About Car Free Days

We’re a family of four living in an in-city neighborhood in Seattle, WA. We ride bikes for transportation: if we’re going to the grocery store, to school, to soccer practice or to the library; we ride bikes to get there.

We began using bikes instead of cars when our kids were 3 and 5. Our Xtracycles allow us to easily transport anything we need on 2 wheels. As the kids have grown, we’ve transitioned from kids as cargo, to kids as independent pedalers, riding on their own.

If you want to follow our journey, grab a cup of coffee and start at the beginning.

We hope you enjoy our blog. And we encourage you to try riding around town, we guarantee you’ll have lots of fun!

(2007) Why Car Free days? Because we American’s drive too damn much. It’s got to stop. Peak Oil, global warming, bad traffic etc.. We as a family realize it isn’t practical for everyone to dump their cars completely (we haven’t and I don’t imagine we will any time soon), but we can drive less.

A lot less.

*Right now we drive around 8000 miles/year. That’s a family of four. But we think we can do better. One way we got to this point is to have “car free days.” We try to park the car and get around on bikes, feet, or just stay at home and work in the garden. Sorry kids, we aren’t driving today.

We recently returned from Europe (yes, I know the carbon emissions of that flight were horrible. I’ll stay home for a decade to make up for it). The bike lifestyle in the Netherlands is amazing. Cars, pedestrians, cyclists, trains, trams, and boats, all living in transportational bliss. It’s all pretty inspiring (especially when you factor in all the stylish fit, contented Dutch eyecandy).

Needless to say, the trip inspired us to get our xtracycles built (they’ve been in the box since April), start this blog (to keep us honest), and see what we can do to reduce our automotive footprint.

Stay tuned.

*As of February, 2011 that number has gone way, way down. We don’t know how many miles we drive a year because it happens so rarely.