a silver lining: The locked doors, too-cold AC and hum of the tires meant I had his full attention as much as he had mine. I still get warm fuzzies remembering that time spent riding solo in the car with dad. Because even with the lip-sweat and fear, I knew, even then, that time with him was precious.

Parents Agree about the Importance of Connecting with Kids

This article,  10 Ideas for Connecting with Your Kids, is six years old now, but the lessons are still valid. Yes! It’s important to make time with your kids, read to them and play with them. And make sure you check out number 7: Talk to Them in the Car. Though for the purposes of this blog you should read that as: Talk to Them on a Bike Ride.

And the bike ride conversation works all the better because it’s easy to focus. No devices, no distractions. From the Happiness Project, an article about unplugging: Find a Way to Unplug from Technology, or, How to Escape the Cubicle in Your Pocket.

So go ahead and do the amended number 7, and leave your phone at home too. I would add one small note to this piece, take your kid for a walk/bike ride and leave your phone at home.

Because we have so many distractions today, parents must insist on some sort of balance with regards to family simplicity.

Looking for distraction-free time with my kids

Image courtesy of INDelight Photography on Flickr

There’s one glaring difference between childhood of the 1970′s, 1980′s and even the early 1990′s vs today: Technology.

Back in the pre-internet, pre-mobile device era parents didn’t have to compete with the extra mobile appendages. Kids, parents, we all seem to have them.

I often remind my kids about my device-free childhood (when I was young, our phones had cords! And if you talked on them too long you’d get all tangled up!). Good or bad, their world is light years away from the one in which I was raised. The kids laugh when Tim and I tell them that we graduated from college pre-internet and pre-cellphone! How did we possibly learn anything? You mean you only had books? Weird!

In the mid-eighties, my dad was one of the first parents with a “car phone” — basically a home-phone sized handset wired to a giant box in the trunk of the car. But he pretty much never used it. Aside from the occasional Willie Nelson on the 8-track, the car ride was all about focus.

Not true in 2013. Today, parents battle even more distractions than my dad faced. We can’t simply get kids in the car, lock the doors and drive off to guarantee parent/child conversation.  Parents hoping to use the “trap kids in the car” tactic now must compete with smartphones, in-car video monitors, hand-held game consoles, music players and soon, Google glasses.

I learned a lot from my dad about raising kids including the importance of talking with them. Since I have two kids, not five, one-on-one time with mine isn’t as scarce as it was for my dad. But I have to compete with devices. So I think we might be even. Non-rushed, distraction-free conversation with my kids is something cherished.

Now I look for opportunities to trap each of my kids alone.

On Bikes and on Foot, Time with Kids unplugged

Since my kids mostly ride bikes or walk places, my version of ‘trapping them in the car’ is usually dragging them on bike rides or walks. Our family rule: no devices allowed on these outings! (Tim sometimes gets busted for this)

When I crave alone time or connection with one of my kids, I  invite force one of them to join me on a walk or bike ride to the store.

The best part about one-on-one talks on bikes vs. cars (oh no, thunk, hot sweat!) is they aren’t actually trapped like they would be in a car. If my kids don’t like where a conversation is headed, they don’t have to fantasize about breaking the window and diving out at a stop light; They merely stomp on the pedals and take off.

And after so many hours in the saddle, these kids can sprint!

I’m happy to report that my kids, skinny little legs and all, can pump out some power! And they’ve also learned something from the many hours spent watching streaming Tour de France video footage with their dad, surprise attacks work best.

Catch mom off guard, and then take off. Get her to look at a cute puppy in a window or point out some pretty flowers and before she realizes what happened, you can totally ride away from her. When my kids get mad, or annoyed with my incessant questions, that’s precisely what they do. Sprint away and leave me in their dust.

And each time this happens, I think of my dad and our time in the car. He was lucky, I was trapped. My kids aren’t trapped. But every time my kids ride away from me, I don’t get mad, in fact I usually crack a smile. Way to go, kid. Use your freedom to your advantage!

Because even though both kids can get me with the surprise attack, I still have an advantage. My legs have endured years of endurance training. I always catch up. Smile. And start talking again.

They Learn from these Rides Too

So I guess there’s really a few reasons to ride/walk with kids:

• distraction-free time with kids
• one-on-one conversation
• and power
  

Maybe power isn’t the best term for it, but I don’t know what else to call it. With every pedal stroke, my kids learn something new. Even if they aren’t aware of these lessons now, experience riding bikes teaches them about freedom. And choices. And discipline. And Joy. On a bike or on foot, they have complete control over their decisions, actions and consequences. Power indeed.

And it’s clear those lessons are sinking in at our house. If you asked either one of my kids to give you one of my favorite parenting lesson/phrases, they would answer with an eye roll ” You aren’t a victim” (followed closely by “put your dirty dishes in the dishwasher”).

And they demonstrate their comprehension of not being a victim on these rides. When I watch from the bottom of a hill as my kid gets mad at my line of questioning and starts sprinting, often reaching the top of the hill long before I’m even out of the saddle, I know at least some of those lessons are sinking in. No, I’m not a victim, mom, you’re bugging me and I just totally crushed you on that hill!

Regardless of little hiccups along the way, I still love these rides. And I think my kids do too.

Only time will tell if they feel the same way about rides with me as I feel about car rides with my dad. We’ll have to wait another thirty years for that story to unfold.

