Alternative transportation

Want Healthy, Happy Kids? Walk With Them.

Walking has always been my favorite mode of transportation. Yes, it’s usually the slowest way to get somewhere, averaging fifteen minutes per mile. But it makes me feel clear-headed and invigorated when I get to my destination. Thus, I’ve long preferred striding, strolling, or sauntering to driving, riding, and even biking. That’s why I’ve commuted by foot to school and work most of my life, even when I was nine months pregnant.

My kids don’t exactly share my zeal for bipedal locomotion.

“You know, the car is faster,” four-year-old Ira patiently explains as we amble toward his preschool.

“One block, Mom. One block. Then we’ll turn around,” seven-year-old Ezra declares as we maneuver our puppy out the door for an after-school jaunt around the neighborhood.

I’ve never seen research on the topic, but the mental health benefits of walking seem to diminish rapidly when a child is trudging beside you complaining. So I’ve allowed and even encouraged the boys to grab their bikes on walks in the past. Wheels tend to help them move along at a nice pace, and their complaining wanes.

However, this year I’m on a mission to get my kids walking more. I love bikes, but I’m convinced walking, the upright movement that distinguishes us as human, is an under-appreciated key to good health. Moreover, not walking — 35 percent fewer kids walk and bike to school than they did in 1969 — may be causing a lot of problems for our kids (and the rest of us).

Walking is Anti-Sitting

Walking is not as vigorous as running or playing. But it may actually be the moderate intensity of walking that makes it so good for us. Why? It doesn’t tire us out, so we continue to move around for the rest of the day. However, those vigorous bouts of high-intensity movement we usually call “exercise” often encourage us to sit more. In one study, exercisers were 30 percent less active on the days they hit the gym. That’s a problem because varied all-day movement seems to be the ticket to optimal health.

You’ve probably seen the headlines that sitting too much increases cardiovascular issues, even when people exercise vigorously several times a week. Excessive sitting is bad for kids too. Just three hours of uninterrupted sitting caused the blood vessels of girls, aged nine to 12, to restrict in a study. Unfortunately most kids sit a lot. Worldwide, children sit for about 8.5 hours a day.

[clickToTweet tweet=”On average, kids sit for 8.5 hours a day. The antidote? Walking. #walking #kidshealth” quote=”On average, kids sit for 8.5 hours a day. The antidote? Walking.” theme=”style1″]

What’s the antidote to sitting? Lots of walking. Walking is not only good for our hearts and organs, it’s good for the entire body. Riding a bike gets the blood flowing, however, the hips stay flexed, our shoulders hunch forward, and our tails tuck. However, walking, when done in proper alignment, is the opposite of sitting. The movement elongates the spine and tones the pelvic floor. Biomechanist Katy Bowman calls it a “biological imperative,” because we must do a lot of it to maintain a healthy body, especially a healthy skeleton.

Walking Builds Healthy Bones

Experts say childhood is the best time to invest in healthy bones. According to the National Institute of Health, bone mineral density peaks around age 20 for boys and 18 for girls. Healthy bone mineral density both makes kids less at risk for childhood fractures and less likely to experience osteoporosis and fractures later in life. Alarmingly, more kids may have low bone mineral density than in previous eras, according to Orthopedic Surgeon Shevaun Mackie Doyle, perhaps because they get less activity and exposure to sunshine.

Biking gets kids outside, offers cardiovascular benefits, and is great for the environment when it replaces car trips. But it’s not so great for bone health, according to a number of studies. In studies, cyclists, especially those who ride on smooth terrain, have the same or even lower bone density than sedentary control groups. (Swimmers also have similar bone density to sedentary people, likely because both groups don’t bear their own weight while they’re moving.)

Walking not only builds healthy bones, it encourages kids to run, jump, skip, gallop, tromp, and tree-climb, all of which are superb bone builders.

Walking Improves Quality of Life

Walking isn’t just important for our bodies. It boosts mental health. It helps people attune to the environment, rather than their worries, and has been shown to increase the size of the hippocampus and improve memory. Walking to school helps kids focus for the rest of the day and has been shown to reduce the need for kids to take ADHD medication, according to a British study.

Daily walks also boost immunity, decreasing people’s chance of getting a cold by as much as 30 percent. That may be especially alluring to parents as we enter another cold and flu season.

Maybe you’re already convinced about walking’s superhero qualities? Warning: your kids may not be. Mine complain walking is boring and say it makes their legs tired. Fortunately, there are lots of ways to make it more palatable.

