Over the last year, I’ve been interviewing amazing writers about simple living, location independence, financial freedom, and more. Today the feature interview is with Angela and Dorea of Car-free with Kids.
Enjoy the interview peeps!
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Tammy: Angela and Dorea, going car-free was a big decision. What inspired you to take the leap and go for it?
Angela and Dorea: Way back in 2004, before we had a kid, when we were free and easy grad students, we house sat for a professor in the suburbs for a summer. That summer our little pick-up truck died. It was an adorable 1987 Mazda and had taken us on many wonderful adventures. When the truck stopped working we felt a little sad, but mostly we felt relief.
We already used our bikes and public transit when we were living closer into the city. That was trickier in the suburbs, but we did it. We were each riding about 50 minutes each way to work, and groceries were a bit of a trick, but we did it, and we figured if we could do it in Newton, it would be a piece of cake once we moved back into town. We never looked back.
It’s not all that strange here to live without a car when you don’t have kids, but once we were expecting our daughter, the questions started. “When are you going to get a car?” Our answer was “We aren’t.” We saw the doubting looks and heard the knowing assurances we’d change our minds, but we stuck it out, and now can’t imagine living any other way.
Tammy: What type of bike do you ride? Do you have special seats for the little ones?
Angela and Dorea: We ride several bikes. Dorea has an old beater road bike for commuting and Angela has a similar quality mountain bike for commuting. Angela’s bike is also set up both with a single rear mounted child seat (a bobike maxi), a trailer hitch for a trailer (an older Chariot model) that we share with a neighbor, and that got us started hauling our own groceries by bike. But for riding with kids, we have an Xtracycle with a custom two-kid seat on the back.
We can’t imagine life without it. To be honest, it gets more use for hauling (mostly groceries) than for kids (everywhere we really need to go with them is walkable). But it’s great for the kids, and a lifesaver for one parent to be able to ride with both of them.
You can find more details on our set-up here and here. [click to continue…]