Five ways to get kids to take a walk/ride with you

So what’s the secret to getting kids to unplug and go for a ride or walk with you?

1) Do I have to? That part is easy, instead of asking if they want to go, just insist. Yes, you do have to come with me. Put down the book, walk away from the video game, leave your phone on the charger, get your coat and meet me at the front door. 

2) What’s in it for me, mom? Even though I rarely have to force them to come along on a ride or walk, I’m not above coercion. And even though Daniel Pink says carrots and sticks don’t work, sometimes they do. All I have to do is tell the kids it’s “Yes Day” (which means you ask for something at the store and mom will probably say “Yes”) and they’ll usually agree to come along. If you come you can choose tonight’s dessert. Or you can pick something for your lunch tomorrow.

3) Timing is everything. Parents can usually tell if their kid is in the right mood to go along on a ride or a walk. Forcing them to go when they are having a bad day does no good at all. Pick a day when they are already willing to talk and are generally happy (this is sometimes tricky with teens and pre-teens because you could be waiting for months). Even so, parents learn to read our kids moods pretty quickly.

4) Make it Fun Who wants to ride or walk with naggy-downer mom. Leave your bad mojo at home and take the walk or ride as an opportunity to start over. Joke, have fun and laugh. But don’t laugh too loud, people might hear you and that’s embarrassing!

5) Shut your mouth and listen. Remember why you wanted to go on a ride/walk with your kid? You wanted to catch up and hear what’s going on in their life. So let them talk. Listen to all of their stories. Even if they go on and on about black holes or rare fossils or some other subject you know nothing about. Listen to what your kid has to say and you’ll probably learn something new.

6) Tell us your tips in the comments. Ok, that’s not really one of the tips, but we would appreciate if you’d share your experiences. Do you trap your kids on bikes? What tactics do you use to get kids to talk?

As always, we’d love to hear your thoughts.

- Anne

Which is better? To schedule or not to schedule? And if you schedule, how do you transport kids to all of their various activities? By car? Or by bike?

I sometimes take this issue up a notch and start to worry about over-scheduled kids. What about them? Do they really enjoy having that much going on? Don’t they just want to hang out at home on occasion?

If you were blissfully unaware of this problem, don’t fret, you can find books and articles on the subject. You too can read about how to avoid over-scheduling your kids. Then you can sit down and watch a documentary and learn about the perils you will certainly face if you don’t get this problem resolved now. After you have yourself in a tizzy about your kids future, you can go back to news and articles regarding childhood obesity. The grim stats will certainly depress you: 18 percent of kids are obese in the United States. “Childhood obesity has more than doubled in children and tripled in adolescents in the past 30 years”

Feeling crazy, confused and on-edge yet? I know I am.

What’s a parent to do? To schedule or not? To relax or worry?

This quote form The Child Trap, by Joan Acocella, a 2008 New Yorker essay on overparenting may not apply to all kids, but it does make me think: 

……children typically face not just a heavy academic schedule but also a strenuous program of extracurricular activities—tennis lessons, Mandarin classes, ballet. After-school activities are thought to impress college admissions officers. At the same time, they keep kids off the street. (In the words of one book, “You can’t smoke pot or lose your virginity at lacrosse practice.”)

Oh and if you’re not done reading, I have another book to recommend, Madeline Levine’s book, The Price of Privilege, How Parental Pressure and Material Advantage are creating a Generation of Disconnected and Unhappy Kids. I definitely want to avoid kid-unhappiness and disconnect, so I read it. Levine bases this book on her experience and work as a psychologist in Marin County, CA. Because she lives in an affluent area, many examples just don’t apply to my life. The pressures brought by private schools, tutors, private club sports? I don’t have these problems, but I can still relate to the message that kids feel pressured by their parents to achieve and they can’t always handle it.

To Schedule or Not to Schedule?

Wait, I’m already confused? Am I supposed to sign my kid up for a bunch of sports teams so they don’t become obese, or not schedule anything so they don’t get stressed out? How do I find the right balance? How do I choose an activity that’s right for my kid and allows a relaxed family environment?

Balance and Biking, ahhhhh

It’s all about balance.

In our family, we choose the relaxed approach for just about everything in our life. From work to travel to how we spend our free time, we’ve deliberately removed ourselves from the proverbial treadmill. We choose to keep our life in a relaxed and balanced state. And that means saying ‘No’ sometimes. We learned when the kids were very young, that too much stimulation is bad and our kids need a lot of down time. They crave time to relax and read and create and just chill. We’ve built exercise into our daily routines by choosing to walk and bike for transportation. Even so, our kids want to play sports and do stuff with friends. We don’t shun all activities.

Even for us, the bike family, daily exercise is something we  have to plan. We only live five minutes, and five blocks from school. If our kids are supposed to get an hour of exercise a day, we have to come up with something in addition to the daily walk or ride. And as I’ve said before, our kids like to read just as much as we do, (competitive reading club, anyone?) so sometimes force them to go outside. Sports teams, with scheduled practices solve the exercise issue for us. (More on this later).

There’s a Class for That

Before we talk about choosing activities and how to get our kid to practice, I wanted to mention just how early some parents start signing their kids up for activities and start driving them everywhere. Here’s a sample of some class offerings available in Seattle.  Let’s skip the more pedestrian classes  like music and art, or sports.  Snore, how boring.

How about something new?

