The air out there

As of this hour Logan, Provo, Ogden, and Salt Lake City Utah make up 4 of the top 5 highest AQI (Air quality Index which includes particulate matter 2.5 and ozone), in the nation. In other words our air is nasty as hell. This is not a new thing, last week we spend many a days on the top of this list as well... Not necessarily a list you want to be ranking the highest on.

On a normal day we can easily see the Wasatch mountains from our apartment but today you can barely make out the peaks of this normally clear range. It really does scare me, this air that we are breathing. And tomorrow will be worse. Tuesday should get still worse until we get a predicted snow storm to 'clear' out the air in the valley.

 It is amazing to me that people believe that this 'dirty' air is only here during the time of an inversion, that all other times of the year the pollution just disappears and gets taken care of. This inversion, this pollution we are seeing and breathing is that of our waste. Our driving. Our burning fossil fuels. Our wasting of finite resources to make our lives as comfortable as technologically possible (note that I don't say 'humanly possible because we are beyond that point). And yet we find ourselves in this ironic position of being advised not to drive on 'red days', but who really wants to be walking or biking to work when we are being recommended not to breath in this nasty air?

So still we are car-less, and heartily attempt to drive less (including getting less rides, renting less car hours and driving less distances). We are on the brink of ringing in 2010 and we still find ourselves being thought of as strange, weird, immature, idealistic, and many more adjectives because of our lack of car ownership. But we still breathe the same dirty, harmful air that our hummer driving neighbors do....but more likely we are breathing more of it since we have to walk much further distances than to our garage and back.

Maybe we should move out of Salt Lake City.

The glory of winter without a car

There are many, many reasons why it would be nice to own a car in the winter...most of them so obvious that I won't even list them...but, there are also many reasons why it is nice to not own a car in the winter:

• No scraping frozen windows or brushing the snow off your car
• You don't have to worry about getting stuck in the snow
• Although the bus or trax may run a bit late, I don't have to worry about 'snow day' traffic with horrendous commute times
• You don't have to sit in a freezing car and wait for the heater to kick in
• It's fun to walk in slush and snow, it's like ice skating for free! ;)

So anyways, we are coming upon our fourth month without owning a car. Ucarshare has been very nice for running errands that require more "stuff" than we can carry with our hands but UTA has really been our godsend.

We are trying to decide where we will be when spring comes and our lease is up...Jake is pretty determined to remain car-free but we'll see where we end up.

Daylight

There is very little daylight left by the time Jake and I make it home from work, often times it is dark by the time we come home. I've noticed that we have made the dog walks shorter (plus it has been REALLY cold for the past week or so) and we aren't doing anything outside after work like we used to. Not having a car makes this a bit harder, last year at this time we were going to the gym (driving to the gym that is) pretty faithfully but now we can't get motivated to walk or bike both ways in the dark...so we sit at home and get more outta shape. It was our plan to go to the gym tonight- but it is now 8:10 PM, totally dark outside, and I'm not feeling remotely like I want to bike or walk those 7 blocks there (let alone having to walk back after a work-out).

I can't wait till the days get longer.

I stopped by the grocery store on my way home from work today and ended up with 2 fairly heavy paper bags full of groceries. By the time I got home it felt like my arms and hands were gonna fall off! The store is only about 4-5 blocks from our place but when you are carrying some heavy things it feels a whole lot further...

Well, that's about all that I have to add for now, things are going on pretty uneventfully in the car-free area. We ride our bikes (well, just Jake is riding his bike nowdays), walk, take the bus or train, and bum rides off family and friends as needed...otherwise life is pretty much as usual.

The Adventure of using Public Transportation

Yesterday was a somewhat adventurous day when it came to visiting my parents in Kaysville. We decided to take the FrontRunner (Salt Lake City's version of commuter rail) to get from SLC to Kaysville (which is about 25 miles north of the city). In order to get to the FrontRunner station we had to either walk, take the bus, or take TRAX (our light rail system). Well, it ended up that we were running late leaving our house so we decided to walk until we saw a bus that was headed to the frontrunner station...but each time we saw a bus that was going where we needed to go we weren't at a bus stop...so we walked faster, then we ran, then we finally caught the TRAX just one stop away from the station. We got to the station with one minute (literally 1 minute) to spare. Jake had to buy his pass so I kept pushing the 'door open' button on the train so he could run and catch it before it took off. Just as we sat down in our seats, we were off!
Then on our way home there was a fire at one of the oil refineries near the train tracks, so we were able to take the train as far as the Woods Cross station, then had to be bussed from there to the Salt Lake station. From the Salt Lake station we got on TRAX which we took to City Center and from there we walked home. 
Whew, I'm tired just typing about it...this was defiantly not the easiest or fastest way to travel...but it worked, and we kept one more car off the street.

Imagine

So, this week has been a bit easier without a car. Despite the rain.

I saw this shirt a couple of days ago and had to get it for Jake. We have discussed many times about how great it would be if there were more bikes on the road than cars.

Today both of us were off work and walked around the city; to the Gateway, Vosens, grocery shopping, and walking the dogs. It was a really nice day to be outside and not dealing with parking. Tomorrow we'll take the frontrunner to go and visit my mom.

Gotta love public transit, especially when you have a free pass :)

lil' over a month

Well, we have been 'car-free' for over a month now and rather than getting easier I think it is getting more difficult to not have one. There are a couple of big reasons why I am finding it hard: firstly is our dogs, and second is our love of the outdoors...it is especially hard to get both our dogs and the outdoors together anymore. Not that we are die hard hikers but it is nice to be able to throw the dogs in a vehicle when we want, for however long we want and go hike a freakin' mountain. Jake is standing strong, wanting to remain car-free which is good, since I'm ready to cave and just go buy a damn truck.

Now to just teach our dogs to be work dogs

Would we look silly biking up millcreek canyon with two bike trailers carrying our two dogs? Maybe, but I don't see any other option to taking them hiking with us without going out and renting a car for the day. Renting a car everytime you want to go somewhere in the mountains isn't very cheap. Hauling two dogs that way between 60 - 90 lbs. would definatley get us in shape! Although, we would then also be hiking after that... I don't know if I'd trust locking up my bike and trailer to a tree somewhere; I guess I could just 'park' it out in the woods so it would be less noticable. Oh, or we could mountain bike up the trail with our dogs running along side. That's totally doable, right?

I'm not sure we would have any where to store bike trailers if we ever got some. Our little apartment is pretty small as is. We thought about just renting a small storage unit, but then that's not all that convient to having to ride down there each time and pick it up.

In the long run investing in a bike trailer would save us from renting a car each time we need to go do a costco run. One of the larger items that we buy there is Eli's dog food.