Homeschooling in Fort Wayne - car-free style!

 

Waiting for the bus after being at Eagle Marsh in March.

A thread in a homeschool group got me thinking about something I've meant to do for a while: post about what we do activity-wise as a homeschooling family.   This year my son has: played soccer, taken an 8 week personal safety class, gone to a weekly art classes and theater drama classes,  been part of an ongoing writing workshop, gone to regular homeschool science classes/labs, scouts,religious education, kids choir, volunteered at a local nature area, book clubs,  semi-monthly Field Trip Friday program at the library.  None of those activities has involved a car.   Living in a city that has a large,vibrant homeschool community certainly helps!  Living in proximity to the downtown, and a bus line doesn't hurt either! 

This summer he is signed up for the usual array of sports and day camps, and once again we will tackle them car-free, by bike and bus.   Like many homeschoolers we are frequently asked the question - when are you ever actually at home?!  For all the use we make of community resources, there is still plenty of learning going on at home. And that is one place you most certainly don't need a car to arrive at!


The trips often do take more time than driving in the car would, but there are some positive trade-offs we've found too.  Trips that are within a mile to mile and a half are generally made on foot, or bike.  We get lots more exercise (without having to pay the Y) and more time to do the kind of talking that walking often brings about. Observations about activity in the neighborhood have led to new topics to study.  Bus trips have been a great motivator for keeping to a schedule.  You want to go to art class? Well we have to leave in ten minutes or miss the bus, and that means missing art. That means you need to find your shoes, and put on your coat now!  When riding on the bus, I sit next to my son, not in the front seat like his chauffeur.  Makes talking to him, not at him much easier (and conversations a lot more fun.)

John Wesley once famously said "The world is my parish."  As homeschoolers we have always believed that the whole community is our classroom.  Walking and biking through it, and sharing the bus with a wide array of people from the community brings that home in many different ways that seeing our town through the rolled-up windows of our car never did.

There is a level of mindfulness that is required that I didn't have to practice when I drove everyday.  Sometimes I don't want to be mindful, I just want the convenience of motorized transportation in my driveway.  Those are the times my faith kicks in.  For our family becoming car-free was an act of faith as much as anything else.  We are practicing Christians. We believe this good earth was God's act of Creation, and that we humans are entrusted with its care.  For us, living lightly on the earth is something positive we can do.

Mainstream and car-free - in the same sentence

Yesterday an article at cnn.com crossed my facebook feed.  It was about people who live in large cities and choose to live without a car.   It is great to see things like this in a mainstream media outlet, it makes families like mine seem less exoctic, (or truthfully, just plain weird.) 

As we've started looking at the things we want to do over the summer,  the realization that we will either have to change some plans or, rent a car more often is settling in.  For about 3 months we had Megabus here in town and then it just as suddenly disappeared.  We are pretty much limited to Greyhound and Hoosieride. With little competition, neither one has an incentive to keep prices low. They also have pretty limited service.  That is the real downside to being car-free in Fort Wayne - going somewhere else gets pricey.  That would be one of my biggest reasons for ever considering a move to another city.

A question came up on a homeschool group about living with one car.  It will be interesting to see what discussion follows up on that thread.  I always love to hear other families stories.

On riding buses.....

We live in a city.  Fort Wayne is 74th in size nationally, far behind behemoths such as NYC, Chicago or LA, but an urban area nonetheless.  As all with all urban areas, we have our share of urban problems.  Last week an event happened that certainly caused many of us bus-riders to sit up and take notice.

The southeast side of Fort Wayne has far more than its fair share of hard luck stories.  It is the area with the highest rates of poverty, violent crimes, and general police notice.  It is also an area with plenty of hardworking, decent people who are going through life raising families, making a home and a life for themselves and trying to stay out of other people's drama.  Unfortunately sometimes drama finds them anyway.

A woman was forced off the bus by her former boyfriend and shot on the sidewalk, in front of many witnesses, many of them schoolchildren waiting for their buses.  It was horrific.  Why do I bring this up on the blog?  Because it is one of those stories that make many non-bus riders say "And that is why I would never ride a public bus."   Millions of people ride public transit everyday. It is overwhelmingly safe. It is not perfect.  As someone who has made a choice to live a carfree life, the bus is an essential part of my transportation package.   This story hit particularly close to home for me because it is the busline I ride to and from work. 

I was asked to say a few words after church last week about living carfree.  There was a potluck to share information about the UCC's "4/1 Earth" Eastertide caring-for-creation emphasis.   After the meal several people came up to share their stories of bus-riding days (mostly from many years back) and some to seemingly ask for absolution when they told of why they couldn't possibly ride the bus.   Choosing to be carfree has never been meant as a means of somehow being "better" than those who drive, it a choice we made as a family.  We don't necessarily play it up, but neither do we deny our choice.

I don't think riding the bus puts me at any greater risk than driving a car through the same neighborhood would put me.  I ride the bus here, because it is where I work.  Carfree is simply another facet of my multifaceted life.

I've been gone....(without the Schwinn)

We left town for a spring break to climates that are warmer and sunnier than northeast Indiana has been.  We left Fort Wayne and ended up in Ocean Springs, MS at Gulf Islands National Seashore for a lovely camping trip.  