• If you think your kid might enjoy the circus arts, you can enroll him in circus classes
  
• Or, if gardening is your thing, how about a Seattle Tilth class that teaches your one or two-year old about gardening
  
•  If you want to get your kid into soccer, you can enroll them in little kickers as early as 18 months 
• Or, if your kid is a budding chef, there’s always cooking class.

Sign me up! Sounds like fun, get in the car kids, it’s time to go!

Don’t get me wrong, classes and activities aren’t all bad. Some of them are super fun. I know parents have varied reasons for signing young kids up for classes. Maybe they just need an hour break and want someone else to entertain their kid? Or a friend is taking the class and it’s more of a social thing, kids play, moms or dads chat, wins all around. If you’re in if for childcare or entertainment, great. No judgement here.

But it is easy to see how classes, starting at an early age, rope families into a class cycle. Before anyone realizes how it happened, kids are hooked and parents feel trapped in the car. We start to believe classes are necessary and that driving kids everywhere is a parental requirement.

Quiet the neurotic voices, your kids will be fine

Jokes aside, I do worry when parents use activities, sports and college in the same sentence.

The word college gets parents in a tizzy. The worry, the cost, the planning required. Yikes. I’m a little skeptical that many of these activities will influence my kids’ future college prospects. But don’t get me wrong, I’m not immune to dark thoughts about the future. Sometimes little voices in my head tell me I need to get my kids into organized sports and activities or their future is screwed. And those pesky voices are loud:

” what about soccer? I need to get him into classes now or his skills will not properly develop. If I don’t start soccer classes when my kid is 2, 3, 4, how will he make select when he’s 8? And if he doesn’t play select, there’s no way he’ll make the high school team. And what about college? He surely won’t get a college scholarship.  Crap, he might not even get into college. Or get a job. He’ll be living with me when he’s 40. I have to sign him up, I want to give him a leg up. Ack!

I exaggerate (a little). I’m not that neurotic. But I did fall into the activity trap when my kids were young. I willingly gave  many hundreds of dollars to Arena sports (I won’t divulge how many hundreds they received or Tim will be pissed!). This all started when our daughter was 18 months old and I thought toddler soccer was so darn cute. The littles running around, the parachute, the songs. Adorable. Unfortunately soccer classes continued for a few years after it stopped being cute and got more and more expensive for not much benefit.

Why did I think that was a good idea? I play soccer, why didn’t I just take the kids to the park more often to kick the ball around? They’d get more skill development out of that.

Why? Because all the other parents were doing it. So naturally I thought I should too. Parents talk about their kids and various activities all the time. If your kids don’t do anything, you start to feel like a slacker. Then the little voices begin jabbering away in your head…I’m holding my kid back, they’re going to fall behind, they have to start (insert sport) now or soon it will be too late, and all the other kids will be so far ahead, my kid will never catch up.

Even though some of that is true, I don’t buy into all of it. This is just a classic case of peer pressure, right?

Choices, Choices, Choices: How to Avoid being a slave to your car

So maybe you’re not into circus classes, and maybe you resisted all of the baby classes. But by the time they get to elementary school, your kid will most likely want to do something. How do you choose what activity to start?

Let your kid decide what they want to do. (and if they don’t pick anything I’m not above forcing them to try something). If I didn’t make my son get outside, he would gladly sit around and read, draw and play games on the computer every single day. We definitely force him to do things sometimes. At least when you’re forcing them, you can can pick the location and make sure you avoid lots of driving!

Let’s go back to the  NPR health story, The main message of the story surrounds childhood obesity and the different approaches parents employ to help their kids exercise. 

In the interview, we heard about the car way and the bike way.  

One mom, Yvonne Condes, of LA, drives both her kids to various practices, sometimes sitting in traffic for 25 minutes to get her kids to baseball and basketball practice. Yvonne Condes is definitely a slave to her car. After all that driving, she has to catch up on work in the evenings, sometimes until 11:00/12:00 at night. But she thinks it’s worth it, in her words, It’s all for the kids.

Martina, on the other hand, builds exercise into her daily life. Exercise happens every day, doing things like getting groceries or walking to school. If her kid does an activity, she deliberately chooses close-to-home activities. Hmm, sounds familiar.  Her kid bikes/walks every day, and she doesn’t have to worry about whether or not that’s enough exercise. Daily exercise is just part of daily life. And as Martina notes, lifestyle is all on purpose, she’s designed her entire life from job to home to school around the bikability and walkability of all life’s necessary services (food, clothing, fun). Why would kid activities be any different?

The bonus of this whole-life approach to exercise, using bikes for transportation and walking, it allows the entire family to exercise in the process of going about our daily business.   

How do you find Activities that are close to home? 

