Why I Drive

The time for gloating about the Biodieselmobile is past. Last week I put 100 miles on the thing in just under three days. Granted, some of those miles were because of two trips across the Lake (in horrific traffic, I might add) that I take infrequently but just happened to occur on the very same day! And my bus-riding son had a scheduling problem that required my (and the car's) attention. But it got me to thinking: what is it that makes me jump in the car, when we live in a walkable neighborhood with two great bus lines and one mediocre one within easy walking distance.

The answer is: time.

The bus doesn't go where I'm going when I need to get there. The bus takes too long. The bus has a bad connection with another bus that requires me to stand and wait. The return trip puts me back at the house later than I can reasonably get there. I get in the car because I want to GET THERE FASTER. I do not want to be inconvenienced.

Another part of the answer is: poor planning. As in "Ooops, I worked on this article for far too long and now I have to be across town in 10 minutes." Leap in the car, drive impatiently in bad traffic, heart pounding and stress level rising in direct proportion to how late I left the house to begin with.

When I was a suburban driver of a minivan (a bigger gas hog than I ever wanted to admit), I planned my errand days very carefully. I made a loop. I never back-tracked. I tried to do errands in a central place, found dry cleaner, grocery store, pharmacy and even coffee shop all where I could drive and park just once. No zig-zagging for me. I was proud of that.

Now I'm urban. Two grocery stores within walking distance. (Three, actually, but the third is kinda scuzzy and I don't like shopping there.) I have been known, recently, to send the kids to pick up bread, milk, salad items. They like it and (don't tell them) it's exercise.

It's the other stuff. Getting across town to pick up my orthotics. Going to the doctor (whose office is not really on a bus line, but it's close). Getting to the downtown library in time for my son's Japanese lesson. Going to the movies, church, choir, meetings, and so forth. It's just too dang convenient to jump in the car. And yet...

...when I was younger, and had no car (and no driver's license), I rode the bus all the time. I carried a book. Later on, I carried a tape player (today it would be an iPod) and listened to music. I lived slower.

Living slower - is that such a bad thing?

Change that bulb!

Here's something almost anybody can do. Change a lightbult - or two - or ten - from incandescent, which spends most of its energy as heat, to compact fluorescent, which spends most of its energy as light.

No, they don't flicker... or take five minutes to warm up... and yes, they give out lots of light to read, work, and play by. Trust me. My husband used to take them OUT of the lamps I put them in. At the beginning of this month, we got some bulbs and changed everything we could.

I'd like to know if anyone knows where to get bulbs that work in recessed lighting "cans." I'm checking out some web sites and will report back. In the meantime, you can use the energy savings calculator at One Billion Bulbs and see how much good you're doing when you change just one bulb. Or two. Or ten. Or...

Mother's Day for Peace

Reminder: Mother's Day is this coming Sunday.
Suggestion: Don't send flowers, candy, silly trinkets that will gather dust. Instead, give a gift in your mom's honor - a gift that might just move us closer to peace. Here's a video that takes us back to the original meaning and purpose of Mother's Day. Take a couple of minutes, please, to watch it.

Voting with my feet

We're lucky to live in a very walk-able neighborhood, which is also just gorgeous to look at right now. Everything's blooming. Our street in particular looks like an extravagantly decorated cake.

Last week our much-awaited neighborhood grocery store opened. We've been watching the construction since we moved here about 8 months ago. Now we have fresh produce, a great deli counter, and most of what we need to throw dinner together (which is all I do, in the cooking department) 7 minutes away. It's really hard to justify driving anywhere else, except maybe for paper goods.

Yesterday my son and I were on the way home with our dinner ingredients and I realized: these people are running a grocery store without a parking lot, on a street where there is NO PARKING. And the place has been doing steady, enthusiastic business since the minute they unlocked the door. It makes me feel good about my neighbors all over again.

How far did your breakfast travel?

There's much discussion these days about the 3,000-mile salad. How much fuel was used, and how many greenhouse gases were generated, to get our food from point A, where it was grown, to point B, where we sat down and ate it?

In the steady stream of articles, blogs, and books by and about eating locally and in season, one stands out. I'm reading and enjoying "Plenty" by Alisa Smith and James MacKinnon, who also published "The 100-mile diet."

James and Alisa live in an apartment in Vancouver, BC, and I've found their year of eating locally (described in "Plenty") to be a fascinating journey in research, cooking, spiritual and relationship growth.

This morning I used Google maps to find out what falls within MY 100-mile circle. I started making my own map, saving my discoveries as I go. I'm ok on fruits and vegetables, thanks to the many berry farms, apple orchards, and small organic vegetable farms in the surrounding area. We have great farmers' markets (in fact, within walking distance, or an bus ride, I have one on Wednesday, one on Saturday, and one on Sunday, each in a different neighborhood, not to mention the great-grandmama of them all: the Pike Place Market.

And there are several dairies within my 100 miles, so cheese, milk and yogurt are not a problem. A couple of them are well-known for standing their ground and refusing to feed hormones to their cows. So we'll know what we're drinking.

It gets touchier in the grain department. Wheat might be an issue (it was a big issue for Alisa and James), and requires deeper research. What about corn? beans? soybeans for my soymilk? And forget coffee. (oh no!) What about tea? Who knows. There are packagers of tea in the northwest but I have no idea where their tea comes from in the first place.

Draw your own circle on a map and see what you find! You can use Google maps and create your own map, pinpointing and saving the farms, orchards, markets, dairies, you find. Or get a paper map, a compass & pencil and draw a circle the old fashioned way. Then start exploring.

By the way, Alisa and James are on a book tour. I highly recommend meeting them and reading their book.