2 popped tires in 1 day

So on the way to work yesterday I had a popped tire. It was right before I got to the office so I didn't have to walk far. However, on the way home it was a long bike walk. I walked from my office to Twenty20 Cycling in Hampden (took about 25min). There I got a new tire and brought it home. At home I started replacing it and when I was pumping it up it exploded on me! It was so loud that the sound wave made our piano play every note. Fortunately it didn't hurt or have any permanent damage to my ears. I didn't understand what I did wrong, and still don't, but I went back to Twenty20 and got another one and tried a slightly different method of replacing it and it worked fine.

:)

stolen from here

Moonlight Madness

We just had an amazing baltimore bicycling event. It's called the Moonlight Madness Memorial bike ride. I'm not sure who it's in memory of, but I assume it's someone who was killed in a bicycle accident. The idea is perfect - get about 100 bicyclists together and just ride around the city. It shows everyone that there are many of us out here who ride on city streets and basically raises awareness and allows us all to have fun at the same time. Part of the route went through East Baltimore, which some of my friends thought was a really bad idea because of the crime, but it turned out fantastic. I rode some streets I'd never riden before and since there was so many of us there was really no danger. There were a lot of kids outside waving at us and stuff. It was a great ride overall.

Here's the website that had all the information:

http://www.socializr.com/event/465093292

Here's the route we took:

http://www.bikely.com/maps/bike-path/Moonlight-Madness-2010

I took some pictures with my iPhone and posted them on my flickr here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/eedanjo/sets/72157624687168445/

Living Better on Less

My dad sent me this article today in an email.

It's a great piece about many different ways to live better for less and he specifically sent me the article because there's a section on reducing the amount you use your car, or even going car free (page 4). It says it increases exercise, reduces stress, eliminates car costs (payments, gas, insurance, parking, maintenance), and helps to reduce smog and global warming. It's good to get a fresh reminder of all those fantastic reasons to bike more and drive less. Anybody else want to join me in my car-free quest?

No More Car

It is done. I have finally given away my car. We drove the old '01 Pontiac Sunfire from Baltimore to Fulton, MO to give to my parents. My dad's going to use it pretty heavily to do his job and even drive to St. Louis to teach a class! They definitely need it more than me. The last two or three weeks I've been riding my bike consistently to work. I even used the JHU shuttle a few times when I had to get to Bayview. I feel very good about this decision and I look forward to my new car-free lifestyle.

I am definitely going to miss the old Sunfire. We had some amazing road trips and times together. I'm going to miss the cool breeze from the sunroof, listening to my iPod on long trips, having friends sleep while I drive them, etc.

My apologies for the hiatus from this blog. During the interim between my last post I've been contemplating if I really should get rid of the car. I got married in June and I felt that I should at least keep the car till then since I'd need it to transport friends and family around. We also used it for the wedding 'Just married' getaway car.

I felt I couldn't rightly post on this blog since I successfully passed my 30 days without driving yet still didn't sell or give the car away. Now that it's done, hopefully you'll see more posts on here in the months to come. Stories of biking/public transit hardships and triumphs as we head into the early fall.

Alas, I still have backups for the car lifestyle. My wife Suzanne still owns a Subaru which I'm sure I'll ride in and likely drive for special cases. Also as a final fail-safe, I still have a membership with Zipcar in case Suzanne and I both desperately need a car. I know it's not exactly a clean break with the automobile since I have these fail-safes, but it's a start.

Wish me luck!

Mission Accomplished!!

Hello again. Apologies, etc. for not writing in a while. So today is the day. Today is exactly 4 weeks into my 'no more car' quest. It's been a tough journey I can tell you, but a very fun one too. I learned a lot about how to do more without a car than I ever thought I could.

Let's catch up a bit: On Monday I finished my third round trip to the Johns Hopkins Bayview campus via their shuttle system. It takes about an hour, but the benefits far outweigh the extra 30 min commute. I also forgot to update you all on my bike pedal situation. The new bike pedal arrived and it's working great. I still have mismatched bike pedals because I wanted to make sure this new one was up to snuff before replacing the other. Also, on Valentine's weekend, Suz and I went to marriage preparation classes in Federal Hill. The first day we took the JHMI shuttle to Penn Station and then walked a mile or two to the church. The second day we were a little rushed so we took a cab. We wanted to take the Charm City Circulator while we were down there but the snow was too much and they canceled the north-south route. Though she was initially hesitant, Suz is very supportive of my no-car initiative and has reduced her use of the car as well.