That all sounds great and everything. But what do I do if I find the very best piano teacher in all of Seattle and she teaches on Beacon Hill and I live in North Seattle? Do I choose her? Or find a lesser teacher close to home that allows me to bike to lessons? Will my child get into Julliard if he goes to the piano teacher in our neighborhood? (shut up silly neurotic voices, the kid will be fine)

Consider the Following When Making Kid Activity Decisions:

• Ask other parents who they recommend. Word-of-mouth is really the best way to find a teacher, class or team sport that is good.
• Community Centers, Local Parks Departments for the win: If you live in an urban, suburban area or town with community centers, or local parks department, you’re likely to find activities close to home. You just have to look. 
• Can I bike or walk there? When you’re a biking/walking parent, your very first question should be, “Can I bike there? Do you know of a teacher/class that is biking distance from here? 
• Ignore the other parents. Who cares if your kid’s friend, Johnny, found an amazing karate studio in West Seattle and he wants your kid to join him. These opportunities will come up, and you have to stand your ground and insist that all activities are close to home. Your kid will understand and you’ll be relieved, promise.
• Is this really necessary? When choosing classes for very young kids, think long and hard before jumping in. Are you just looking to get out of the house? Is the class just social time? If so, go for it. Or do you really think the “expert” is better at teaching your kid than you. When my daughter asked to take a cooking class with her friend, I told her to get out a cookbook and use any ingredients/supplies she wanted and cook something. Cooking class is not important to me, because I like to cook. I’d rather teach her myself. Maybe the choice would be different for you,
• Your choice may not be “the best ever” Yes, the dance studio across town might be “the best in town”, but can’t you just try your local community center first? If your kid ends up being Joffrey worthy, you can always try a better studio when they’re older and after they have a few classes under their belt. I guarantee, when kids are two and three and four and five, splitting hairs about the quality of instruction really doesn’t matter much.

For all the parents out there, have you fallen into the kid activity trap? Have any funny stories about classes your kids have taken? How do you deal with bikes and kids and activities?

 - Anne

I love this video from Playing Out! (Thanks to Sarah Goodyear for sharing it along with her insightful post).

Take away all of parked cars and the parents milling about, and it could be a scene from my childhood.  Just a regular day in the neighborhood: packs of kids on bikes and skates, games of kick the can, or any other game you can imagine, and kids young and old playing together.

If I could, I’d make one tiny edit, I’d love to take a giant eraser and rub out all of the parked cars (and the parents). Wouldn’t it be better to see kids squealing and laughing while they scoot, pedal, jump rope and create chalk masterpieces in a street completely free of cars?

I guess the parked cars and the parents illustrate just how far we’ve fallen in thirty years.

More tips on how to get something like this going at Playing Out:

Playing Out is a not-for-profit information and advice resource for street play. We aim to increase children’s safe access to informal play in residential streets through: Directly supporting resident-led street play sessions; Running workshops for parents and residents; Coordinating a network of ‘street organisers’; Providing free resources and advice; Training play/community professionals; Communicating the benefits of street play; Working with policy-makers to enable street play.

Do you see scenes like this where you live? Do kids in your neighborhood play outside without parents?

 - Anne

Did you make any resolutions? Sticking to them? This is about the time of year that most resolutions fizzle out. I don’t know about you, but I’m with the 30 percent of people who break their resolutions by the end of January.

Two of mine are totally busted and the third is merely hanging on by threads:

1. Learn and practice Spanish for 30 minutes every day. Oops, it’s been weeks since I logged on to my Livemocha account
2. Do the Primal Workout every day. Yeah, I ran like Grok once, and did a few wall squats. But daily workouts? Busted!
3. Write every day. I’ve been better about that, but I can’t say I do it every single day.

There’s a reason habits and resolutions are such a hot topic every year: we really, really, really want to change, but our pesky bad behaviors are difficult to break, and new routines are hard to stick to!

I should have made a book-related resolution and maybe I’d have a better track record to show for the new year. When it’s cold and dark and wet outside, reading holds more appeal than sprinting or squatting or push ups or most anything for that matter. Curling up with a soft blankie and a big stack of books? My way to endure the winter months.

Since the New Year, I’ve read Daniel Pink’s Drive, Charles Duhigg’s The Power of Habit, and Mark’s Daily Apple Primal Workout post (I even sat on the couch and watched some of his YouTube videos to learn how to do the workouts. Bonus: watching someone primal fit running on the beach is H-O-T). I also just finished Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird. (Great book about improving writing skills and getting into a writing habit).

After a month of reading, I now understand why my friend, Carrie wanted to start a competitive reading club starting in high school and continuing on into adulthood. Think adult-league soccer, but with books and wine. I’m on a tear: If a reading competition was held this month, surely I’d be in the running for some kind of medal.

But this whole habit thing isn’t meant to be a total downer. Sometimes they take, and sometimes they don’t. And when they don’t you just have to try again. But for now I’m going to put Spanish and the hot-beach-running thing on hold for a minute and celebrate an ongoing success . Six years ago I broke my bad car habit!

The Bike Trip to the Store That Changed Everything

How did I break that driving habit? It’s hard to remember all the details, but I do remember a pivotal moment/day six years ago when my biking habit began. Some memories of that day are crystal clear, others are a bit fuzzy: the sun was definitely shining, it was Spring of 2007, Tim was in his last quarter of graduate school and not home much, but he was home that day.

This entire scene played out during the kids’ nap time, probably on a weekend.  With two young kids at home 80% of the time, and a husband in graduate school and working, I was in full survival mode. I absolutely loathed grocery shopping with the kids: some of those bad-grocery-shopping-memories are still painful. The shame, the embarrassment. Like the time the kids were so rotten, I abandoned a full cart of food in the store and walked out, dragging both kids behind me. “Don’t mess with me kids, I meant it when I said we were leaving if you did that again”. They’d often gang up on me, the two of them passing random junk food from the shelves to the cart while my back was turned, hoping I wouldn’t notice until home. Then they’d run away squealing like piglets, weaving through the crowd of startled shoppers.

Needless to say, I seized all opportunities to avoid dragging both little kids to the grocery store. When Tim was home, I went shopping by myself!

