Hey ya'll, looking to car-free parents out there. I'm considering dumping our junker car which is only used when my wife has the other car at work about 15 miles away.

We didn't need a second car until our daughter came along, and we'll probably shoot for another somewhere along the line here. I have several way to carry my daughter on my bikes, the real issue is carrying her in rain and carrying her in snow/cold. I figure if I can manage to sell the car I'd have extra cash from that to make sure she was snuggly warm either on the back of my Big Dummy in a PeaPod or in the Burley Solo that I sometimes pull her in.

Denver has pretty mild winters and my wife only works 3 days a week (but she is gone all day when she does). In general, I'm only bringing the little one to daycare or sometimes running short errands on days she isn't around.

I suppose on occasion, I also like to go do things in the mountains on the weekends which could screw with these plans as well.

I'm hoping the creativity of the Car Free Crowd might help me come up with all the work arounds necessary to make this a reality. What do you say?

-Dave

Just one thought off hand. People did have babies back before there were cars, and it got cold and rainy then too.

Roody, not particularly helpful but I appreciate the insight. People also didn't have two income families.

It would work perfectly if neither of us had to go to work. But until I'm independently wealth I'll need to find another way to make it so. Any concrete suggestions?

I can think of several options; depending on where you live in the Denver area...mass transit? Rental car for the few times you want to head off into the wilds. Kids don't melt and with proper clothes and a bit of weather protection they will survive just fine. Also look into a Bakfiets for transportation, expensive, not suited to steep climbs, but will give you protected child carrying capabilities and one helluva workout!

Aaron

Being without children and averse to northern climates such as Colorado I can't deal in specifics.

In your case, I'd keep the car around and then live like you don't own it. Find out what works and what doesn't. You'll have the car as backup just in case all else fails. Then next year about this time, you can have a going away party for the car.

Don't they make child-sized "mummy" sleeping bags? One of those inside a covered trailer would work wonders.

This sounds like good advice because I am not convinced that the David is ready to let go just yet. Perhaps he could do this in the same way I started. When I made the decision to bike to work, for example, I started with 3 days a week... any three days conditions were good. This quickly lead to 4 and then 5 days a week. In the meantime, I discovered a great bus route for a backup. I also learned how to travel in rain and then in snowy conditions.

It would be good to made a formal note of when the backup car was really used. This will be useful because if you follow your plan, it will be rarely used and other backup plans will emerge. Keeping a record will let you know when the time has come to let the car go.

I just meant that the babies survived being outdoors in rainy and cold weather. (But now that you mention it, I'm pretty sure that parents back then also worked a hell of a lot harder than we work today, whether they had an income or not.) So my concrete suggestion is that maybe you underestimate the baby's ability to thermoregulate.

It's funny how long it can take to find out all the slick tricks. With my backup bus it took a hour and a half to get to work by bus. But after a year plus, I figured out that I could cut half an hour off the time if I got off one bus at a very particular stop and walked two blocks to catch another. The time-tables didn't offer enough info to make that leap. It was just sitting waiting for the buses and experimenting that allowed me to make that discovery.

That is the major problem with most mass transit, the scheds don't show the obvious, local on the ground experience is the way to go and sometimes that learning curve can be steep.

Aaron

There really is a knack to riding the bus. It's weird that they teach kids how to drive in public schools, but they don't teach them how to ride the bus.

God forbid we teach them anything really useful or based on common sense!

Aaron