Here's a post from Rapsodie from our Sustainable Communities Group. She is doing a 100% no car to commute challenge. Take it away Rapsodie!
Well this is officially my first blog! I've been so inspired by your blogs - i've set up a channel from the down pipe of the shed to my lemon tree (a la bathtub model), i'm very interested in the ankle support for walking and i've re-committed to the joys of lentils. Not a bad start
really.
I like this idea of committing to a challenge to start the year. Maybe it'll give me a bit of a shake up. Although I do a fair few activities to reduce my impact on this earth, i'm busy (like everyone) and my priorities get skewed with the hustle and bustle. I don't like driving much so I've
set myself a 100% no car to commute challenge. It started off great! Work is only 5km away but i'm a bit ricketey so it takes me about 25 mins. I've allowed myself a couple of escape clauses to ensure it would all go to plan. Firstly I'm allowed to catch the bus if its 35 degrees or more - don't want to get too hot and bothered. Secondly if i'm meeting someone in town after
work, I can catch a ride with them in their car home. My usual pattern for work is I ride my bike 1 - 2 times a week, catch the bus once (usually when i have a meeting in town) and drive a couple of times. I live in Stepney and work on South Terrace - so the car journey always seems like the
quickest and easiest - a 10-15 minute journey in peak hour plus a ten minute walk from the 4 hour parks. All up about 20 minutes from front door to desk. I have to move my car at lunchtime to another park which is another 20 minute walk round trip. The bus stop is about 10 minutes walk and then another 5 minutes at the other end and the journey is about 30-35 minutes so
all up a journey of about 55minutes - 1 hour.
So Monday went beautifully. Spent about an hour packing the bike. It's like i'm touring. I've got the work outfit, my lunch, the water bottle, bike lock and the kitchen sink. The lemon scented gums were at their finest - the early morning air transformed by the subtle wafts of eucalyptus
lemon. Galahs and parrots were everywhere and it just felt good to be outside and feeling my body work. I'm very lucky, my journey takes me along Osmond Tce down Victoria St across Victoria Park and on to South Terrace - very leisurely. It feels so good to be starting this challenge - when i arrive at work I feel invigorated and calm.
I don't usually ride 2 days in a row so Tuesday was a tad harder - I had to stop at the servo and pump up my front tyre (probably the touring load was getting out of hand) - and by Wednesday I wondered whether perhaps I wasn't as young as i used to be. I needed to pick up a couple of things at the supermarket on the way home on Wednesday - strangely this was much easier
than i expected it to be. It was quite hot (about 34 degrees) and I had to ride a bit further and carry a bit more on my already overloaded bike (minus lunch) but it was easy albeit that i had to unpack all my 'stuff' onto a trolley and cart it around with me while i shopped.
Thursday was bus day (39 degrees) - it was lovely and cool on the bus. I didn't get a seat until town but I always love watching all the people on the bus trying to imagine what their mornings have been like and how they're going to spend their days.
To my enormous disappointment - Friday I failed in my challenge. The plumber came early to do the final bits to connect my rainwater tank to the toilet and he struck a cracked pump head. This was my downfall. Unfortunately he didn't finish til 10.10am and it was 39 degrees - so it was
bus day but not an hour to spare to get to work. Always with these sort of personal challenges its tempting to chuck it all in at the first failure but I'm wise to this and I'm going to get back on the bike (after the 43 degree bus day on Monday!).
I'll keep you posted on how things go. I think i'll need a good book this month because i can see a lot of bus days coming up.
Cheers, Rapsodie
Showing posts with label new year's. Show all posts
Showing posts with label new year's. Show all posts
Sunday, January 10, 2010
Friday, January 1, 2010
31. Make a zine or blog or both about this
Hey,
So number 31 but the first day of the 31 things. We made a blog!
We came up with the list of things this morning and that part was easy. Some of the things are stuff we've been intending to do for a while and some just seem like fun investigative things to look into that we wouldn't have been motivated to do without formalising them into a "challenge". When I look at the list, some of the things seem really obviously appropriate and some seem not to belong, but they do. We'll explain why with each activity.
I'm a little freaked by how much time it's probably going to take to document each of the daily things, when we're both committed to various other projects, but I'm also really excited by the whole thing. There's something about writing about a project that you're doing that makes you take it a bit more seriously, and that makes it a lot more fun.
We're going to pick them randomly, except for the ones that need to be done on weekends and so on. We can also do however many we want at a time, as long as they're all done by the last day of January. Our neighbour Anna was wondering if we'd end up in a 31 Things swat vac nightmare equivalent - with 27 activities left to do on the night before the 31st. I said that if so this would add the requisite drama to the blog.