On this particular weekend day, I put the kids down for a nap (i.e. put them in their rooms and told them to be quiet, entertain themselves and not come out for an hour), grabbed my wallet and car keys, yelled to Tim that I’d be back in a 1/2 hour and jogged to the car parked in the driveway.

Tim caught up to me as I was clicking the car’s remote:

“If you’re just going to get a couple of things, why don’t you take your bike?”

I had no response (in words). Though in my head was growing annoyance and a little voice muttering curse words. I was so close, why did you have to follow me?  I don’t want to ride my bike, I just want to go. Why don’t you ride your bike?

I thought about ignoring Tim and taking the car anyway. But instead, mostly to get him off my back, I decided to try biking and prove to him that I could do it.

 I trudged to the basement, huffing and sighing along the way, hefted my dusty road bike off it’s basement hook, found the equally dusty pump and added air to the tires, found my Sidi’s and checked the toes for spiders before putting them on (because road bike = funny shoes and clipless pedals and dark basement = spiders), grabbed my helmet, a backpack and a lock and schlepped the bike up the basement stairs.

Phew! What a pain in the ass. It took so long to get ready that had I been driving I would have been home by now. Whatever. I hopped on the bike anyway and took off down the road.

And half-block from the house, my frown turned into a grin. Hey, this isn’t bad. It’s even kind of fun.

Maybe that’s why this particular day is so clear, I can still remember the wind on my face and the freedom I felt from that ride to the store. Am I 12-years-old again? This is so easy. Look! I can park right in front of the store!  And fun too! Wait, shopping can be fun? Man, why didn’t anyone tell me, I’ve been missing out.

The Xtracycles followed a few months later. Flat pedals made special shoes unnecessary, the built-in grocery-carrying bags freed me from the backpack, and lots of compartments holding locks and pumps and patch kits meant no scrambling every time I wanted to ride. Since my bike was always ready to go, eventually, after some practice, quick trips to the store on bikes became easy and actually,  you know, Quick. Within a few months, riding bikes was habit and the car languished in the driveway unused for days at a time.

The key motivator for me was desire. I really wanted to ride. But I’d been driving for so long that breaking those automatic-driving habits took time. And a little push.

Motivation

In the past few weeks, we’ve been encouraged by the dialogue that followed  the post, Why we ride: Thoughts on Motivation. Many of you shared ideas about what motivates you to ride. From joy to “wheeeeeeee” to beating the bus home, you shared the multiple reasons so many of you ride. If you haven’t read the comments from that post, I’d encourage you to take a glance. I know I found myself smiling and nodding along as I read.

The Meat of the Post: Breaking Old Habits and Starting New Ones

So how do you take motivation, and turn it into a habit? Take some advice from Charles Duhigg’s book and start small. If you want to, you can develop new habits surrounding transportation choices.

Driving short distances is a habit.  For many of us it’s automatic: we don’t have to think about how to fire up a car, back it out of a driveway and take off. We just do it. In her interview with Charles Duhigg about his book, The Power of Habit, Terry Gross talks about the habit of driving and the scary feeling of arriving at a destination and realizing you have no recollection of the drive. Wait, I’m here already?, I don’t even remember driving here.  How many of you have done that? We grab the keys and our basal ganglia takes over. Our brain knows how to drive, we know our routes, what to expect along the way, how long it will take to get there, how to park the car. It’s all automatic.

The power of habit is not just a pop-culture phenomenon. Scientific studies have found the same results. This article from Science Magazine, Changing Human Behavior to Prevent Disease: The Importance of Targeting Automatic Processes, (this link is to the abstract, if you want to read the full text, ask your local reference librarian to dig you up a copy) explores the discovery that automatic processes are habitual:

…..habits, which are actions that occur in response to stimuli without necessarily bringing to mind the goal of that action. Habits are contrasted with goal-oriented behavior and form one class of automatic behavior. They become established by repetition and routine, their emergence being marked by measurable changes in brain circuits….

Interesting. Habits form based on repetition and routine. And forming habits changes our brain? Cool.

If we want to change habits, we must change routines. And keep at it. Instead of taking the elevator every day, force yourself to take the stairs one day. And then the next. Take the stairs every day. Pretty soon, you won’t even think about taking the elevator, you’ll become the chick who takes the stairs. Or start walking to school with your kids. Walk every day. Keep walking. Pretty soon, you’re the family that walks. You don’t even think about driving to school anymore. You are the walkers.

So, OK, we all know bad habits are breakable and new habits are startable. If we want to, we can change. People quit smoking and drinking and gambling and eating junk food and watching bad reality TV all the time. Well, maybe not reality TV.

In his book, Charles Duhigg recounts the steps he took to break his afternoon cookie habit. His wife told him he was getting fat. Who wants their spouse to think they’re fat? He traced his weight gain to the cookie he bought in the cafeteria at work every day at 3:30. He had to train himself to stop buying cookies every day (by first recognizing he had a cookie habit hen by forming a new 3:30 routine/habit to replace the cookie routine).  And he did this over and over and over again, until the new non-cookie-routine was his habit. Goodbye cookie, hello sexy Charles!

Clear enough? The only way to train yourself is to do it. And keep doing it until your brain is rewired and the new way becomes automatic.

So You Want to a Start Biking & Walking Habit?  A Few Tips:

When you’re starting out walking or riding bikes there are so  many unknowns:

• What do I wear?
• How long will it take to get there?
• How do I lock my bike to a rack?
• What do I do if I get a flat?

