Sometimes I miss the family car, especially when my friends seem to so effortlessly come and go, while my husband and I are plotting out our trips, negotiating whether we can fit all of our groceries in our bike trailer, and opting to stay home at times rather than trek across town after dark in…
I’m surrounded by trucks – dump trucks, tow trucks, garbage trucks. They’re all a few inches long, and they’re motoring up the sides of tables, spinning across the floor, scattered across my son’s bike trailer. It seems ironic that my son is obsessed with motorized vehicles at the same time that my husband and I…
You know that feeling you get when someone says or writes something far better than you could have? I love that feeling. Here are 10 of the more memorable times it happened to me in 2010: When anthropologists spend time with aboriginal peoples, one of the very first things they almost always comment on is…
We’re all familiar with the learning curve – that slow, hiccuping start we get off to when we tackle a new task. The period where we suck at something, which is the necessary preamble to the period where we kick ass at something. I’ve watched my two-year-old son wobble, fall, and falter hundreds of times…
“Maybe we should get the car fixed,” I mutter to my husband as icy rain pelts my face It’s a pitch-black, moonless evening. It feels more like midnight than 5:30. We’re on our way to a birthday dinner for my husband’s colleague, pedaling onto a bike bridge that crosses a busy street. Below us cars…
My family is doing an experiment in car-free living. We’re considering going car-free for the winter, mostly because our only car needs major repairs, and it’s too old and unreliable to sink much money into. We want to save money to buy a better, more efficient vehicle next year, and the best way we can…