I also decided to sign up for Zipcar since we last spoke. I feel that there are going to be times when a car is absolutely necessary, such as emergency situations, or hauling large items. Zipcar is so convenient and fairly inexpensive ($8/hr + $35 yearly fee). Even if I don't give up my car, I still want to support an organization dedicated to taking more cars off the road and also promotes car sharing.

So the craziest thing happened in the last few days of my car diet. I got a call from Suzanne saying that she'd really need to be picked up in Westminster MD (long story), so I told her, sure I can pick you up in my car (I checked zipcar, but they were all taken). I go and shovel the snow (what's left of it) out from the front of the car. I got in and the car wouldn't start. The battery had been completely drained from lack of use. My friend even tried to jump-start the car but to no avail. I later found out after talking with my Uncle Mark that jump starting a completely dead battery can be nearly impossible. Also a word of advice for you car owners out there: if you don't use your car for a few weeks, you should disconnect the ground to your battery so it doesn't drain. Anyway I ended up getting a ride from my friend Sam to go and pick up Suzanne in Westminster, thus keeping my no-driving streak alive.

So today, my one-month anniversary of no-more-carness, I had to go and get a new battery for the car. I'm still not sure if I'm going to give up the car completely or not, but either way I don't want to make someone tow it away when all I gotta do is replace the battery. I took out the old battery and used my bike crate to haul it down to Advance Auto Parts. I told the guy I biked the battery down and he thought I was crazy. I got the cheapest battery, gave them the old one, and started heading back. On my way home I had a bit of an incident. I was going through an intersection as the light turned yellow and had to swerve around a car slightly and my basket (held on by bungee cords only) rotates and the battery falls out right in the middle of the street (car batteries are VERY heavy). It was right at the intersection of 25th and Howard. I stumbled off my bike, then picked up the bike and took it to the curb and ran back out into the street to get the battery while a bunch of cars were staring at me. After I got the battery off the street I realized I also dropped my U-lock. A bunch of cars ran over it before I could go back and pick it up, but it's still functional. Anyway I made it back safe and took this picture as I rode up to my battery-less car:

I love this picture because it's like the bike is saying, "Here's your damn battery you A-hole." After installing the battery (you do feel like a man when working on a car by the way), I took the car for a quick spin around my block just to make sure it was working. It was like two old friends getting re-acquainted.

As it is the season of lent, I'm going to continue my car-free lifestyle as much as I can. I don't know if I'll be able to continue the non-driving, but I think I can limit it to driving only when carpooling during this lenten season. I'll also hopefully be giving my car away to charity or family at some point. I'll keep this blog going so I can post to it every once in a while about thoughts and adventures in the world of public transport and car-free living. Thanks to everyone who supported me during this mission, especially my fiancee, the future Mrs. Suzanne Schlattman. As all writers of books say, I couldn't have done this without her loving support.

Kicking the car habit

At the top of Baltimore's City Parking Authority website it says: "Encouraging you to kick the car habit and rethink your transportation choices." I love it. That's a much better title for my blog.

So I'm over three weeks into kicking my car habit. I've gotten a second email from Progressive making sure I'm okay (see earlier blog post). The snow is really crazy, but I decided to ride my bike to work anyway. Also my new bike pedal came in and that has made it much easier to ride.

Also check out this story on NPR about how honeybees can go almost 5 million miles on one gallon of honey. Something to shoot for in our vehicle engineering. You gotta listen to the audio because they play a Muddy Waters song about honeybees in the background.

Another Big Snowfall

So there's another HUGE snowfall going on right now. I felt a little bad saying that the snow creates my ideal society since there's still so many without power and gas. I don't believe that those are elements to the perfect society, but I do think that we as a people need to drive less and spend more time locally. We can socialize with our neighbors and really enrich the areas in which we live. I also realize that a lot of my friends would not be able to live and work in this area if not for transportation. I'm not saying that the no-car thing is going to work for everyone, but it's certainly something that we can strive for.

