Originally Posted by guenevere
I've come to understand that though CarFree is the ultimate lifestyle for many people-- however sadly, only a minority of people can ctually pull it off. To be CarFree, one must :
~ live inside a reasonable perimeter of the city. If a person is rather isolated in location, they must have means of income where they don't have to leave the house daily.
~ make many sacrifices as to recreation, travel, and ease of mobility, and that seems to be an issue for many (not me so much, I rarely leave my town).
~ have relatively temperate climate to do it regularly, though I understand there are those rare brave individuals who are bicycle mobile in the worst weather.
It's much simpler than that. To be carfree a person simply has to want to do it badly enough. I've ridden through torrential rain, hail, floods, dust storms and cyclonic winds with impunity. I've ran errands as long as 198km in a day. Public transport in this city is a joke, but the money I save in not owning a car allows me to make the occasional use of a taxi and still come out in front. It's also allowed me to travel to places that I wouldn't have been able to visit otherwise. The mobility is actually easier on my bike because I don't have to sit in gridlock for two hours each day, and can go places that motor vehicles can't. I can also put my bike on buses, planes, ferries or trains if I need to travel to another city (which doesn't happen very often). I don't consider it to be a sacrifice at all, quite the opposite.
In the end, however, this doesn't appeal to the majority of people, which is fine by me. In fact, I'm glad more people don't take it up in a way because a lot of the liberties I now enjoy in that lifestyle would be threatened. In life, people make choices. The decision to get married and/or have children is a choice. The decision to live 50 miles from where you work is a choice. It's not that people can't pull it off, it's just that they choose not to, which is their right. I just choose to do things differently.
Originally Posted by guenevere
I've come to understand there *is* a necessity perhaps to divide the Car Free from the Car Lite, and can appreciate it, and can find my place. Likely only ironically did the CarFree forum become the Entire Bike Forum's inner nemesis. (I mean, why insult ANYBODY who comes to a bike forum to become involved?) There are those of us who might be car free some day, who are possibly in the process of weaning from a lifestyle which exclusively depends on a vehichle. Hooray for them! Hooray for all of us who ride instead of drive! I do find it fascinating how many of the minority of Car Free folks hurdle the very difficult obstacles-- indeed a challenge ! But, why the judgements, I don't understand this tremendous friction between Car Free and Car Lite...we're brothers and sisters in the same cause... really, what is there to fight about?
It's human nature to sneer at people who are different. That doesn't make it right, but it just happens. When you add the anonymity of the Internet, you've basically got the perfect environment for friction. It doesn't just happen here, but on every Internet forum covering virtually every conceivable topic. They basically banned people from discussing issues like this outright over at bikejournal.com because of the flame wars over there. Even among people on the same side on any debate, there will always be the "hard core" element who feel the need to sneer at everybody else. Indeed, this post has probably set up the environment for an attack from certain members who shall remain nameless.
In the end, the best thing to do is to look at the separate fora for the value they provide individually. In both there is useful information to be found for people who want to be carfree, carlite or whatever else. Just focus on that and treat the rest as light entertainment.
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That is all.