Car Free Days

World Carfree Day is Monday, September 22

Posted on September 20, 2008 by Anne | Leave a comment

Leave your car at home on Monday in honor of World Carfree Day. Tell your friends, family, neighbors, and co–workers to do the same.

World Carfree Day is an annual celebration of cities and public life, free from the noise, stress and pollution of cars. Each year on September 22, people around the world organize events of all sizes to showcase alternatives to the automobile.

Check out the World Carfree Day events page to find a gathering in your part of the world.

Seattle has an event in Ballard: Get your Undriver License in honor of World Carfree Day. Just pedal, walk or bus it over to the Ballard Neighborhood Service Center, NW 56th St and 22nd Ave NW on Monday, September 22, 2008 from 1-4pm to get your undriver license.

We got Undriver licenses last year at the Sustainable Ballard Festival – hopefully they aren’t expired yet.

Have a good weekend.

– Anne

Dexter Darkness brings Danger

Posted on September 17, 2008 by Tim K | 18 comments

Anne's Oma with generator hub is always ready for dark

I’m not sure exactly when it happened, but my evening commute has quickly slipped into darkness. My inherent laziness means I never took the lights off my Xtracycle but unfortunately it’s looking like few of the city’s bike commuters are on the same legacy lighting program. Continue reading →

18 Comments

Posted in alternative transportation, bikes, Commute, safety gear

Tagged bikes, dexter, lights, night, riding, seattle

Back to School (on Bikes)

Posted on September 9, 2008 by Anne | 5 comments

School started in Seattle last week. Hurray. Yippee. Yahoo. I’m not even going to try to contain my excitement as I now have two kids in school full time. After seven years of kids-all-the-time, it’s nice to have some time to myself to do whatever I want.

And I want to ride my bike. Alone. (I’d also ride with a friend if the opportunity presented itself as long as they promised not to whine or bicker or proclaim, “it’s not fair” if I pedaled a little faster than them.) Continue reading →

5 Comments

Posted in alternative transportation, bigger than here, bikes, kids, seattle, sustainability

Tagged bike-to-school, bikes, bikes as transportation, seattle

Labor Day Ride Update

Posted on September 2, 2008 by Anne | 3 comments

The Labor Day ride was a huge success. We didn’t get an official count but we’d guess the ride drew at least 50 bikes pedaling down Broadway, over the University Bridge and up University Ave to Cowan Park. All kinds of bikes were represented–road bikes, mountain bikes, kids on bmx bikes, Xtracycles, Bakfiets and trailers to name a few. It was great to see so many folks out riding on an early fall Seattle day.

More photos here

Traditionally the next ride is the day after Thanksgiving(or buy nothing day). Mark your calendars and we’ll see you out there.

– Anne and Tim

3 Comments

Posted in alternative transportation, bikes, seattle, xtracycle

Tagged bikes, Cargo bike ride, cycling, Labor Day Cargo Bike Ride

Labor Day Cargo Bike Ride

Posted on August 25, 2008 by Anne | 1 comment

The Labor Day Cargo Bike ride will take place Monday, September 1st, 2008 at noon (we put it on our calendar for 11:30 so we won’t be late!). Meet at 20/20 Cycle, 2020 East Union on Capitol Hill. The destination is Ravenna Park via Broadway and University Ave.

We can’t miss this one since it’s in our neck of the woods.

We hope to see you all there.

– Anne and Tim

1 Comment

Posted in bikes, cargo bikes, longbikes, seattle, xtracycle

Tagged Cargo bike ride, cargo bikes, Group Ride, Labor Day

Carfreedays Dot Com – We (finally) own our URL

Posted on August 21, 2008 by Tim K | 2 comments

Just a quick post to note that we’ve finally coughed up for http://carfreedays.com. Our one-year annivesary seemed like as good a time as any for an address change. Besides, we didn’t want his mayoral Largeness to grab it out from under us for his familiarly named Ciclovia program.

WordPress seems to be handling redirects quite well, but you may want to update your bookmarks, if you are the kind of person who worries about such things. Same goes for RSS—from what we’ve seen it’s working fine in places like Google Reader and Sage, but if you are having problems you might just want to add it again.

We’ve probably got some other changes up our sleeves—I’ve been meaning to update the template for about 10 months now—but we’re going to squeak out a bit more of this care-free/car-free summer before resuming our normal level of web-dorkness.

Enjoy the ride!

-Tim

2 Comments

Posted in admin

Tagged admin, carfreedays, cycling, summer

Has it been a year already? (our year of Car Free Days)

Posted on August 19, 2008 by Anne | 12 comments

Life and summer and perfect weather and kids going to bed late and too much work for Tim have gotten in the way of bike blogging these past few weeks. We figure it’s summer and the kids are out of school and we’re free and easy to go where we want, when we want and we’d much rather be outside riding than sitting in front of the computer prattling on about riding. A long winded explanation excuse for why we’ve been lame bloggers these past few weeks.

We have a lot of experiences stacked up to share with you–they will most likely trickle in this fall when the weather turns and we’re hunkered down inside. There you go, all the excuses we could muster for now. Continue reading →

12 Comments

Posted in alternative transportation, bigger than here, bikes, kids, sustainability, xtracycle

Tagged alternative transportation, bikes, xtracycle

Sailboats, Sea Planes and Cool Breezes: You get it all at the South Lake Union Park

Posted on August 4, 2008 by Anne | 5 comments

Tim and I highly recommend a visit to the new South Lake Union Park. Situated on the south tip of Lake Union, next to the Center for Wooden Boats, it’s a surprisingly serene locale to have a picnic and enjoy the hubub that Lake Union has to offer. While we lament the short-sighted Seattle voters each time we go there, it’s still a great spot even if it’s NOT as good as it could have been. Continue reading →

5 Comments

Posted in alternative transportation, bikes, extravehicular activities, seattle

Tagged bikes, carfreedates, dates, Family Cycling, kids, seattle, South Lake Union Park

Riding with Kids: The Recipe for a Happy Summer

Posted on July 30, 2008 by Anne | 4 comments

We’re having a great, virtually car-free summer. After a horrendous spring, with snow and cold rain way too far into June, the weather in Seattle has improved to a near perfect 70° and sunny on a daily basis.

Tim’s working his ass off for the the man this summer, but other than morning swim lessons, the kids and I have no set daily plans. From lunchtime on, we’re free to pursue classic summer activities: park visiting, swimming, gardening, reading in the hammock, beach combing, library visits, insect studying, berry picking, lake wading, and just about anything else that involves transport by bike. Continue reading →