How to Help Kids Love Walking

“You know, Mom, that was sort of fun,” Ezra remarked the other day after a one-and-a-half-mile walk to a school-related meeting. This walk is straight uphill, and a few months ago, he would have balked at the idea of it. So it was an exciting moment for me. However, getting him to this point required some effort on my part. The following tactics have made walking more fun for my kids and may help your kids enjoy walking more too.

Go Somewhere Fun

Whether it’s a playground or a birthday party, having a destination gets kids moving. One popular hike in our area is a winding uphill trek, but every kid I know hustles to the top. Why? There’s a swing up there.

Walk to School or on Errands

Walking is best when it’s used as a mode of transportation. That way, it becomes a seamless part of life, and kids and adults alike are less likely to think of it as optional “exercise.” Let’s face it, exercise is too often an activity we don’t enjoy that encourages more sedentary behavior for the rest of the day. It’s better to make walking routine.

Bring a Friend

Nothing seems to gets a kid moving like another kid. The instant a friend joins us, complaining vanishes as the kids race each other to the end of the block and scramble up trees.

Play games

A game of Red Light, Green Light or Follow the Leader is a sure way to get kids excited about a walk. We’ve invented our own walking game called Force Fields. Basically, there are imaginary “force fields” we can fall into in as we walk, and someone has to rescue us with an imaginary rope or magic dust. The game relieves my kids’ fatigue and boredom quickly, and they have a great time thinking up variations, such as “whirlwind force fields” and “quicksand force fields.”

Expect to Carry Little Ones Sometimes

Little legs tire faster than ours, so our littlest kiddos will probably need to be carried sometimes. It may be tempting to bring along a stroller or backpack, and I do when we’re going a long way, but these tools can encourage more sitting than walking. So on shorter walks I leave them at home and expect to carry my four-year-old occasionally. Here’s what I’ve learned. When I resist carrying him, everyone is miserable. When I happily let him climb up on my back, he’s usually back on his feet and running around within a block or two. And the good news is, carrying little ones is something we’re built to do, and it makes our bones and bodies strong. Think of it as strength training with built in hugs.

[clickToTweet tweet=”Walking builds healthy bodies and brains. With a little creativity, kids can love it. #kidshealth” quote=”Walking builds healthy bodies and brains. With a little creativity, kids can love it.” theme=”style1″]

Conclusion

Many adults are looking for ways to feel better, relieve musculoskeletal pain, and connect with our kids. At the same time, we’re worried that our kids get sick too much, spend too much time on the couch with electronics, or have trouble focusing at school. The solution to all of those problems and many more is free and accessible to nearly everyone. Walk!

If you liked this post, you may enjoy these related posts:

Do you walk with your kids? Have you found ways to make it enjoyable for them? I’d love to hear about it in the comments.

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Imagine a City With No Cars

By Abby Quillen

Every summer in Eugene, the city blocks off a neighborhood to car traffic for an afternoon, and people come out to bike, walk, roll, dance, do yoga, listen to music, and celebrate in the streets. The event, called Sunday Streets, and similar ones around the country are inspired by Bogota, Colombia’s Ciclovía, which started in 1976.

We always have a great time wandering around and celebrating human powered transportation. While most people don’t want to live in a city with no cars, Sunday Streets events help us envision safe and vibrant city centers that cater to people, instead of automobiles.

As I mentioned last week, August will likely be quiet here, as I travel and revamp this site. (Of course, I may not be able to resist stopping in for a garden update; there’s so much happening out there!) I look forward to seeing you back here at a new and improved website in September.

Bicycling in Shanghai

By Abby Quillen

My sister, Columbine Quillen, is studying in Shanghai, China this summer. She wrote this guest post about the bicycling culture there.

Let’s hope China does not lose its love for the bicycle as it strives towards modernity and first-nation status. In Chinese cities, rivers of people flow in every direction. So too do the cyclists, who flow with motorbikes in the outside lanes of every major thoroughfare. At rush hour the right lane is densely packed. When a stoplight turns red, the lane quickly becomes a congested mosh pit of sweaty cyclists often swelling to a block long by the time the light turns green.

The wary pedestrian must be hyper aware not only for looming buses and honking cars but also for gung-ho cyclists, as none of these parties will stop even when directly confronted. It’s the pedestrian who must scamper away if he wishes to hold on to his life.