And then when you involve kids, the unknowns grow exponentially:

• Will my kids whine?
• What do I do if they don’t want to (walk, ride)?
• What if they walk/ride so slow it makes me late?
• What if they stop in the middle of the road and refuse to go any further?  (true story….this has happened to me a number of times. Meanwhile the other child keeps going)

If you know your kid is going to whine about walking up some hills in the rain, buy an umbrella and a good rain coat and prepare a canned response you’ll give when he/she complains. Such as, “a little rain doesn’t hurt us, we have rain coats and boots.” Or, “hills will make us strong, and fast lets start timing our walks and see if we can improve the time it takes to walk to school.” 

The key is not giving in. Kids will ask/demand that you drive them to school. And they will ask over and over and over again. If you want to break the driving habit, you must resist these requests, and insist on walking. After seven years of walking to school, my kids finally stopped asking if we could drive, because they know the answer will be No.

Bike Gear

To start a biking habit, you need some gear if you don’t already have it. We touched on some of this in our post about groceries:

• Get a working bike that’s mechanically sound (with fenders, lights, a rack and some kind of bag/system to hold your “stuff”
• a helmet
• a lock
• and clothing that will keep you comfortable for each season (nothing special, just rain gear, gloves in winter)

The key to making biking a habit is to ride. Just start riding and ride some more. Ride your regular route to the store or to work when you’re not rushed. When you arrive, practice locking up your bike. Practice, practice, practice. And keep practicing. Since you’re not trying to be a biking outlier, it won’t be necessary to practice for 10,000 hours before you feel comfortable, but give it a good month before you think about quitting.

Soon biking/walking will be automatic, it will be difficult to remember why you thought any of it was a big deal. These days, I smile when I think about past frustrations with locking my bike. When I started riding, I really had no idea how to use a U Lock; locking to a rack took forever. Once, I even missed my whole bike, securely locking the lock to rack and nothing else.

Thankfully that’s all a distant memory and locking along with riding is pretty much automatic for me. Sometimes I even arrive and forget how I got there. Scary in a car and scary on a bike!

If you have thoughts about starting a walking or biking habit, please share them in the comments!

 - Anne

The story has legs and is making the rounds on Twitter,  Facebook, blogs, and news outlets. Everywhere we click (at least in our admittedly bike- & walk-centric world), we see a link to the study.

You’ve seen it, haven’t you?

Like many of you, we get excited about these articles and want to pass the on to our network of friends.

Click! Like! Share! +1!

The resulting flurry of retweets and likes is a good thing, isn’t it? “Hey look here’s a great story. Let’s share it with our friends!” We click and make a difference. And then …. nothing.

For all their worth so many of these stories fade quickly, replaced with the next alt-transpo buzz (like … “e-bikes are coming and they are going to change everything!”).

Lately this pattern of enthusiasm then vacuum has us questioning the value of our easy methods of what we call click advocacy. We share a story and we feel better. But does just spreading the word spur change? After reading all these articles, do people actually become inspired to take action? Or do the stories just bounce around among the already bike-and walk-aware, only to scroll off the page like yesterday’s news?

Is clicking ‘Like’ actually doing something?

We often debate the importance of social media in our house. Tim was an early-adopter. He joined both Twitter and Facebook in graduate school and still grants more credit to the power of network effects than Anne. She was slower to join the social media party, and although she thinks she (mostly) likes it, she still wonders what good it really does.

We certainly appreciate the equalizing power of social media. Anyone with an Internet connection can publish their (sometimes nutty, sometimes world shaping) information and ideas. Having a voice loud enough to spur change no longer requires access to a printing press, newspaper, or TV station. Powerful ideas can move from the minds of a few to voices of the masses in a matter of days. Social media can be amazing.

But in terms of local advocacy and action, we wonder if this ease of sharing has sometimes driven more complacency than change.

When you ‘like‘ something on Facebook or share it on Twitter, you’re letting others know you care about a cause. Awesome. But is sharing enough? Clicking ‘like’ or tweeting or even blogging for that matter doesn’t take that much effort. Do these clicks spark real-life action? Do people look at you and think, “Hey, they’re doing something. Maybe I should too.”?

Or do we simply generate noise?

That article about improving kids concentration via walking and biking to school was definitely worth liking and sharing. Our teachers and school administrators are over burdened. We‘d think they’d want to know about another way to improve student performance AND would then want to encourage families to get to school in an active manner: feet, bikes, scooters. It’s a pretty compelling result

The survey looked at nearly 20,000 Danish kids between the ages of 5 and 19. It found that kids who cycled or walked to school, rather than traveling by car or public transportation, performed measurably better on tasks demanding concentration, such as solving puzzles, and that the effects lasted for up to four hours after they got to school.

-from The Link Between Kids Who Walk or Bike to School and Concentration

Walking and biking to school improves concentration? And the effects last up to four hours? Holy crap, that’s better than Ritalin. And it’s free (and, it’s not a d-r-u-g)!

Go ahead and share, but get involved too!

So fine, share all you want. Get people thinking about important topics. But when you come across a story that really matters to you—like this one does to us—take it a step further and DO SOMETHING with your new information.

As you are clicking “like” just ask yourself: “is this something really important to me?” And, “is the information in this post (article, tweet, whatever) a potential game-changer?” If the answer to both is yes, maybe it’s time to DO something.