That said let's show some funny photos from the great SnowPocalypse:

This is how I prepared for the snowfall on Friday night.

This is my car after the 24" of snow. I did eventually clear it off a little because I was worried that the windshield would crack after our second bought of snowfall.

This is a video of Rolley Polley, my dog, running wild on Saturday Morning. With no cars around, he's safe to roam free (also he's very friendly so no danger to others).

Deep Snow = My Ideal Society

So for those of you not in the area, Baltimore had a gigantic snowfall over the weekend. It started on Friday and continued through most of Saturday. It was really thick and we ended up with over 24 inches total. It's definitely the deepest snowfall I've ever seen. The snow has really packed in cars and most of the streets aren't plowed that well, yet the streets are still plowed well enough to allow emergency vehicles to access most places. People walk on the streets to get where they need to go and they think carefully about what they need to get. I really like how this snow has drawn us all closer together and has also forced a lot to use alternate forms of transportation besides cars. If you want to get lunch or groceries, you have to go local and thus support your local businesses. It's given us a glimpse as to what society would be like without cars. Pretty beautiful.

Still Keeping it Up

So there's been a few pretty close calls, but I still consider my car diet ongoing. On Thursday morning Suzanne had to be somewhere downtown very early for an outreach event for her work. She's been having some problems with pink eye and couldn't drive because of it, so I drove her in her car. I don't consider this breaking the rules for a few reasons. For one, how could I say no, second, I still rode my bike to work that day after I dropped her off, and third I didn't drive my own car. I know some of you will be like, "This isn't much of a test if he's still driving cars," but I'm trying my best. Suzanne has offered to do a guest post for all of my loyal readers so stay tuned for that one. Other than that one time I've been very good about biking and walking everywhere.

So it turns out that I ordered the wrong pedal size for my bike. For those of you looking to get a new set of pedals for your bike make sure that you check the thread size of them. There's only two types 1/2" and 9/16". They're only a 1/16th of an inch different, but it doesn't matter. I'm sending them back to Amazon and I've ordered some new ones. Also I was getting tired of borrowing Suzanne's bike, so I just took off my bike pedal and now all that's left is a rod. It's not as bad as I thought it'd be. I just wear some tough soled shoes whenever I ride it and it's not so bad. There's still some grease on the rod so my foot slips off every once in a while.

Anyway the East coast was hit with a record breaking snow storm this weekend. It's yet another test of my no-more-car will. Biking and walking to work are going to be more difficult, but arguably more safe than driving. I'll let you all know how this affects my transportation in my new no car environment in upcoming posts.

Progressive Insurance is worried about me

So progressive has this device you install in your car and it records your speed and how many times you do hard stops and hard starts. The idea is if you drive safely and drive during 'non-dangerous' hours, they'll reduce your rate over time. I thought it was a fantastic idea. I got an email from them today saying:

"When properly plugged in, your sensor will periodically call us regardless of any trip activity. This just lets us know the device is working properly even if you haven't driven lately. Unfortunately, we haven't heard from the following device(s) since 1/26/2010."

Then it goes on to say how to fix the device if it's not working. I like how the last part is bold, it really makes it sound like they're worried about me. Like, 'Are you okay Dan? It's been over a week since you drove your car!" It actually hasn't sent me anything like this since my circuit breaker broke and the device lost power. So I guess this officially the longest I've gone without using my car since I got my progressive device at least (which I think I got a little over a year ago). Quite the milestone.

Some biking/relationship humor

So Suz was out of town for a week and I used her bike while she was gone (because my bike pedal broke). I didn't tell her I was using it of course. I'm a bit taller than her so I raised up her bike seat. When she came home she asked me, 'did you use my bike?' and I said, 'Oh, did I forget to put the seat down?'. Get it? I guess you could consider it 'toilet humor'. One other really quick one - Suzanne's napkin static clinged to her last night at a restaurant and we almost walked out with it on her skirt. She said, 'Oh, I must be attractive'. Get it? Okay, that's enough for now.

