Car Free Without Being a Douche, Part 1

You are two parents. You are the parent that you are going to be before you have kids and know everything there is about kids, then there is the parent you become after you have kids and realize you don't know shit. Part of this is realizing the importance of leading by example. What do your everyday choices say to your kids? About the importance of community or environment?

One aspect where this has come into play is with transportation. I've always loved cars, but with kids there aren't many any practical options which are fun to drive. Resigning myself to my fate, I got rid of the kicking rad 6 speed and purchased a Ford Flex the month after the short one was born. Yes, it did the job. It carried my children safely from point A to point B (And C, D, E, F...),with a minimum of fuss. It just wasn't any fun. I was bored, and when it feels like you're constantly taking the kids places, you realize how much of their time is just sitting in the car. Some of that is unavoidable, but it really felt like wasted time. All of this time was spent focusing on my kids' growth and development, but then so much time is just spent sitting there.

Then it hit me. Literally - on the way back from a run at the beach with the short one and the dog, we were smashed into by a Japanese compact. Everyone was fine, but my car was barely repairable, which meant I spent two and a half months without a car. I was allowed a loaner car, but I was curious to see, given this opportunity, how much I would actually use one.

The first step was to get a bus pass and start taking transit to do the preschool drop off. The biggest issue here was the location of where we were renting. Because it's a ridiculously wealthy area on the way to the university (lot price starts at 2 million, and that's for a teardown - I'm not ridiculously wealthy, we were renting one of those houses waiting to be torn down), you don't get a lot of transit users. There are some semi regular buses, but they're non-existent on the weekends and in the summer. This was a short term problem since we were planning on moving anyway.

What was interesting about taking the bus is how educational it is for a kid in an urban setting. There's the social aspect of greeting the driver and sitting next to other people and kids on the bus. You can't dawdle, because otherwise the bus just gets going. Pulling the cord for your stop means kids start to learn a bit more about their neighborhood, where they live, and where they go. Sitting in a car just doesn't require any sort of attention. He's knows generally where we're going based on what streets I turn down, but there's no participation. He now knows the skytrain stations, and which ones are where we catch the bus, which one is his preschool, and most importantly, which one has a smoothie stand.

It's also just more enjoyable for him. He loves trains and buses. One of our rewards is being able to watch skytrain videos (yes, they exist.) Trains are practically a diagnostic criteria for autism. He was never into Thomas the Train all that much, but actual trains and public transit have always held a certain fascination. It's nice being able to have a keen interest of his translate into something that could be a useful skill for him.

The public transit experiment has been a success. We've recently (as of 3 weeks ago), moved into a new house which is located right next to a major transit intersection which means it's more convenient than before.

The second part of the experiment? Biking. To be continued, with the subtitle "Big Kid Problems."