Let’s keep going with the study article. Is the inflection point of kids, education and biking & walking to school something you care about or just like? And is the news about improved academic performance for walkers and bikers a big deal? (hint: Hell Yes!)

By now you should know we care about walking and biking to school. For years, we’ve been those kookie folks trying to get our neighbors and school community on board.

With mixed success.

But stories like this give us new energy. Now that we can tie what many considered oddball behavior (“You make your kid walk to school? How interesting.“) to actual data about improved academic performance, we have an opportunity to take our passion beyond simple click advocacy.

Walk and bike advocacy: Give it a try

Here are a few ways we think we can help this story move from buzz to actual action. We’ve already tried some and have more in the works. If this story is something you care about, maybe you too can give them a try:

• Talk to your school principal or other administrator. They have influence among parents and teachers at the school. This works even if you don’t have kids. Email the principal at your local elementary and talk about neighborhood traffic. You are a voter and your opinion does matter. 
• Contact your elected officials. Your school board and/or write your city council and legislative representatives want to hear from you.
• Join a Safe Routes to School action network.

Then move beyond the click with personal action!

• Talk to your neighbors and encourage them to walk to school and for neighborhood errands. Tell them about the study!
• Organize a walking school bus, or get together with other like-minded parents and start a walk and bike to school program at school.
• Visit a PTA meeting. Again, share you opinions as a neighbor or school parent.

These are just a few ideas, but hopefully they’ll get things started. So go ahead and click like, but when it really matters follow that click by doing something!

Do you have any stories about turning social media buzz into action? We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments!

- Anne and Tim

A little housekeeping first: when used in the same sentence as bikes, commute has many definitions. Most people associate commute with work. But work isn’t the only destination for a commute. What about school? or play, activities, errands, appointments, or even to run kids here and there? Maddie, for example, is a bike commuter in our eyes. And for the purpose of this article, if you use a bike to “get around” (say, any use not strictly for sport),  then you are a bike commuter too. This article mostly refers to “bikes.” But if your needs are better met by mentally substituting “walk” or “scoot” or “multi-modal” instead of “bike” as you read this post, you have our blessing.

This discussion is not new, our bike tribe has been talking about this topic for years. Back in 2008, Kent Peterson did some posts: why do you bike commute? / Why don’t you bike commute?“

You’ve heard of first world problems, right? Most people who live in the world’s wealthiest nations have abundant choices. One of those is the option to choose our mode of transportation. To get from point A to B, we can drive or walk or take the bus or use a bike, a scooter or a unicycle, or even hire a town car. Us first-worlders are blessed (cursed?) with commute options.

So why choose bikes?

In our non-scientific sample of riders we know, when asked why people bike commute (or want to bike commute), many respond with one of the following:

• saving gas/money
• exercise/losing weight
• global warming
• peak oil

Yes, those are great and valid and noble goals. But what’s the real reason? The driver. The motivator? 

Why do long-term, regular bike commuters leave their cars (in the driveway, in the parking garage or on the dealers lot) and choose a bike instead? Keep pressing folks for reasons and things start getting interesting.

Pure bliss

Tim talks a lot about bikes providing freedom. He thinks freedom encapsulates some of those “typical” ideas (freedom from the expense of a car, freedom from traffic, freedom of the tyranny of the gym, freedom that comes from the knowledge that you’re not contributing, as much, to environmental Armageddon). For others, bike riding contains a spiritual element. Maybe a connection with the planet. Zen. Self-reliance.

For me, it remains joy.

Last month I wrote about the joy of getting groceries by bike. For me, it’s not just about money, or fat, or saving the planet, or … . it’s about personal happiness and finding joy in everyday tasks.

Bob H agreed but he thought saving money was a big motivator:

BobH | January 2, 2013 at 9:44 am | Reply | Edit

Great post!

I do take issue with the idea that saving money is not a great reason to ride. There is a great blog that shows that biking vs driving saves a family somewhere in the ballpark of $100,000 in 10 years. That sounds like a pretty damn good reason to ride to me.

Sure bikes save money. But I think people get hung up on this.

I’ve read cost-calculators on bike commuting web sites. But let’s face it, taking the bus is cheap too. And walking is even cheaper. People still drive. So will saving money drive you to hop on the bike each and every day through rain, fog, sleet and snow or heat and humidity in the summer?

Is money alone a good motivator?

Face it. Cars are cheap. At  fifty-five cents a mile, I can justify a quick trip to the store or to run my kid to school or a friend’s house, or to the gym or (insert destination). Until gas reaches $20 Per Gallon, most people will rationalize their car driving along with all of their other oil-driven consumption habits.

For many of us choice-laden first-worlders, I don’t think riding bikes (or not) is an economic decision at all.

In the United States, gas and cars and roads are subsidized. Which makes them relatively inexpensive for the value provided. Besides, we’re all comparatively rich. We can more than afford to drive cars on this infrastructure we’ve designed for the cheap automobile. Even as gas prices increase a tiny bit, we’re still more busy than ever. We all know time is money and because cars are faster than bikes, it’s actually cheaper to drive!

If bike vs drive is purely an economic decision, we’d be foolish to bike instead of drive.

