The Folks, Part One

My parents came to visit at the end of April.  It was the Stumptown Comics Fest, and their buddy Brig is a cartoonist, so they all came up to make a Portland-y, comic-y weekend of it.

We've gotten good enough at getting around town car-free that when our visitors ask, as my folks did, whether they should rent a car for their visit, we say no.  We prefer not to use one if we don't have to.  Getting the car seat into new cars is a pain.  So get a hotel close-in, we'll get you on a bike, and we'll all have a better time.

They were only in town from Friday late to Sunday midday.  They took the MAX from the airport to the Lloyd Center Doubletree, where the con was being held.  We met up with them Saturday morning at a restaurant in walking distance of the hotel, then walked around Broadway a bit before heading back to spend the morning comic-ing.  By lunch we were pretty done with the main exhibit hall, and while Brig had some workshops lined up, the rest of us were ready to do other things.

I rented them each a Brompton from Clever Cycles from mid-Saturday to mid-Sunday, and so headed over with Dave after lunch to pick up the bikes.  I think Bromptons are about the ideal rental: they fit everybody, you can keep them safely in your hotel room when you're not using them, and they're strange-looking enough that they turn on end any performance-oriented hang-ups you might have about "being a cyclist."

We put two bikes on the Yuba:



And one bike on the Steamroller:



And rode them all up to the hotel.

That evening, we rode bikes to dinner a couple of miles away.  It felt great being out in the city with my folks: me on the giant mama bike, everyone else like little ducklings on the tiny Bromptons.  I had talked them through Portland-style bicycling beforehand (use your signals, use the bike lanes, take the lane when you need to) and then was calling out instructions from behind: left turn!  Right turn!  Stay out of the door zone!!

Dinner was tapas at Toro Bravo and was fantastic.  We ate outside and, for the first little while, parked the Yuba with sleeping baby on the sidewalk by the table to keep an eye on him.  When he woke, we moved the Yuba back down to the conveniently-located bike corral and continued with dinner.  Good service, great food & drink, and you can't beat the company.

The next day, we planned to bike until it was time for them to go home.  We met up for breakfast at Voodoo Too and then went down to the river to do the Waterfront Park/Esplanade loop.  After that we headed east up Salmon to visit the Hawthorne district, did some shopping at Powells, and then cruised back to return the bikes at Clever Cycles.  We walked from there to the food carts at 12th & Hawthorne for crepes and then put them on a 70 bus back to their hotel, where they would pick up their luggage, hop on the MAX, and fly home.

I think what I loved most about this visit was how ordinary it was.  Aside from the bike rental, everything we did was part of my normal life (though, not ordinarily all in one day).  Because of that, I felt like we got to show my folks how we really live here, and how fun and easy and simple life with bikes (and without cars) can be.

Turns out, we made an impact.  Stay tuned for The Folks, Part Two.

Crash.

It was late, and dark.  Jasper was crying, and we'd already changed him, nursed him, and our attempts at cuddling and soothing were only delaying our arrival home.  Dave and I had switched bikes, so he was on the Yuba and I was on his single speed Surly Steamroller.  The Steamroller has only a front brake, which, as Uncle Sheldon wisely tells us, is adequate and safe-- if you're used to it.  I'm not used to it.

In the dark, the chill, the hurry, the stress, and accompanied by the soundtrack of a silent neighborhood pierced by our wailing child, we were zipping down a slight incline.  Dave, ahead of me, braked suddenly to soften the Yuba's ride over a speedbump.  I, surprised by his deceleration and assuming something more treacherous than a speedbump, slammed on the brakes (er, brake) to avoid hitting or passing him.  He continued on another block: apparently, it took me some time to yelp my distress.

In adrenaline-induced slow motion, I felt the bike stop.  I felt the rear wheel lift.  I felt my arms and my core tighten in response, and I felt the bike level off.  The rear wheel returned to the ground.  I even felt a brief moment of relief at my recovery.  Then, I fell over, hard.  And then I yelled, and Dave turned, and time began to move again.

I took the fall on my left knee and my left forearm.  There was definitely blood, and pain, and I'd knocked something out of alignment on the bike, but Jasper was still crying and we still needed to get home.  So I got back on and we started moving again.

This was the worst part.  With no ability to assess what damage I had done to myself or to Dave's bike, we passed the next few miles mostly in silence.  I realized we were out of hydrogen peroxide, and I wasn't sure where we stood on large bandages, either.  So I sent Dave home with Jasper and stopped at the store to pick up first aid supplies.

There, under the fluorescent lights, I examined my wounds.  Blood dripping down from an already-swollen knee, and some broad, but not deep, road rash on my arm.  Lost skin and embedded grit in both palms.  Bad, but not so bad.