Hundreds of bicycles line the wide sidewalks at every shopping mall, university, library, and bank. There are no bike racks in China, just kickstands and simple light-weight locks connecting wheels to frames. There’s no need for a U-Lock here, as theft is almost non-existent. In the rare case that a bike is stolen, a new one costs around $40.

The cyclists here wear no helmets, yet maneuver through a network of speeding cars, buses, bicycle carts, motorcycles, and electric scooters with ease. Some of the bicycles have large carts attached to them with tarp-covered mounds larger than the cyclist himself. Sometimes children sit on a rack over the rear wheel clinging on while the peddler chats on a smart phone while maneuvering through a course most Westerners would deem more suited for a stint on Fear Factor.

Bike mechanics have small repair stations on the sidewalks. They carry parts, tubes, and do all sorts of repairs.

Many people in China look fit and young. It seems as if they’ve discovered the Fountain of Youth. (Poor Ponce de Leon, I’m afraid he might have landed on the wrong continent.) I think there are many things that attribute to the Chinese people’s youth and vitality. Primarily, most people still know how to cook and thus eat whole and unprocessed foods. In addition the culture believes in daily exercise and calisthenics and in getting a good night’s sleep (which Mao supposedly preached to be at least eight hours per night). But I also like to think it’s because so many people ride a bicycle everyday.

Columbine Quillen is a law student, world traveler, and avid bicycle rider.

Revisiting the Car-Free Life

By Abby Quillen

“Drive to work. Work to drive,” my husband likes to say. He has a point. The average cost of owning and operating a vehicle soared to $9,100 this year, according to AAA.

Saving money is not the only reason to consider living sans vehicle, at least for awhile. We’ve done it on and off over the years, and every time, we’re amazed by all the perks of the car-free life.

As long-time readers know, we lived car-free for more than a year. We bicycled our way through a dark, rainy Western Oregon winter. We fetched groceries, hauled chicken food, and toted our son to parks and play dates on two wheels. My husband rode twelve miles round trip to work every day, and I pedaled across town and over hills when I was nine months pregnant.

A few days before our second son Ira was born in August 2011, we welcomed a vintage gold Volvo sedan into our family.

Why?

We loved so much about the car-free life as I documented on this blog. However, most authorities on the matter agree that infants should not ride in bike trailers or seats until they’re about a year old. That would leave me car-free and bike-free throughout an entire winter.

I’m a huge believer in choosing a joyful life when you have the option. So that’s what we did. And our Volvo brought us a lot of joy in those early, overwhelming days of parenting two little ones. I loved taking it to the library and piling the trunk up with books. I loved zipping across town to my mama friends’ houses when it was pouring rain. I loved being able to go on hikes on nearby trails and visit my sister, who lives an hour away.

My husband biked to work most of the time. I walked (and then biked, when Ira was ready) nearly everywhere. But we also had the option of driving. My friend calls this the car-optional life. It felt like a pretty good one.

Then something happened a couple of months ago. Our Volvo needed an alternator, and we didn’t have time to fix it right away.

So we revisited the car-free life … and loved it.

We loved it so much that we’re still doing it. The weather is lovely and we’re biking everywhere, sometimes up to 15 to 20 miles in the course of a day.

This time, perhaps because we took a year-long crash course in the subject (and because of that lovely weather I mentioned), car-free living feels infinitely easier. Joyful. And we’re astounded all over again by how quickly it transforms your body, health, mind, and spirit.

Now that our transit is entirely human-powered, we both feel fitter and healthier, have more energy, and are less stressed.

Arthur Conan Doyle sagely advised, “When the spirits are low, when the day appears dark, when work becomes monotonous, when hope hardly seems worth having, just mount a bicycle and go out for a spin down the road, without thought on anything but the ride you are taking.”

I agree. I know of no better mood lifter than gliding along the river or stream beneath newly leafed trees beside meadows of wild camas, community gardens, and unfurling irises, rhododendrons, and roses.

It’s been almost two months, and we just don’t feel in a hurry to jump back in the car.

The car-free life is not right for everyone in every place at every time. But it may be an adventure worth trying if you are able. You may find out you love it.

More posts about car-free living:

Have you ever lived car-free or car-lite? Have you ever wanted to try it? I’d love to hear about it in the comments.

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Car-Free and Loving It

By Abby Quillen

I’m guest-posting today on Jacquelin Cangro’s blog about my family’s decision to go car-free.