I have read the calculators that multiply the bike vs. car savings over time. The internet is rich with stories of people gaining financial freedom by giving up stuff. From early-retirement “badass experts“, to  get rich slowly, to getting your life back, they talk about cutting back on “stuff” as a path to financial freedom. Some preach about “getting rich” by saving a little on day to day items, making your own coffee and lunch instead of buying lattes and meals at restaurants among other things. Riding bikes is one of the ways, each 55 cent trip adds up, right? The fact is, the  latte method of saving money won’t make you rich. Helaine Olen, author of ”Pound Foolish” discusses this trend in her interview by the Economist. She says many of these American, self-proclaimed financial “gurus”, have limited expertise/training in the field of economics. Yet they make money giving financial advice!

But I digress….

From where I sit, saving money (or gas or losing weight) isn’t enough of a motivator for most people.

When mom or dad buckles their kid in the car to go to school, are they thinking about how much that trip will cost them? Do they weigh the amount of money they could save by leaving their car at home? 

The Israeli Daycare Experiment

I loved this story about the monetization of  time and how it backfired on an Israeli daycare. I first read about this in Freakonomics in 2005 and again in Daniel Pink’s Drive. An Israeli daycare tried to charge parents for being late when picking their kids up from daycare. But the plan totally backfired. When the daycare put a price on being late, lateness actually increased!

Because busy parents realized the price of being late was a bargain. Instead of having to worry about how your tardiness might impact your relationship with your child’s teacher, or how it made you look pathetic in the eyes of the other parents, it became a strict transaction. Pay a tiny bit more and reap some pretty large benefits. 

Same goes with driving.

In the same vein, these stats on the average distance of most car trips in the US make my eyes glaze over. I’ve read them hundreds of times, I’m sure you have too:

• 25 percent of all trips are made within a mile of the home
• 40 percent of all trips are within two miles of the home
• 50 percent of the working population commutes five miles or less to work
• more than 82 percent of trips five miles or less are made by personal motor vehicle.

No wonder citing stats doesn’t curb the average American’s driving habits. Paired with the knowledge of how cheap it is to drive, it’s finally sunk in. Driving makes financial sense for many people.

If I quantified every car trip and put a dollar amount on all of those less-than-a-mile-trips I make on a daily basis, I’d realize how cheap it really is to drive. You mean it’s only going to cost me fifty-five cents to drive my kid to school? And it’s raining? And we’re late? Totally worth it!

What if you put a happiness value on walking to school instead?

If I take ten minutes (or 20 minutes) to walk or bike with my kid to school, I have a chance to have some fun, and talk to my neighbors.

Grave for the dead mole we found on the way to school

I might slow down, engage with my kid and discuss the intellect of crows or gather dead moles and plan their proper burial. I might ponder whether or not dogs can sense whether humans like them or not. Hmmm, can they? Or we might run into a friend and spend ten minutes before school walking and discussing Minecraft.

My kid will also accomplish something (riding up a hill, or walking up a hill), and feel pride in getting there on his/her own power. (Yes, even a ten minute walk feels like an accomplishment to a four-foot-tall person). 

When you look at it this way, NOT walking or riding to school has a pretty stiff price. Self-esteem. Family time. Fitness. Community-building. Whoa. The cost of choosing driving just went way up beyond 55 cents/mile.

Or What about a Social Cost?

Let’s go back to that daycare example. Once those un-priced  social costs were out of the picture, being late became easy and cheap, and socially acceptable. (And also unsustainable for the daycare).

It turns out, the system we’re all familiar with (don’t be late because it’s not socially acceptable), as imperfect as it can be, works best in most cases.

A pure financial cost (or savings) isn’t always going to drive motivation in the intended direction.  Daniel Pink refers to this pure financial cost as carrots and sticks. External rewards (money) don’t work as long-term motivators. Even if they do work for a little while, they won’t last. As soon as the initial buzz of saving money has worn off, we’re back to our old habits.

What if we could add some of the unquantified, but very real social costs that keep daycare pickups on track, to the “do I drive or not” equation?

What if it was socially unacceptable to … [drive your kids 4 blocks to school], [fill the roads around our schools with dangerous cars and pollution], [not spend a few minutes walking and talking with your child]?

The equation becomes radically different.

Sure, for some parents the ability to buy time may win. A difficult work schedule may mean the driving-dropoff — even with social costs factored in — is the cheapest solution. At least initially.

But what if more people start walking and riding? And it becomes more commonplace to see sidewalks packed with kids every morning? And we all do it enough that it becomes a habit?

Maybe the idea of sending your kids, on foot or bike, with other kids no longer seems as dangerous and socially irresponsible as it once did? That opens the possibility for the equation to shift and the parent to consider the value in other ways of getting to school.

The first step is making a choice

Bottom line, people make choices that make them feel good (or at least less bad). The problem is sometimes we don’t choose, we just do. Habits are formed and maintained every day.

Considering the ease and ubiquity of our car-oriented society, driving is often a habit. Which means people need a powerful motivator to help them to buck the system and ride (walk/bus/scoot, etc) instead of getting into that cheap, warm, dry car (with tunes! and coffee!) every day.

We regular riders (and wannabe riders) have made these choices and are driven by these motivators– we may just not be able to articulate them to ourselves yet. Maybe we started with one: saving money, or getting in shape. and shifted to something deeper; freedom, joy, spirituality. For the commute curious, the “winning” motivator may not be known yet.

For me, wanting joy and happiness and simplicity is the reason I ride and walk. For Tim it’s freedom.

What about you?

Why do you ride? Is money your motivator? Or happiness? Or something else? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

- Anne