Machka 

You did it all on your own, by yourself, in Post 33 ... as Rowan mentions above.

Congratulations ... once again, you single-handedly derailed another thread. Good job. Well done. You should feel so proud. Go on ... pat yourself on the back. Aren't you wonderful. Yet another accomplishment.

tandempower

Idk. Is a suburb 'rural?' To me, the whole region is just part of a large continuous geography you can bike around. It always amuses me nowadays when I'm biking and I encounter a sign that says I'm crossing a county line. I can remember thinking such boundary lines really existed geographically when I was young, instead of just as political references.

I used to spend weekends camping in a land-preserve, which I thought of as a weekend home in the country. This was back when you could see tents pitched here and there practically everywhere you went. Nowadays I don't see tents like I used to and it's sad. I'm happy that some of those people may have gotten more permanent dwellings and thus decided to stop camping, but it's nice to be able to get away for the weekend and pitching a tent is the lowest-impact way to do that.

Wrong. "This land is your land, this land is my land; this land was made for you and me."

tandempower

Post #33 was a response to Rowan's post #32, specifically where he said there's nothing wrong with never going car-free. My only point was that there's not nothing wrong with it. It's understandable, but there's not nothing wrong with it. Still, anytime I mention that, people will debate it so maybe the key to not derailing threads is for people to stop debating whether or not it's ok not to go LCF.

The simple reality is that it's not ok to fail at LCF, but that doesn't mean everyone is going to succeed. People aren't perfect. Situations, circumstances, and conditions aren't perfect. Reality isn't perfect.

Machka 

Nope.

Rural is ... rural.

country, countryside, pastoral, rustic, bucolic; agricultural, farming, agrarian ...

Even small towns, like the smallest one I lived in with 400 people, isn't really rural, but small towns might qualify as borderline rural.

Suburbs are not rural.


The location where Rowan and I lived for my first year in Australia was rural: https://www.flickr.com/photos/machka...57623277367498 Yes, those are the photos I took during that year.

The location where Rowan lived (car free) before his place was destroyed in the 2009 Victorian Bushfire was rural too, and wasn't far from the location in the photos in the album linked above.

tandempower

I guess it just depends on what it means to 'live' in an area. As I said, I used to go camp in the woods on weekends in what you would call a rural area. I also sometimes take 100+ mile bike tours where I camp along the way in the woods. You will probably say camping isn't the same thing as 'living' there, but then if someone lives in a rural area and commutes to the city, is that really'rural' living or is it essentially suburban living where the rural homestead functions as suburban 'bedroom community?'

Who truly 'lives' rural anymore, meaning lives self-sufficiently out in the country on a farm without interacting with the city/cities?

Machka 

Live means to dwell in an area for some time ... longer than camping for a weekend, longer than camping for a week or two.

Live means that's your primary home, at which you reside ... if your primary home was your tent and you were able to camp in an area for a while (longer than a weekend, of course), that might be considering living in an area.

Live means that you are carrying out day to day life from that location. You're getting groceries, you're working, going to school, visiting the library, going to church, doing other shopping, etc. etc. etc. ... whatever your day-to-day life contains.

When you live in a rural area, that doesn't mean you never go into a city or town. It simply means that your place of residence is in a rural area. And chances are you go to the city infrequently.

Speaking as someone who has lived in a rural area, we would make trips into the nearby (30 km away) small town (pop 2500) about once a week, and then we'd make trips into a city (75+ km away) about once every 6 weeks.



(I can't believe I'm defining the word "live" here! And "rural"! )

tandempower

For a while, I was looking at parcels of land in the area I was camplng. I was also looking to rent and/or barter a camping spot. If I had property or a spot to camp permanently without the risk of harassment and/or forced removal, I could live out there and shop at the Dollar General store, if I had the money. I don't know of many places in the southeastern US that are more than 10 or 20 miles to a city/town. You could LCF in such places, but your daily walks would probably not involve sidewalks.

Commuting to a job is the hard part. Many people in this area commute/drive from rural areas into the city for work, but I would call that just another form of suburban living. To me, if you're driving 50+ miles a day to live in a rural homestead, it's about the same as biking 10 miles a day, because the commute time is about the same. In Alaska, I think some people do it with airplanes instead of cars/bikes.

