there is a really good article about someone going car free

https://www.cicle.org/cicle_content/p...hp?id=113#body

that is the link to part one where she is just mainly taking public transportation, part two she gets more into biking.

nice article, glad she put time into her bike riding, not like some othes who do it for a day, hate it, then go back to thier lazy self driving around in thier car or truck.

That was quite the article. She put into words a few concepts I had been pondering about my cycling commute. Specifically, the slow down affect it has on my life those days that I commute via bike. The class portion of the article was a bit interesting. I have never thought of it that way. hum.......

Nice article, but I wouldn't use it to promote bike riding. I think most folks would read it and be put off the bike for fear of becoming "community-living", granola-eating hippies (see part two).

I liked it. She communicated a lot of the changes in her life that snowballed from cycling. I find that I have made, or desire to make, a lot of the same changes.

It's an article that details her distinctive point of view, and in its way it's charming. It does clearly give the impression that cycling is an alternative lifestyle, though-- an activity to go hand in hand with your compost heap and solar panels. I'm not sure her reassurances about body odor are going to have the desired effect on persuadable audiences, either.

I began cycling primarily to *avoid* mass transit. I was willing to pay just about any cost necessary to get off of the bus. How liberating it was to get away from that hell on earth.

I still feel this way about mass transit, so much so that, for those who aim to proselytize, I suggest *not* comparing cycling to mass transit. The Critical Mass crowd eats that kind of thing up, but other people will not.

Like this woman, I began commuting in L.A. At the time, though, there was no internet, and no other commuters I could see. I just started doing it. My first surprise was that cycling was faster than the bus getting around the city. Believe it or not I was not prepared for that. It was as if I had discovered some great secret. I was perfectly willing to endure large time costs to get more exercise and to get off of that squalid coach. When I discovered that cycling was faster anyway, well, that was the beginning of the riding I still do today.

Where I live now, no one cycles for any reason except drunks and criminals. No one except me, that is. I sometimes get looked over twice in the supermarket or the electronics store. My clothing isn't ratty, though, and I carry myself and speak as if I feel entitled to first-class treatment. That does the trick as far as reassuring employees. They figure I'm a fitness nut or an environmentalist whackjob. Either way, harmless.