Here is a fun one pager in the new issue of Momentum magazine. It is about our family and it even has a half page picture of us – one that was taken the morning we had 3 young touring bikers (warmshowers) stay at our place – just after waffles – the kids are still in their pajamas. Take a look at Momentum Magazine. I think this is the best magazine going right now for bike culture.

http://issuu.com/momentumplanet/docs/issue-39/27

Happy New Year! All is well here in Eugene. Wet to say the least. Kitchen remodeling, bike advocacy, math and geography fills our days. I’ll write more here very soon, but I wanted to get this picture in.

As many of you know, I work at Sunnywood Design Collective. We just completed a project for The Nature Conservancy where we created a carbon calculator that simply helps you determine the size of your carbon footprint. It is a bit different than some of the other calculators out there, in that it is based primarily on your lifestyle choices and your behavior— the things that you can easily change to positively affect your impact. Our family contributes 43 tons of CO2 equivilant per year, that is roughly 1/4 of the US national average for a family of six. But we are still slightly over the world average. So, we’ll keep working on creative ways to reduce our carbon emissions. I’d like to get us down to 10 tons. Then I’ll work to cut more from that. You can help the cause too. I suggest you ride your bike to work or to the grocery. For every day you ride your bike you can cut ‘rising’ fuel costs by 20%, and cut your carbon emissions for the day as well.

So take a look at the calculator at www.nature.org, and figure out your impact.

If you are not prepared to shake in you boots then don’t go any farther. For everyone out there who thought that I was absorbed by my four children and that I would never resurface again, you’re wrong… for now. I am back and standing only a little hunched over. I fought my way out from under mounds of laundry, dirty diapers—times two, reading more than my fair share of Dr. Seuss books, making snacks, tandem nursing, putting kids down for naps, making lunch, nursing, making more snacks, putting more kids down for naps, wiping butts, supervising hand washing, tandem nursing, bandaging booboos (because I am a doctor), doing dishes, nursing, getting rainy from the bus stop, making more snacks, changing a few more poop diapers, discussing which super hero is the biggest, the fastest, and or the strongest, and then looking at the clock and seeing that I (we, me and the bigs and littles) only have one more hour to go before Daddy comes walking through the front door. And when he does the joy is over whelming. My relief is here! And I run to the bathroom to pee. Tune in tomorrow for a bit more. I am committed to writing for another 15 minutes.