At the register: "How's your evening, ma'am?"  I look at my purchases, at the blood, at the clerk.  "I've had better."  He looks at me, all seriousness and sincerity.  "Are you ok to get home?"  I tell him I am.  I check out.  I limp the few blocks home.

And then I'm a mom: still bloodied, I nurse Jasper and rock him while Dave goes outside to check out the wounded bike.  No big deal out there, a few quick adjustments and it's better.  No big deal inside, either: exhausted Jasper goes right to sleep.  And only then do I get to really look over my own damage, get into the shower, lick my wounds.

Over the next few days, I had to endure a fair amount of clucking worry.  "Bicycling is so dangerous, you know."  But I didn't learn the story's true moral until a week later, in Tacoma.

Another beautiful day.  Out walking with friends.  A new, smooth walking path.  Jasper in a moby wrap.  And I take a header.  Slipping from the side of the path, I grab the baby's head and hit the ground in a sideways roll.  I take the fall on my left forearm, again, and on my right knee.  There is a lot of blood; I strap a disposable diaper around my elbow to staunch the flow.  Jasper is unscathed.

So, the moral of the story?  Cycling is dangerous.  Really.  About as dangerous as a walk with friends on a sunny day.

Ikea!

There's something really lovely about being ridiculously backlogged in a blog that is about active living.  "Get outside!" I say.  "Go ride your bike!"  And then I do, and then I eat, nurse, and sleep.  And then the blog gets neglected.  No apologies, but as I sit here and tickle Jasper and stretch my aching hamstrings, I'll try to tell you a story.

About a month ago, before Tacoma, we took advantage of some beautiful weather to have an adventure.  We could have just gone exploring, but we like trips with destinations (and needed an excuse to get it together) so we set our sights on that great Scandinavian edifice to the north, Ikea.

We actually started the morning with a smaller trip: out for brunch at Zell's, by F. H. Steinbart for some brewing equipment and some hop rhizomes, and then by the Urban Farm Store to pick up some seeds for the garden and contemplate tomato staking methods.  Before we headed home from there, we had to change the baby:



Next, I did some planting and some weeding, and then, later than we should have, we restocked the diaper bag, grabbed the cargo straps, and rolled out for Ikea.

Now, it is possible to get nearly all the way from our place to Ikea via off-street trails, but it adds a significant amount of milage to the trip-- increasing from 10 to 17 miles each way, or from a 20-mile to a 34-mile roundtrip.  So we opted to ride the first half of our adventure on bike boulevard, a trip that took us farther east than we'd ever biked in town before.

I was surprised by how rapidly the infrastructure deteriorates as you head east: roads badly in need of maintenance, poorly-designed crossings, and above all, an increase in scary large vehicles driven by people who either don't know or don't care about our right to the road.  But that said, it's still Portland, and we didn't have any particularly ugly run-ins on the trip.  And I was reminded of how much I love being in the parts of the city where you can see Mt. Hood:



We made it safely to the highway 205 bike path and headed north. We'd not yet been on that path, and were surprised to learn that while it looks pretty smooth on the maps, it in fact zigs and zags a bit, and is less well-labeled than one might hope for... and eventually, we missed our turn entirely and could see, but not seem to reach, the big blue-and-yellow box that was our destination.

We also found the Columbia River and a nice view of Mt. St. Helens, and so took some pictures before stopping to regroup, nurse, and get our bearings:



It was at this point that the previously-sleeping Jasper awoke and announced his need for immediate attention, and I snatched him up rather abruptly and took off down an embankment to nurse with some shelter from the highway noise. Dave creatively solved the problem of joining us without abandoning either bike on the trail:



After everyone had a snack and Jasper had his second outdoor diaper change of the day, we re-re-checked the map and figured out how to get from the river to Ikea, along a road that cut along the back edge of the airport.

Success!


We were the only bike there, but there was no shortage of bike parking should anyone, or a hundred anyones, suddenly decide to join us.





Creative bench placement:


Shopping carts impersonating bikes:


And with that, we locked up the bike and engaged in a bit of mainstream consumerism.

I try to be very specific about the stuff that we bring into the house.  I'm uncomfortable with the assumed disposable-ness of things, and I try to buy only what we need, and of a quality that will last.  I spend a lot of time on craigslist and in second-hand stores trying to buy the things we want used so that new materials don't need to go into them.

But.

Sometimes, even a quasi-minimalist lifestyle needs stuff; with a baby in the house doubly so.  What did we pick up on our Ikea quest?  Mirror tiles, art, and a rug for Jasper's play spaces.  Some child-proofing gear for the toddling phase to come.  And some new canisters for the kitchen.  So: lots of glass, and some hefty cotton.  You know: dense, heavy things.

The bike was notably harder to move when we loaded and started back.  And a stiff headwind had blown up.

Jasper was fussy as we started home.  A change and nurse didn't fix it.



Singing loudly and continuously helped a bit, but was hard to sustain with the exertion.

