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