Day 7 - 1 week complete

First week of the no driving adventure complete! I've gotten a lot of good feedback from friends and family on this quest. Maybe our American society is ready to get behind public transportation and less car driving. Maybe America's obsession and love of the automobile has finally come to an end? I hope so. I remember Andrew Bird said something like that once. He's very pro-bicycle and very carbon neurtral. I think his tour bus is run on biofuels. Anyway not too much today, I carpooled with a co-worker down to Bayview, and then Suzanne and I rode in her car down to Roy's for dinner (her parents gave us some gift certificates). I'll admit it was slightly emasculating to be driven to a date with my fiancee, but it's just the tough pill I'll have to swallow in order to accomplish my mission. I tried to get Suz to ride the bus with me down there but she wasn't having it. Catch ya tomorrow Internet,

Dan

Day 6 - Snow everywhere

Not too much happened today. It was a Sunday mostly at home. Of course I've stuck to my pledge not to use my car. In fact I have a picture that captures the essence of my quest:

I have no need to clean my car of snow anymore! On the other hand, I did get another ride from a car driver today and so I helped Suzanne clean off her car so that we could go grocery shopping. I know, this doesn't seem like much of a sacrifice if I still drive everywhere, but I'm trying my best and sometimes it's tough to say no. I did ride a bike to a church meeting on campus and that was a little tricky in the snow and everything. Tomorrow I'm heading down to Bayview and I'm also getting a ride from a co-worker (check my Friday post about car-pooling). Also check out the month of January and my 'No Car' calendar:

Day 5 - Snow Biking

Dear Internet,

I thought I'd start my new post this way in memory of Conan O'Brien's last show. On one of the last shows he made a joke about writing to the internet.

So Day 5 was another tough one. I woke up really early to volunteer for habitat for humanity down in Pigtown. After contemplating using the bus system again, I decided to just bike it. I used Suzanne's bike again (by the way I've used hers a few times since my pedal broke) and picked up a sandwich at 7-eleven. I made it down there pretty well, though it was again very cold biking. Working there was pretty awesome. I felt like I was really helping to make this house. Most of the day was spent moving debris. They had taken down the roof of this old house and we had to throw all the junk down, and then take it to the dumpster on the street. Not a glamorous job by any means, but it was hard work and necessary work. After a few hours we started working on constructing the walls of the house. We just used old fashioned hammers and nails. Anyway after lunch the snow was coming down so bad that they canceled the rest of the day and I rode my bike back home. This was the toughest biking I've done in a while. It's mostly an incline back up to Remington from Pigtown so that in addition to the snow blinding me and the slow speed of snow biking made it a bit more difficult than usual. I decided to just take it one pedal stroke at a time. Once home I took a long nap to recover. Afterward I played a bit of Monopoly with my friend Belle and Alexis (my couchsurfer from France). Suzanne isn't too keen on my recent Monopoly craze, so she sat that game out. I guess I'm getting a bit distracted from the purpose of this blog so I'll leave it at that. Good night internet.

Love,

Dan

Day 4: Broken Pedal, two rides bummed...

So I was biking a few days ago and my pedal began to act funny. Then it just broke in half (I took a picture). It's very uncomfortable to ride with just one half of a pedal. The rod of the pedal really digs into the arch of your foot. I decided to do some work on it and order some new pedals. I ordered these on amazon and then I thought I'd try seeing how easy it is to take off a bike pedal. Turns out there's like a dozen ball bearings in pedals and they all came out and fell all over my living room. There was no way I was going to put them all back in so I just screwed the pedal back on without them. Turns out ball bearings make a HUGE difference when biking. Don't ever take these little metal balls for granted people. Now when I pedal the pedal stays frozen and doesn't allow me to rotate it around the axis. So each rotation of the pedal I have to lift my leg off and then bring it back down. It's very awkward and must be interesting to watch from an outsider. It's a very asymmetrical bicycling pattern. I kind of feel like a one man band street performer who constantly has to hit a kick drum or high hat with one leg while doing some kind of constant circular thing with the other foot.

Today was also a viciously cold day. I had some big time runny noses from my bike to and from work.