Machka 

Living rurally usually means that your neighbours are some distance away. In our case, our nearest neighbours were about 2 km away.

In suburbs, at most you might only be a couple hundred metres away from your neighbours. Suburbs are more like small-medium sized towns.

And if you're lucky, like we were, you can work rurally too ... or in a nearby small town.


But therein lies the problem presented in the original post. If a person, like the OP, lives rurally ... how might such a person manage to be car free?

From our experience living rurally, we've suggested that it is a challenge and that perhaps car light is the solution for now.

jon c. 

The same can be said of procreation.

tandempower

In terms of LCF vs. driving, I think it helps to look at the motor as changing your scale of distance/time. So when your neighbors are 2km away, that's like being a few hundred meters away in bike distance (sort of like translating 'human years' into 'dog years'). So in this sense I think you could say that living in a rural area by car is comparable to living in a suburb by bike. Also, note that suburbs gained popularity in the 1950s as a way to live out in the country without really living an agricultural lifestyle.

As I said, it depends on money and grocery shopping, mainly. If I moved to the rural area where I used to camp on weekends, there is a Dollar General store where I could get many food supplies. Then I would probably take a 10-15 mile ride on weekends to a Walmart for things not sold at the Dollar General. In some areas you'd have to bike further, I think. You might spend the whole weekend biking to a store for supplies and then camp before spending sunday biking home (actually you'd probably camp first and shop in the morning so you didn't have to leave your groceries in your bike trailer overnight). This is all assuming you have a m-f job that prevents you from taking multi-day trips to do shopping.

If you need a job, and the nearest job you can find is far away, it's going to be tempting to give up LCF. It's also going to be tempting to move closer to your job. When you live in/near a city, it is tempting to get a parcel of land out in the country to have a vacation home/campsite; but if you want to make your country home your permanent address then it is tempting to get a parcel of land or other place to say near where you work so you don't have to come home at the end of every workday, if doing so involves a long bike ride.

I don't think there are many people serious enough about LCF, who are also serious about rural living, to invest in these kinds of split lifestyles. It's not like in the past when rural living was a real thing. Nowadays, rural living is more of an aesthetic choice that has driving as par for the course. I.e. driving is the foundation for rural living, and even for suburban living in many areas. You can choose to LCF, and doing so is like trading in modern automotive 'rural' living for real rural living, the way people lived before there was motorized transportation; but it's a completely different thing, I think, like being Amish. I don't think many people choose rural living because they want to live Amish; they just want the aesthetics/scenery and maybe cheap land in abundance.

If you prioritize rural living over LCF, of course you're going to live car light, or just drive. If you really want to LCF in a rural area, you have to think in terms of self-sufficiency/homesteading. You can't be commuting for a daily job. You could grow/raise your own food and stay at home that way. You could get satellite internet and telecommute or play the stock market if you are able to do that for money. You could make jewelry and carry it by bike to a jeweler somewhere every couple weeks.

It sounds like you or the people living rurally just want to be validated in giving up the prospect of LCF in rural areas for some reason. I guess people feel some kind of moral pressure to choose LCF and they want someone to tell them it's ok not to, or to live car light instead. I don't look at it that way. A car is a machine, like a lawnmower or a generator. If you use it, you are contributing to the industrial society that goes along with it as an accessory. With a lawnmower or generator, there are factories for parts, refineries and gas stations for fuel, oil fields for drilling, oil tankers for shipping it across the seas, etc. You're contributing to those if you live car light, but you're also contributing to them by shopping at stores that ship goods by truck.

So you really have to ask yourself what kind of society do you want. Do you want urban LCF with rural driving? What about if everyone decides to move out to the country because they want to drive instead of LCFing? Do you want rural living to be more conducive to LCF, e.g. by having more telecommuting opportunities or by being able to migrate to a migrant work camp for a couple weeks every few months or something to that effect? It's dumb to just say there's a reality and it demands driving, car light etc. If you want to LCF, you have to forge a vision for how you want to live without driving and then figure out what it takes to realize that vision, and what the bottlenecks are. If you are just looking for a way to accept a reality that you surrender to, you're not going to get very far with LCF, because the automotive culture has pretty much brought LCF to surrender during the last century or so.

