Streak Ends at 22 on World Car Free Day

Sept. 23, 2007: I should have posted this when it happened, but gosh I felt soooo ashamed!

Anne and I had a great run going with the Xtracycles — We parked our cars for 22 days and let our bikes do the talking. Grocery stores. School pickups. Play dates. Parent dates. All of it. I even delivered a bike box to FedEx via longbike. It felt good …

And then we drove… on World Car Free Day of all days!

As World Car Free Day approached (Sept. 22), we looked around Seattle expecting to find lots of cool carfree events to commemorate the occasion. We were feeling pretty empowered by our non-driving and wanted to share the buzz. Instead we were skunked for west-side events (it turned out BikeWorks and the Bike Alliance put together a cool event at the last minute — though oddly they didn’t mention the World Car Free Day tie-in and we didn’t hear about it until the day after. Bummer.) We even thought about hosting a carfree BBQ or something (but we’re lazy so that never happened).

But, it just so happened that Star Crossed, the oh-so-hip, under-the-lights-cyclocross race was also happening on the 22nd. It was over at Marymoor in Redmond, but that’s doable, right?

Our plan was to ride the Xtracycles to Montlake, take Metro across the bridge, then ride to Redmond. The way home would be metro most of the way. This plan seemed sound, until we dug into the logistics. The way over to Redmond was fine, but going the other direction at 9 or 10 pm on the bus with two sleepy kids was was not going to cut it. The timing was tight if we nailed the schedule perfectly. And if we didn’t, or if the bus racks were full, we might have spent an hour or more just waiting at a cold bus stop. Not an option with a four and six year old at 10pm (two hours past normal bed time).

So, we drove. The decision was pretty easy and a good one.

The streak was broken but we had a great time. No biggie. We still haven’t bought gas in September and we drove for a bike-focused event. That’s got to count for something, right?

-Tim