For lunch my colleague and I went to Holy Frijole's on the Avenue in Hampden. He offered to give me a ride in his car and I accepted. I told him I don't want this experiment to turn into Dan's bumming a ride from people project. I figure if people offer I'll take them up for it, but I'll always attempt to take the bike or public transit first. I also realized that the rides I bum from people will kind of be a small payback for the rides I've given to so many people over the years. During grad school I was the only one of my friends with a car so I drove people everywhere. I also would often give people rides to the airport who needed them. I also donated some drives for my local church as a fundraiser a few times. Plus it promotes carpooling which, though still not solving the problem of evil cars, still lessens it in someway. It's kind of a compromise so that I can still exist in the real world. Plus one of my main reasons for quitting the car is the anti-social nature of driving (since so many people drive alone). Carpooling allows for great conversation because the scenery is constantly changing and there's always something to talk about. Look at the sign over there!, Do you remember that building? Where are we?

Anyway, I also bummed a ride to the party in Canton. The couchsurfer I'm hosting this weekend, Alexis, stayed with a different couchsurfing host, Caroline, on Thursday night and she offered to give me a ride. I had my bus system all planned out when he called, and decided to take the easier option of just getting a ride. It was kind of sad that I won't get to test out the Baltimore bus system just yet, but I'm sure I will have to soon. It's just too damn cold out there to be waiting on the busses. I'm going to dedicate a whole blog post to bus systems so stay tuned for that one.

The party was really cool by the way. Couchsurfers apparantly know how to party. There was a keg and they made pigs in a blanket! Fun times. One of the guys who lived there had this extremely complex salt water aquarium. In retrospect, I should have taken a picture of it on my iPhone. I talked to him about it all night. For a while I was just staring into it and some girl came up to me and was like, are you okay? He had see urchins, crabs, starfish, shrimp, and even a clownfish (I guess every salt water tank has to have a clown fish nowadays - Thanks finding Nemo). I kind of felt like when Dwight Schrute went to that dinner party and all he did was test out the structure of the house. Overall it was a pretty good house party.

Anyway I'm going to bed so I can rest up for my long bike ride down to pigtown for Habitat for Humanity! I'm so excited to be working on a house. I wonder what I'll get to do - saw, hammer, staple, paint.......

First tough times coming up

So I realized that my first really car-tempting events are happening soon.

I woke up today and it's absolutely freezing outside (feels like 9 degrees according to weather.com). It's going to be a face-freezing ride to my work (it's like a 15 minute bike ride).

Also I live near Johns Hopkins homewood campus and I was invited to a couchsurfing party in Canton tonight. I'm hosting a guy this weekend and he invited me (check out couchsurfing.org if you have no idea what I'm talking about). It would take about 20 minutes to drive there, and I'm thinking of trying out the Baltimore bus system (which estimates 45-60 min). I haven't really tried bus riding in a city before so I'll be sure to tell you all how it goes.

Next up on Saturday (tomorrow) morning I'm volunteering for a day with habitat for humanity. It's down in Pigtown and I suppose I can just ride my bike down there in maybe a half hour, but it's also supposed to snow that day - should be fun.

Next up on Sunday I told my church that I'd get the bagels and donuts for our 11am mass. This would be much easier with a car, but I'm going to attempt it with just the bicycle.

Finally on Monday I told a Neurology professor I'd meet with her at Bayview. Bayview is crazy far away, at least a 30 minute drive and I think I'll attempt to follow my friend Johns advice of taking the Hopkins shuttle to JHMI, and then switching onto the bayview shuttle there. That's going to be a really long ride.

Anyway, wish me luck internet.

Days 1,2,3

Hello World. So this is my blog about quitting the car. I've decided to give myself a one month trial period to see if I can live without the vehicle and I'm going to chronicle this adventure on here. I started 2 days ago on Tuesday January 26th 2010. Why you may ask? That's a good question. I've been thinking about it recently and I've come to the conclusion that cars are a source of great evil in this world and that if you want change it has to start with you. Cars are very dangerous for drivers and pedestrians alike. They get you from A to B faster and in comfort, but they also come at an expense. They're dangerous, bad for the environment, don't allow social interaction (like public transportation), and are not physically healthy for you like bicycling and walking.