Walter S

If you're at a campground then maybe so. Otherwise I prefer the lower impact I find with a hammock.

tandempower

Comparing procreation to buying a car is like comparing the value of human life to the value of robot life.

Mobile 155

It doesn't do any good to answer you point for point because you will simply drag the topic farther and farther away from what people are talking about with your Jabberwocky and redefining words into some form only you use or understand. If there are no real rural places to live you aren't eating. So you are wrong there is rural living, period. Don't wiggle, flex ,redefine or pontificate about how some book or movie found a way to feed people with growing, farming, ranching or having a orchard. In short you are blowing smoke and have no clue about what you are talking about. You didn't know why trees don't grow above the tree line. You didn't know why the great plains had so few trees. And you don't know there are still legitimate rural areas even within cycling distance of LA. There are separations between towns, counties, states for a reason and it doesn't matter one bit that "you" don't feel there should be. So you are wrong again. There is private property and you will not talk the nation into believing there isn't so you are wrong once more. So in reality there are people living in rural areas and they can or cannot make LCF a priority but that was what the question was about in the first place. So if you simply ride through such an area it still exist, and it is still a real area, and there are still people farming, ranching, growing things. Another place you are wrong. If you like I am sure I can post a few pictures or a rural area not 10 miles from me. I bet Machka and others can as well. So don't try blowing smoke up our skirt with they no longer exist simply because you don't recognize them and think the are suburbs. Some rural areas may have been converted but if you are eating fruit and vegetables all year long there are rural areas.

Now as you so often say, if you want to make this a social/political/economic discussion head of to P&R and and I am sure you can post to your hearts content about non on topic propaganda. Could you please just let one thread travel along the lines of the OP?

elocs

Just off the top of my head...why in the frock would anybody choose to come into a forum about living car free to one degree or another, indicating that the people who post in the forum have a desire to live car free as much as they can, and post that there's nothing wrong with never going car free? What is the point of doing that?

tandempower

I'll give you that one. I've tried sleeping in a hammock but I couldn't do it. I can sleep on the ground without a pad, but not a hammock.

Mobile 155

Here is a clue. Living Car Free Do you live car free or car light? Do you prefer to use alternative transportation (bicycles, walking, other human-powered or public transportation) for everyday activities whenever possible? Discuss your lifestyle here.

It was once debated over several pages and several tries if this was indeed a Car Free, not using a car for anything forum. Most were not inclined to say that. So if the best you can do is car light that has been acceptable under the guidelines posted at the top of the forum page. I am sure it can be correct if I am wrong. I am not putting a stake down however.

Walter S

I think what he's saying is that you should be car free but if you "fail" at that it's still acceptable at least on some level. Then again, if you don't even try then you're scum and should not show your face in public.

jon c. 

The majority of people who live car free do so because it works for them, not because they think it is wrong to drive a car.

elocs

My point is that the forum is about "Living Car Free" and not "It's OK to Never Live Car Free" and that the people who post here have a desire to live car free to one degree or another.
Would somebody go into the Electric Bike forum and post that there's nothing wrong with never owning an electric bike or into the Recumbent forum just to say there's nothing wrong with never owning a recumbent? If you don't like it or don't want to do it, then why post about it?
I've only posted to these forums here for a couple of months but man are there ever some pissy and argumentative posters.

Rowan

And it didn't take YOU long to become one of them, here and elsewhere.

If you are that pissy about the content of this thread, where is YOUR constructive contribution to living car free in a rural location? I know you don't own a car, and ride a recumbent or two, and are retired from a physically demanding job, but have you lived car free in a remote location away from instant access to supermarkets, medical assistance, jobs and education? If so, what were the challenges YOU faced, and how did YOU overcome them?

If you have, then you can become one of us, who post about actually having experienced these situations, rather than theorise... and be pissy.