I was really, really tired, and after a few miles Dave and I switched bikes so that he could haul for a bit and I could rest.  (Note to self: I am not a single speed sort of girl.)

Jasper continued to fuss and cry as his bedtime came and went, and the gathering darkness was also raising our stress level.

And then I crashed.  But that's a whole other story, really.

Thoughts (and data!) on car ownership costs

I've bummed a ride home (in a car! the beauty of commuting on a folding bike) a couple times this winter during exceptionally bad weather or late workdays when the siren call of a warm, faster commute pulled too strongly to ignore. The co-worker from whom I've accepted rides mentioned last week that she had calculated that as long as she continues to car pool with another co-worker of ours, their combined costs for the car commute are less than the cost of two annual transit passes, even with the passes partially subsidized by our employer at a rate of around 35%. This sort of argument is one I've heard before, a different aspect of the siren song of automobiles, and I had a feeling that in this case, as in many others, it was based on an incomplete calculation.

I know this because during the process of selling our car I wrote a maintenance record summary in a spreadsheet as a service to the new owner as well as for my own records (I also gave the new owner my file of all the receipts and reports). Combining these tabulated maintenance costs with records of our insurance and registration payments, depreciation based on the actual purchase and sale price of the car, and a reasonable guess at fuel costs (using recorded distance driven, measured fuel efficiency, and average fuel price), I made a realistic estimate of the total cost of owning that car for almost exactly 5 years.

Make/model: 2001 Ford Focus ZTS sedan, 4-cyl, EFI, 1.8L, FWD

Primary place of use: Upstate NY

Primary mode of use: 24-mile round trip year-round 6-day per week commute on country roads (4-years)

Other use: Occasional trips to nearby cities, 3 cross-continent road trips

Special equipment/costs: Excellent snow tires ($600/set, two sets), ~$2000 extra repair due to driving on salted roads.

Length of ownership: 5 years

Total distance driven: 52373 miles

Maintenance, repairs, and tires: $6685.51

Value depreciation: $6000

Fuel (28 MPG, $2.60/gal): $4863.21

Insurance (2 drivers): $2760

License & registration: $90

Total cost of ownership: $20398.72

Annual cost of ownership: $4079.743

Cost of ownership per mile: $0.39

The estimate is large. Much larger than most people realize and much larger than I had realized until I finally tabulated all the costs. This accounted for almost 10% of our household income, spent to have the use of a single car. This estimate is also conservative, it doesn't account foe a few oil changes that happened in other states and the receipts didn't get filed, and the estimate of average fuel price is undoubtedly low. Most of the time it was much closed to $3.00/gal. Note that the current reimbursement rate for mileage on a personally-owned vehicle is $0.50. When most people see such a rate they think of it as exceptionally high and think they're getting paid to drive, when in fact our costs for a small, inexpensive, relatively efficient car were almost 80% of this figure!

This isn't to say that we didn't get something for our money. By being able to commit to a car commute (a dubious decision in hindsight) we were able to buy a house in an area with we could afford. On the other hand, before we moved out of town (our first year of owning the car we lived in town in a rental and only used the car for grocery and errand) we only put about 4500 miles on the car, after that we put on almost 12000 annually. The difference between these numbers is almost exactly the length of our 6-day/week commute.

Making another reasonable estimate that half of the depreciation can be counted as mileage-based and half as time-based (a car that isn't driven doesn't lose value as quickly) while counting maintenance and fuel as purely mileage-based and insurance and registration and purely time-based, it comes out that about 71% of our costs were based on mileage and 29% were based on time-owned. This means that if we hadn't moved out of town our annual car costs would have been $2420 instead of $4080. The incremental cost of our commute was $1660 per year: 40% of our total cost of owning the car.

To me, this drove home the point that if you're going to own a car anyway and you carpool driving can be cheaper than an annual transit pass costing around $1000 per year per person. This is one of the financial traps of car ownership: the incremental cost of any extra usage is small enough that if you own a car it's hard to financially justify not using it. It's a pair of thrifty handcuffs, making the owners feel good about driving more. I consider this throwing good money after bad.

By using car rentals and car-sharing instead of owning our own car, we incur something very close to the actual per-trip cost of car ownership, but structured such that the overhead (the time-based costs) are paid on a usage basis. This shifts the thrift decision from saving money by driving more to saving money by driving less.

The financial incentive to not drive can't be entirely realized by not driving. It's realized by not owning a car. This is a huge psychological hurdle that can be difficult to get over, and there needs to be plenty of shared infrastructure in place to make it happen: good transit, convenient car-sharing, and walkable/bikeable everyday shopping were keys to getting over that hurdle for us. Once we had structured our lives to be able to take advantage of them, the financial decision to sell the car was easy.

As an aside, when I've succumbed to the offer of a ride home, traffic has always made it take longer than taking the train.