Monday, March 28, 2005

Guilt Free Travel

Nice to see a couple of comments on the blog. I'm going to stick a picture of me and the kids on the bike - unfortunately my camera broke last summer and I've had to rely on my mate Chris's camera phone so it'll probably be a bit blurry.
I've just got back from a family wedding in Hartford. The only way we could afford to get over was by flying. It's nice to see my relatives but I sometimes think is all the good I do by cycling every day wiped out by flying over to London? I know that you can offset the carbon emissions by paying to have trees planted or something, but to be honest we couldn't even afford the flights - even though they were on Easyjet.
So with a family like ours, with my parents and two brothers all living at opposite ends of the country what options do I have? If we go by car, we'd probably be driving for over 400 miles and using a ferry aswell. We could use train and ferry I suppose, but its difficult with 2 kids and a lot of luggage. And we couldn't do the whole trip in one weekend.
It would have been easier if we'd all stayed where we grew up but life's never that simple.
But then I see Moby (supposedly an environmentalist) giving an interview for EasyJets inflight magazine, and Sting (supposedly an environmentalist) swanning about on the last Concorde flight swigging champagne, and I think maybe I'm not that bad after all.

Thursday, March 03, 2005

Bicycle made for three

I finally tried bike + child seat + trailer bike combination this week and it worked! The only problem is a bolt that hangs down from the child seat and scrapes the trailer bike, but there is a plastic sleeve protecting the frame and i'm going to file the offending bolt down this weekend.
The one thing about having 2 kids behind you is that cars do seem to give you a lot more room, but I only have to use the road for a tiny stretch as there is a cycle path for most of the way to the school, although it is covered in glass in parts. I've been tempted to bring a dustpan and brush with me.
You get quite a lot of people smiling at you and kids saying cool, but I dont see many of them getting out of their cars and doing the same. Who knows - one day it might be their only option.