It would be difficult, particularly out here in our geographic area with sprawl and wide-open spaces, to live life completely independent of a car. If you have stuff or occasionally get stuff, you'll invariably need to move that stuff from time to time. (I move small stuff with my bike and BOB trailer all the time, but not the big stuff.) ALso, occasionally a group of people is riding to a common destination. If some of them haven't "seen the light" about bicycle transportation, it's probably most economical to pool it. And, I've got to confess that for most mortals, the weather sometimes plays into such decisions.
Nonetheless, I make an ongoing effort to keep my car trips to a minimum.
Just for kicks, I've been keeping a journal of my car trips for several months.
Let's take the last 6 months. October 1 thru March 31; arguably the time of year when car trips are most rational. That's 182 days.
Over the course of those 182 days, we went out of town by car on 6 days; 5 to the Oregon coast and 1 to Winter Carnival in McCall.
Of the remaining 176 days, I was the driver in a motor vehicle on 19 days/trips, all but 3 with one or more passengers. And I rode passenger on 8 days/trips. So I traveled by car 27 times. Grand total miles; approx. 201.
(For the record, of those 182 days, I bicycled on 179; grand total miles, 2973. Oh - and I rode 337 miles on the motorcycle. Pretty lame... the motorcycle part.)
Tireless advocate for the most efficient form of
human transportation ever devised - bicycles!
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