The secret to car free living!

We've been warned that it may a long cool to cold spring, so much as I'm longing to trade out the winter coat for something lighter that day hasn't come yet.   Today I was reading a blog entry by someone who has lived car free for 10 years.  Makes my 1 1/2 years feel like such a neophyte!  There is no question that this winter has been a challenge sometimes.   We've never not been able to get somewhere we wanted to be, but being car free makes one acutely aware of how much snow we've had and how often another polar vortex has snuck down out of Canada.


This past week we went to a Komets hockey game we had tickets for.  We took Citilink up to the Coliseum, but bus service ends for the day before the game was over so we had planned to walk home.  We made it in just under half an hour.   Thursday I went to hear Brian McLaren speak at church.  We took dinner with us and ate with Mike at the newspaper cafeteria and then walked down the block to Plymouth.   Today Pete is playing chess with the chess club at the library (his first time here) and I'm typing elsewhere in the building.  Tomorrow we'll go see Youtheatre's production of Willie Wonka.  We aren't lacking for  places to go and things to do.  Besides "How do you grocery shop?", the second most asked question I get is:   "Do you ever go out to do anything?  How do you do it without a car?"     I think Zachary Shahan answered it best in his blog.  Ask any realtor and they will tell you the same thing.  It all comes down to Location, Location, Location.

Living in the Lakeside neighborhood of Fort Wayne is for us one of the main keys that makes car free living work.  We have easy access to several bus routes, to downtown, to work. to entertainment, to our chosen houses of worship, to homeschool activities, to shopping.  I wouldn't call our location perfect, but it is very workable for us.

Now if spring would just finally arrive and stay for more than a day at a time!

Run Away!!

We've been singing a lot of Spamalot songs at my house the last couple of days! We had tickets to go see it this past Sunday and it was even funnier than I remembered if from a few years ago when Mike and I saw the Broadway version in Chicago with friends. 

Also, Pete got the warped Monty Python humor! (Should I be worried?) 

We watched the movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail a week or so ago to kind of catch Pete up to speed on all things Monty Python.  We also read up a bit on King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table  (a very round table).

The funny thing was how multiple parts of life tie back together.  Last fall Pete took a math class that used the Sir Cumference books  (which are loosely based on the Arthurian legends)  As we were coming home from the play he started talking about that and made the connection himself.  One of the gifts of homeschooling - all sorts of things are learning experiences!