I consider myself a very good driver. Perfect driving record, very careful, but also skilled at parallel parking and all the other rules and regulations of the road. I've never had an accident and I've been driving since I was 16 (I'm 26 now). Driving with other people can sometimes scare me, so I offer to drive as much as I can.

I keep good track of all my expenses and I've calculated that I've spent about $880 in the past six months on car expenses (gas, insurance, maintenance, parking). My fiance and I are currently saving money for our wedding in June and I can't believe how much more we could save if we didn't have all these car expenses.

So I've decided to try giving up the car completely. I hope I can make it. I realized this time period, January & February, is a good time for a trial period since it's about the worst weather that Baltimore has to offer. I can handle heat with no problem. I think if I make the full one month period, then I'll just donate my car to charity (WTMD). By the way, this is a picture of my car. It's a 2001 black Pontiac Sunfire. I really like the car a lot and it's given me a lot of great experiences. It's kind of like breaking up with someone you've been dating a long time, I can tell it'll be pretty emotional when I finally say goodbye. I bought the car with my parents in 2001 right off the dealership lot brand new. I checked the bluebook and it's gone down to somewhere between $1,600 and $2,400.

I'll try to keep this blog as up to date as possible. I think it would be fun to pretend like I have like a million readers when in fact I think just my fiancee and mom might read this. So periodically I'll try to say things like, "Let me know what you all think about ___"

Without further ado, let's catch up on the past few days.

On Day 1 I rode my bike to work - no real big deal. It was while I was at work that I really started devising the plan and thinking about life without driving. Then I remembered that there was this mayor's bicycle meeting downtown after work and I realized if I was really going to commit to this, I need to show that I'm willing to do some crazy biking, so after work I biked all the way downtown (about 3 miles through traffic) and went to this cool meeting. There was just 9 of us there and it was my first time so I just listened. They have a lot of cool things happening in Baltimore for bicyclists. There's a lot of streets currently being converted to 'bike-friendly' streets, and the committee presented a gigantic map of all the current and future bike route's in baltimore. It's a beautiful sight. Afterward I rode home and hung out with my dog the rest of the night. I cooked some food for myself (Suzanne, my fiancee, usually does the cooking, but she's out of town). Anyway that cooking turned out to be a very bad idea because the next day I got pretty sick. Maybe I should just leave the culinary stuff to Suz.

On day 2 I had my first predicament. I work at a biomedical research startup company and I've been working on this paper with a PhD student at Johns Hopkins Medical Campus. He called me and asked if we could ride together to my office to print out the paper in high quality color to give to all of the authors (the lab printer only does black and white). It was pretty tempting but I finally decided to tell him that my car was acting a little funny and that I was planning to ride my bike, but that I had a color printer at home and could print them there. So I printed them and biked over to his place to hand them off. First dodged bullet of the experiment. I'm sure there'll be more tempting occasions. During the day at work my stomach started to really ache from the dinner the night before, so after lunch I went home. Riding a bike with a bad stomach isn't that fun, but it's not too hard. Once home I just laid in bed for the rest of the afternoon. Around 6 or so I felt much better so I rode my bike to Charles Village and got some sushi for dinner.

On Day 3 (today) I rode my bike to work again. My friend's wanted to go to a restaurant for lunch because it's Restaurant week in baltimore. The restaurant's called Fogo de Chao and it's downtown. I rode my bike back home and met my friends and my friend Alex drove us all. This was the first time in the experiment that I rode in a car. I know it's pretty wrong to even do that, but carpooling is good for the environment, and I don't think it'll be possible for me not to drive at all in any vehicle for a month. I'll need to take busses and shuttles to get to some places, and that's not much different. Anyway the food was delicious. It's like a meat overload. We all maxed out our bellies since it's all you can eat. Riding my bike back to work was a bit tough because of this over-eating. Let me know in the comments what all of you think about over-eating and then bike riding.

P.S. - I forgot to mention that on Day 3 I accidentally split my jeans while getting on the bike. Big time bummer. I'm down to just one pair of jeans that I really like now. I guess going without a car will have consequences that I couldn't even imagine.