My post begins:

I met the Adkins family on a crisp September day a couple of years ago. I leaned my bike on the large bike rack they’d installed where their driveway used to be. Paul showed me around their yard, pointing out beehives, fruit trees, and rows of peppers and tomatoes ripening in their sprawling raised bed gardens. Nearby a flock of Araucana hens squawked and pecked in a run. The family’s Labrador Josie followed behind us wagging her tail as Paul unlocked the shed to show me the family’s 22 bikes and various bike trailers.

Paul and his wife Monica have four kids; their youngest daughter has Down’s Syndrome. When I met them, they’d been living intentionally car-free for a year and a half. Paul is a local bike advocate, so perhaps it’s not surprising that they decided to sell their Toyota Previa minivan. But living without a privatized motorized vehicle is incredibly rare where I live in Eugene, Oregon, as it is in most parts of the United States. Only 8.7 percent of American households have no vehicle, and that includes the young and elderly.

I was visiting the Adkins that day to interview them for an article about local families choosing a car-free lifestyle. Tellingly, I couldn’t find a single other family to interview.

You can read the rest of the post here.

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Finding Adventure

By Abby Quillen

My family has been living car-free since last August. If I were to write a survival guide about our year, I’d include all the practical tips on commuting, safety, weather, etc. … and I’d dedicate an entire chapter to adventure. For me, the real challenge to thriving sans automobile is finding ways to get out of the day-to-day and away from our neighborhood. It’s finding adventure.

When my husband talked about getting rid of our car, I didn’t worry about getting to the store, library, or doctors’ offices. I knew we’d figure all that out. But I had serious reservations about not being able to drive to the forest, mountains, and ocean. I know I’m not alone. I interviewed a car-free family with four kids for an article last year. They’re bicycle advocates and they thought about living car-free for a long time, but they held onto their Toyota Previa minivan for years. Why? They wanted to go canoeing. They wanted to visit the coast and big city. They wanted to go on adventures.

Well, fortunately, adventures are more accessible than you might think. Our city bus system drops off near one hiking trail that’s sixty miles from town. Local hiking groups routinely carpool to trail heads. In the winter, buses take adventure-seekers to two different ski resorts on weekend days, where you can also cross-country ski or snowshoe. You can often join in on friends’ hikes, excursions, or camping trips. And, of course, you can rent a car for a weekend.

When I’m feeling weary of the same old walks in the same old neighborhoods, I try to think like a tourist. I’ve traveled in the United States and Canada and in several foreign countries, and I rarely rented cars at my destinations. I never let that stop me from finding adventures. I took buses, subways, trains, and shuttles. I explored on foot. I rented a bike.

Bicycle day trips are a nearly perfect form of adventure. They’re not hard to plan, young kids can easily participate, it’s fun to seek out a scenic route, and the journey is inevitably part of the adventure.

On Memorial Day Weekend, I took two bicycle day trips. Both reminded me of how important it is for me to get away from the city and into nature even though both destinations were technically inside the city. One day I took a 14-mile bike ride in the wetlands. It’s an easy ride from my house, and it’s home to 200 kinds of birds and 350 plant species. I’ve seen blue herons, beavers, and a bald eagle there, and I’ve listened to the melody of Pacific Tree Frogs and birdsong. This time of year, the grasslands are speckled with native purple camas lilies.

The next day, my husband, son, and I rode to a beautiful forested city park that we don’t visit often. It’s on the other side of town, but only a four mile ride from our house. This time of year, it’s blooming with thousands of rhododendrons. We hiked around, smelled flowers, ate a picnic, and then stopped for ice cream on the way home.

Both were easy day trips and required little in the way of planning or packing. And both left me feeling restored … and made me hungry for longer bike trips. Next I’m hoping to ride to an arboretum and hiking spot about ten miles from our house. And I have big plans for a bike camping trip and a longer bicycle tour in the future (although both of those will wait until after our new family member arrives later this summer).

Taking a car-free adventure can seem daunting, but like any adventure, the hardest part is committing yourself to it. Once you’re on the journey, you’ll almost certainly be glad you went.

Looking for inspiration? Check out these resources:

The Circumference of Home: One Man’s Yearlong Quest to Live a Radically Local Life by Kurt Hoelting
Our Big Adventure – Pedal Powered Family
A Wayward Journey – Family on Bikes
A Beginner’s Guide to Bike Camping – Rowdy Kittens
Car-Free Hiking: Take Public Transportation to the Trail Head – Ready Made Magazine
Plan a Car-Free Vacation

Do you go on car-free adventures? I’d love to hear about it.

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Alternative transportation

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