The question I've been asked most is "How did you get there?"  I guess the assumption is that if you choose not to own a car, you must not ever drive one either. Au contraire!  We rented a Toyota Yaris from Enterprise for the trip.  Having most recently owned a station wagon, we knew packing for this camping trip would require some rethinking our usual M.O.   Instead of our very large and spacious multiroom tent, we went back to the smaller dome tent Mike and I received as a wedding gift.  In theory it holds four people.  We found that the three of us filled it up nicely, with just enough room for our duffle bags.  Once the trunk was emptied out, we used it as our pantry, where food was stored between meals.  Having had our cooler decimated by racoons on a camping trip a couple of years ago, we didn't want a repeat performance.

Of course on the Gulf Coast one may have to contend with more than racoons:

Yes that is an alligator, soaking up the sun in the bayou at the campground!


While in Mississippi, we hiked, ran in the Gulf Coast Running Club and Hibernian Marching Society St Patrick's day races, took a boat to West Ship Island,

 and checked out the Gulf Coast Science Center in Mobile, AL.  It was a great antidote to winter.  Of course up our return, we discovered, that winter had settled in for an even longer stay here in the Midwest!

As with all trips, once you get home, there is always laundry to do:

Long distance bike trail

Just after posting today's earlier entry, I ran across this article: 

Michigan To Wisconsin Trail, Proposed 924-Mile Bike and Hiking Route, Moves Forward

 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/07/michigan-wisconsin-trail-bike-hiking_n_2829019.html

We can connect!

Musings on getting out into nature without a car

Yesterday there was a post from the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette on facebook looking at how other cities have developed their downtowns and asking "Should Fort Wayne be more like Oklahoma City?"


This was my response:
 "I think there is a lot we can pick up from places like that all of those referenced in the story. The towns around Biloxi MS have not just a greenway, they also have what they call blueways - water trails to use for kayaking and canoing. We have lots of water, but we don't do a lot with it. South Bend has had a whitewater course for 25 years, so I'm not sure Fort Wayne needs to duplicate that effort, but we have a lot more outdoor opportunities than we usually let on to. We have rivers, lots of nature areas that are often unused. The co-op of county and city parks, ACRES, LRWP that offers fall hikes is a good start, but we need more co-operation across bodies like this to leverage the outdoor recreation possibilities in Allen County and NE IN. Lets be Fort Wayne, not OKC's shadow, but let's take what we can learn from other places. I feel far more hopeful about FW's future than when I first moved here 14 years ago."


Today, another blog I follow, posted the question of whether her family could get to a local nature area by public transit and bike.
http://www.carfreefamily.org/2013/03/can-i-get-to-jackson-bottom-on-trimet.html

This just tied in so well with our experience of getting to Eagle Marsh this weekend to participate in a cleanup project.  (See yesterday's post.)

Eagle Marsh is located along the Towpath Trail  one of Fort Wayne's many greenways., So bike access is actually very good.  Monday through Friday, Citilink runs a flex route bus to the Towpath Trailhead, adjacent to the marsh. But that service doesn't run on weekends.  So on Saturdays we take the regular fixed route bus to it's end point, and then walk about a mile and a half through a quiet neighborhood to the Towpath trail and then get to the marsh.  It isn't a perfect arrangement, but it gets us their.

But what about other natural areas in Allen County?  Well that gets to be a lot more complicated.  Our two main county parks,Fox Island and Metea are both beyond the boundaries of our bus system, though the county dial-a-ride bus theoretically could get you there during business hours Monday through Friday.  Fox Island is actually adjacent to Eagle Marsh, which on the map  looks like a great plan. In reality, there is a river and busy set of railroad tracks between the properties and no point of entrance to the park.  That entrance is a road that could be biked, though the roads approaching it are both quite busy.  Same for Metea Park, it is just off of a state highway.  So in essence both of the county parks are really auto dependent.

We also have a wonderful asset in Northeast Indiana called Acres Land Trust..  They have nature preserves in 16 counties in the area.  They also run some wonderful programs.  Their Mengerson Preserve is actually on a bus line, but the rest are not.  All are theoretically bike-able on county roads.  But it does come down to the reality that without a car, few people will visit these preserves.


Thoughts?

Spring is sprung, old newspapers and other oddities of March

Yesterday morning on the way to Eagle Marsh to help out with a cleanup day, Mike said it felt like spring was in the air. I, wearing a winter coat, hat and mittens, disagreed.  Today though, it did feel like spring (the temperatures in the 50s didn't hurt!)

Eagle Marsh is a nature preserve at the edge of Fort Wayne that our family volunteers at as trail guides.  Little River Wetlands Project is the land owner for the marsh and several other tracts of land in the Little River Valley.  The Little River (sometimes it is called the Little Wabash) has it's headwaters in Eagle Marsh and flows into the Wabash River in Huntington.  The French Voyageurs called it the Joyful River.  Leaving Quebec, they had to paddle upstream against the St Lawrence, lakes Ontario and Erie and the Maumee.  By the time they finished the relatively short portage over to the Little River, it was all downstream to New Orleans - joyful indeed!

With all the snow on the ground, litter wasn't as easy to find as it will be once the snow is all gone, but we found a fair amount.  Pete was carrying the recycling bag and snagging pieces of newspaper.  He found this one:

The date is Thursday August 12, 1999!

This paper was in remarkably good shape for a 14 year old newspaper.  I assume it blew off a truck taking it to the recycling center a mile or so down the road, but really, who has 14 year old newspapers to recycle?

After we finished our clean up we headed back to our bus stop and waited for our ride home.

Today we  didn't do much beyond church in the morning. Tomorrow is a work day and then on Tuesday the vacation adventure begins!