PLUS, while I am at it, if someone expressed an interest in buying a recumbent for maybe riding 30% of the time compared with 70% of their diamond frame, would yo tell them to piss off (seeing you like that term so much) because they would fail at being a recumbent rider? For someone of your age and seeming maturity, your argument about car light is as naive as tandempower's.

The thing is, living car free is not something that you can force on people, but -- and there are always pissy people who will whine and say this isn't effective -- but change comes incrementally. Stepping stones. Pathways. People can learn about the practicalities and tool of living car free, but they inevitably will react badly when forced to do something or are dictated by someone who can't even relate their own personal experience!

I've just a casual vox pop in another forum about this one. It is, sadly, held at some level of ridicule by BF members who ironically are to some degree, living car free already. That is how bad this situation has become here. Worthwhile people who don't want to contribute because thread inevitably devolve into philosofests that serve little to no purpose.

[And just so you are aware of it, old cock, I was car free for over a decade, including six years living in a rural location, so don't preach to me about being pissy when someone continues to dismantle and divert threads that have worth and I can contribute to, just because they want to be the centre of attention with their naive nonsense. Finally, every time ANYONE is riding a bicycle, or walking, they aren't driving a motor vehicle and are living, in that moment, car free.]

tandempower

You are wiggling/flexing/redefining the identity of a rural place to lump everyone who drives back and forth between a city and a house in the country together with farmers who produce food. You know that a minority of people living in rural areas are living any different from suburbanites in practice, yet you slyly associate 'rural' as being equivalent to food-producers. This is pure spin.

Ad hom reference to something outside of this thread.

What I'm saying is that it doesn't matter whether you define an area as rural or suburban. If people live there the same way they live in a suburb, it's suburban living, not rural.

Nor does it matter that you support them.

What does private property have to do with this discussion?

If they aren't making LCF a priority, why would they be participating in this forum?

Some people are doing those things, yes. Others are mowing their grass and landscaping and driving into the cities for work and shopping, like other suburbanites.

There are some fruit-bearing trees in the cities and some vegetable gardens too, but that doesn't make them rural, does it? The smoke-blowing you're doing is defining the identity of a place and then defining people according to where they live and not what they do. A suburbanite is a suburbanite, whether they're living in rural area or just outside the city limits. I consider myself a suburbanite, but I do it LCF.

If you read my previous post to Machka, I discussed nothing other than how to LCF in a rural area. You're the one starting a debate with lots of ad hom collateral and identity/definitional issues, as you typically do. I'm surprised you haven't started another discussion of whether there should even be a thread on rural LCF in this forum because car-light isn't car-free.

tandempower

I can't speak for Rowan, but I believe his point is to make people feel comfortable and not judged. I also don't want people to feel judged, but I don't think that saying there's nothing wrong with not going LCF is the way to do it. I think you have to acknowledge that there are circumstances and it's not the end of the world if you don't go LCF, but there are consequences of car ownership and driving that don't go away just because you have no other practical choice in your situation. If anything, I would like to have more discussions about the specific effects of various choices and lifestyles, but I think the mods could view that as P&R, as they do so many things I would be interested in discussing more in LCF.

jon c. 

That which does not exist is generally thought to be without value.

If we reduce the human population, we reduce the negative environmental impact that human civilization causes.

Mobile 155

Do you live or have you lived car free in a rural area? Not trespassed but had a residence and address in a rural area?

Rowan

One of the constants about living in rural areas is the postal service, at least here in Australia. Every town above 500 or so people has a postal service of some sort, whether that is attached to a supermarket, or a fully fledged post office.

In may case, the post office was attached to a general store in a small town about six kilometres away from my home. It was while living there that I cottoned on to how eBay and mail order in general has worked for decades to well in so many countries such as Australia, the US and Canada. Place you order on the computer and Hey Presto!, within a fortnight something sent from the other side of the world was waiting at the post office to be picked up.

The first picture here is of the box that contained my single-wheel trailer, and the second shows one of the uses for the trailer. The first picture also shows that with a simple rack and some imaginative use of cords, quite bulky loads can be put on the back of ordinary bikes.