I'm gonna get flamed, but when I go to car free I feel like I am talking to those caveman dudes from the Geico commercial.


"I'm really not very hungry"

While Commuting and Car-Free have their common points, there's enough differences to merit having the two separate forums. I'm a commuter, and I live quite a bit of my life car-free. I can get my groceries, dry-cleaning, movies, etc. all on my bike. I need a car to get to the places I go hiking and mountaineering, though. Some of the peaks I climb are over 100 miles away from where I live. It's not like I can ride a century with 80 pounds of mountaineering gear, climb 7,000 feet and come back down to ride another century back home.

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.

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?

We're talking about splitting some fine hairs the way I see it, when the vast population of the nation is completely dependant on driving and can't fathom vehichle independance, and there's a minority which bike commutes some of the time, and a smaller minority which bike commutes all of the time (and doesn't own a car).

We're all on a bicycle forum, talking about actually riding bikes, right? I guess it's just that there's always people who are aggressive, no matter *what* the subject is, it's just their nature to gripe. Well, it's my nature to look at the positives as much as possible, band together, and try to be a support.
~jen

In my case its more a question of wishing the Living Car-Free forum would be, you know, actually ON TOPIC and not filled with car-use apologists*. I get enough of that every day. I need to find a moderated car-free forum... well, actually, this is a moot point because I don't really have time to keep up with forums anymore.

*Not a reference to those car-light and truly making an effort.

IT's great that there's a CarFree forum to add to Commuter. I guess the lifestyle of CarFree is more political for some than others -- more about what they AINT rather than what they ARE.

This thread brought up a question, now I see the answer, however, I'll admit I'm a tad discouraged and self conscious about stepping into the CarFree forum, and certainly don't want to be any sort of an apologist. I'm dang proud of myself for making an effort, and everyone else out there who is. A bicycle commuter is just the most beautiful thing there is, more wonderful than a jar of roses.... the way I see it, bicycle commuting is nobler than any other cause. It merits equal ranking with Mother Theresa!

~Jen

They really aren't that bad in Car Free...I drop in from time-to-time with a smart-arsed comment and haven't had any bicycle-riding suicide bombers going after my pickup!

Heh, heh.... if such are barking dogs in general, why provoke them to chase?

I went car free for a year in my early thirties when I was finishing a degree and the transmission on my old car went out. Although this was more out of necessity than choice and only until I got done with school when the plan was to get another car. But you are right. It worked well for that situation when my life was focused on campus, most everything I needed I could get in the neighborhood I lived in, I was single, and I had good public transportation to back me up. I still try to commute to work as much as possible but my life is more complex again and it is no longer practical for me.

OH hey.. heh, heh... I *just* got the footnote reference, as 'apologists' who don't bicycle commute , but perhaps are what I call 'sport consumers' ? There's a whole bunch of categories the cyclists fall into, but in my personal perspective, those who ride for sport exclusively are divided from those who ride for transportation some/all of the time.

Yet... I have been sport roadie rider, atb trailrider, and transportation rider, (a brief time of CarFree) --- and am sympathetic to all cyclists and our/their seemingly elitist illusions.... .

jus' doin my job, ma'am. We haven't been formally introduced, I am the Klass Klown of BF. Damn proud to meetchya!

A perfect sub-topic sprouts from this post :

How many of the CarFree folks do so out of complete choice?

How many don't drive or own a car because it's not an option?

Thus is a finer splitting of hairs among the CarFree cyclists....

I haven't gone into Car Free in a while just cuz it doesn't relate to me and isn't all that interesting. I've lived car free before and never thought of it as a sacrifice, just a practical and less expensive way to live. At the time, I wasn't a bike commuter either. I like the Commuting forum because I am a commuter and it's pretty light-hearted in here most times.

Heh, heh... in no time I 'spose I'll be known as the philisophical Forum Mom who is overly supportive and breaks up the fights.

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.

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.

Thanks Chris, for the "inside" on that . I value imput from CarFree folks, immensely !

Personally, I am very open minded to everyone because I spent a solid decade working in a great grassroots Mom & Pop bike shop, and enjoyed meeting cyclists of all kinds, from the socially challenged/quazi street people, to the diehard commuters, the racers, the roadie sport 'hobbyists', to the dirt surfer atb-ers.

I love it all, and respect it all. We all have the two wheels and the pedals in common!

~jen

I have never been in the Car Free Forum but that's interesting. I have found that some of the most contentious threads on the Commuting Forum have been the utility/European bike threads. They also tend to be quite idealistic and at times rather pretentious. Just from the subject by itself it would seem logical that they might be drawing some of the same crowd.

I am wondering, what liberties do you feel that you would loose if more people went carfree? I am in China where most of the population is carfree and am able to see how it works out.
So, please, what do you feel that you would loose? I would like to be able to compare yor concers with the reality that exists in a carfree environment.

It won't be long now before we can put the hamburgers on.

I'm not carfree because I'm an antique and classic car enthusiast. I wish the Carfree forum was more concerned with shopping etc, rather than car-bashing.

Paul

Thing is commuting and hauling furniture home on your rear rack (I have) are totally different things.

Commuting can be easy, car-lite is a bit tougher, but you still have that security blanket...things get too big, use the car.

A car-free person either has to rent a vehicle (technically car-lite), or they tweak their bike to do what they want it to....in my case I have a plate I bolt onto the rack to hold oversized boxes, adjustable straps and bungies to hold htings in place, cargo netting to hold smaller objects on top of the boxes, and I've even learned how to dismount by swinging my leg over the handlebars....since there is so much stuff piled up on the back of the bike.

That's on a mountain bike with a "heavy duty" rear rack.

That's the difference....most carfree folks are trying to make a bike do car-like tasks. This requires a bit of work. The rest are just car-lite folks who need a little encouragement from time to time....it's hard to get on that bike somedays, but at the end of the day I'm grateful that I did.

Anyone who doesn't like my carfree (carefree?) attitude is free to buy me one!

I don't mind the idea of having a car, I just don't want to pay for one.
:

Thread from some time ago. https://www.bikeforums.net/showthread...hlight=popular

Basically, what concerns me is that a rise in the popularity of cycling might just lead to governments wanting to start taxing cyclists, or to more restrictions on places we can ride.

Living carfree in the U.S. often involves lifestyle adaptations that take a person somewhat away from the mainstream culture.

The emphasis in the commuting forum is more on how to ride a bike to work and still fit into the mainstream.

I'm carfree but I don't commute to work. I occasionally chime in on this sub forum because I used to bike commute quite a bit. The past commuting experiences have largely shaped the way I think about transportation and living in general.

Carfree living isn't something whose time has come for most of the U.S. My personal opinion is that economic forces on the tectonic scale will slowly encourage more of us to look at carfree living. Right now I see carfree living as an experimental lifestyle where all the bugs aren't yet ironed out.

Living car free was easy in the military...probably could have kept it up too, but I lost my looks and my chances of being a kept man after I got out.

I dont think I've ever visited car free forum. Probably because gas consumption, peak oil, enviroment i could care less about.

I commute by bike because its free exercise time, as in I dont need to give up any of my free time after work in order to work out.