My family and I live in Eugene, Oregon and I think it is an intelligent city. Would millions and millions of dollars help our community? I think so. We could use better schools, a safer community for our friends and neighbors, less theft and vandalism, more people with good jobs and thriving businesses. If more people in Eugene realized the value to the community of keeping our money local, I think it would make a dramatic, positive impact. There is research to back this up ( Time magazine’s article). But in an article from GRIST (click on grahic) the thinking goes into how much money ends up going into ‘our cars’, thus taking that portion of our dollars away from our neighbors, our town, our state and even our country. When we use our bodies to get around we meet more people. We build relationships and grow to care more for our public assets like our streets and paths. Our food becomes our fuel with improved air quality and increased safety.
This notion helped me and my family to follow through on selling our motor vehicle in 2007. We choose to buy local when we can. We shop closer to home than further away. And we use the internet to research the larger companies so that when or if we spend our money with them, we know that our money will be used with better intention.

We were talking the other evening about the fact that our kids have moved into a new phase. With Dare and Sanguine now 5 years old and this fall they will be going into Kindergarten, Monica and I feel like we are starting to feel like we can say goodbye to a lot of small kid things. Getting out of the house is getting easier. Going to the library is beginning to be something we can consider. And they are finally learning how to clean a bit in their room or around the yard.
Monica is doing yoga and plans to get into working out as the weather gets better. I’m committed to do some local mountain biking this year. I bike everyday, for commuting to work, going to the grocery store and other errands, but getting out and riding off-road in Eugene is hard without a car. I’ll have to buddy up with folks that don’t mind doing the driving to get out to Whypass or down to Oakridge.
We’ll be working on not buying much this year. We see that most consumer goods do not have much lasting value. We’ll be focusing on growing lots of food in our yard and at the end of our street at the Community Garden. I’m sure we’ll be posting on the specifics of what and how much we’ll be trying to grow, so for now lets leave it at that. We will be picking more blackberries, raspberries, strawberries, blueberries and cherries for sure. The kids love picking berries and there isn’t much that is better for them. We will take pictures and post them here.
We hope to get Sanguine riding a two-wheeler on her own this summer. I’m pretty sure she will be able to do it. Not too sure she will be able to get real good at it but we are hoping that she feels what it is like to pedal and balance. This will be a big step for our family and Sanguine.
We have no plans to travel much, or to…
The post above was drafted in January of 2011. And it fell by the wayside as we found ourselves hustling around. Now I’ve made it serve as a reminder of where were were at at that time.

We just made our plan to pedal to Portland. As a family we will ride two Bike Friday Triples from Eugene north for roughly 150 miles along the Willamette River. We’ll be camping each night and searching for the smoothest pavement with the least car traffic each day. It will be the first multi-day tour since we had two new additions to the family 5 years ago.

Monica and I have done a few long distance tour in our time, and we even did a few when we had two kids riding trailer bikes and in Burley trailers. Now, with 4 kids – ages 10, 8 and twins at 5 – we are ready to give it a go again.

We’ll be biking along the Willamette Valley Scenic Bikeway for much of the way, then a finding good route from Champoeg State Park to Portland. We are hoping to catch a Portland Timbers Soccer game when we get there. Then we’ll take a day in Portland for fun, and jump on the Amtrak back to Portland. The kids are already getting excited.

So we will be blogging and posting about our trip as we go. The trip begins Jul7 27th.

Mixed emotions. I love the idea of gas prices going up. I feel like gas should cost more considering the negative impact it has on the atmosphere, the air pollution, and global impact of refining it from crude oil. In other parts of the world gas has been considerably more expensive for a long time. I think the higher prices have encouraged other countries to be more tuned in to the impacts of transportation and energy consumption. Expensive gas makes people think about how much they use.

Several years ago I had the idea that I wanted to get rid of all our gas powered things. We sold our only car, then our lawn mower. We had never owned a gas powered weed-trimmer or the multitude of other power tools people often feel they need. All the motorcycles and mopeds of my youth were long gone. I know we still buy things that have used gas in manufacturing and delivery almost everyday but not having to buy any makes me happy.

I remember when I was a 13 year old, I needed gas for my moped. I would siphon it from my dad’s truck often enough that I still know what gasoline tastes like. Now as a 44 year old, I check the gas prices at oregongasprices.com just to see them climbing – always hoping that more people will give bicycling a try.

High gas prices will have so many other effects. I can’t begin to imagine.