Anyway, tomorrow's thing is 21. go on a bushwalk. Our friend Maja is picking us up at 10.30 to walk in the hills from Waterfall Gully to Mount Lofty.
So number 31 but the first day of the 31 things. We made a blog!
We came up with the list of things this morning and that part was easy. Some of the things are stuff we've been intending to do for a while and some just seem like fun investigative things to look into that we wouldn't have been motivated to do without formalising them into a "challenge". When I look at the list, some of the things seem really obviously appropriate and some seem not to belong, but they do. We'll explain why with each activity.
I'm a little freaked by how much time it's probably going to take to document each of the daily things, when we're both committed to various other projects, but I'm also really excited by the whole thing. There's something about writing about a project that you're doing that makes you take it a bit more seriously, and that makes it a lot more fun.
We're going to pick them randomly, except for the ones that need to be done on weekends and so on. We can also do however many we want at a time, as long as they're all done by the last day of January. Our neighbour Anna was wondering if we'd end up in a 31 Things swat vac nightmare equivalent - with 27 activities left to do on the night before the 31st. I said that if so this would add the requisite drama to the blog.
Anyway, tomorrow's thing is 21. go on a bushwalk. Our friend Maja is picking us up at 10.30 to walk in the hills from Waterfall Gully to Mount Lofty.
Thirty days have September, April, June and November. All the rest have 31...
Hey there,
We are Cass and John, a couple living together in Adelaide, South Australia. We are artists, writers and environmentalists.
Where we live, the weather has changed noticeably in the last ten years, and in the last 5, the changes have been dramatic. We've known about climate change for years, but suddenly it's too hot here, not just summer fun heat, but regular heatwaves that burn our gardens, and trap us inside for days at a time. There's also less water than there used to be.
There's also the knowledge that this is a global situation and that for most people it's going to be a lot worse than fried lettuce, buckets in the shower and aircon guilt.
Our little town-city, on the plain between the hills and the sea.
At the moment we're trying to balance the fun and excitement of making a house and garden together with our attempts to come to grips with what can regularly feel like an overwhelming crisis. (Just a nod here to Peak Oil, the cousin of climate change in terms of scariness and the potential for generating sustainable behaviour.)
If this introduction seems to be seesawing between cutesy optimism, and genuine freaked-out grief, it's because that's how we're feeling. This blog is our attempt to marry the hope we have for the future with the knowledge that this future is being shaped right now and that our current activities are a part of it.
We think it starts at home, so the fun times around the house are part of our active local response to the crisis.
The 31 Days thing came about through a neighbourhood group we joined last year that's part of a global movement to build resilient communities. It's very similar in concept to groups that are part of the Transition Towns movement; both are about sharing skills and knowledge, supporting local businesses and communities, reducing our dependence on energy and our ecological footprint, all on a very local scale.
We meet once a month, and at the December meeting we decided that in January we'd all take a challenge to do something sustainable.
Now it's the first of January 2010 and we have a list of 31 things we're planning to do this month.
So this will be a very short, very frequently updated blog.
Please feel free to comment!
Cass Flanagan and John Willanski
We are Cass and John, a couple living together in Adelaide, South Australia. We are artists, writers and environmentalists.
Where we live, the weather has changed noticeably in the last ten years, and in the last 5, the changes have been dramatic. We've known about climate change for years, but suddenly it's too hot here, not just summer fun heat, but regular heatwaves that burn our gardens, and trap us inside for days at a time. There's also less water than there used to be.
There's also the knowledge that this is a global situation and that for most people it's going to be a lot worse than fried lettuce, buckets in the shower and aircon guilt.
Our little town-city, on the plain between the hills and the sea.
At the moment we're trying to balance the fun and excitement of making a house and garden together with our attempts to come to grips with what can regularly feel like an overwhelming crisis. (Just a nod here to Peak Oil, the cousin of climate change in terms of scariness and the potential for generating sustainable behaviour.)
If this introduction seems to be seesawing between cutesy optimism, and genuine freaked-out grief, it's because that's how we're feeling. This blog is our attempt to marry the hope we have for the future with the knowledge that this future is being shaped right now and that our current activities are a part of it.
We think it starts at home, so the fun times around the house are part of our active local response to the crisis.
The 31 Days thing came about through a neighbourhood group we joined last year that's part of a global movement to build resilient communities. It's very similar in concept to groups that are part of the Transition Towns movement; both are about sharing skills and knowledge, supporting local businesses and communities, reducing our dependence on energy and our ecological footprint, all on a very local scale.
We meet once a month, and at the December meeting we decided that in January we'd all take a challenge to do something sustainable.
Now it's the first of January 2010 and we have a list of 31 things we're planning to do this month.
So this will be a very short, very frequently updated blog.
Please feel free to comment!
Cass Flanagan and John Willanski
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