No Car — Will Travel (Nov 2008 column)

   Ever since our car broke down in February during our move from Kentucky, my wife and I have been threatening to shed it entirely. Though we're both favorable to the idea, our conversations about it have centered mainly on objections. Do we tell Mom and Dad to get a taxi from the airport? Can we bike home with three sheets of plywood for the shed? No spontaneous midnight movie trips? But of all the things we would lose in giving up our car, the hardest to swallow might be the quick one-night getaway. The refreshment we both find in a brief escape from daily distraction is something it's hard to imagine going without. And for us, that kind of escape has been nearly synonymous with our car.
   After some weeks of casual brainstorming on car-free getaways, two ideas were at the top of our list: the “S24O” and the “Long Walk Home.” We decided to try them both.
   The S24O is a bright idea from Grant Peterson, one of the country's more sensible and stylish bicycle builders. He spells out the concept in an Adventure Cyclist article subtitled “Bicycle camping for the time challenged.” The term is an abbreviation of sub-24-hour overnight, and the idea is a quick human-powered getaway that doesn't interfere with your schedule, even midweek. We planned ours for a Wednesday night after work. After dinner, we threw our sleeping bags on the bikes and headed for the hills. One hour later—one hour!—we had sent a black bear loping away through the trees and were sitting on our bags watching the moon rise over mountains. There was no evidence of humanity in sight. We fell asleep that night under the Milky Way and woke in time to cruise down the hill, shower up, and head to work with a sweet and lingering sense of wildness about the day.
   We thought up the Long Walk Home as a way to expand our options beyond bike camping. In all honesty, spooking the black bear out of our S24O campsite hadn't made falling asleep particularly easy. I've always thought an inn-to-inn walking trip through some idyllic old world landscape sounded quite tolerable, and the Long Walk Home grew loosely out of that idea. I've not historically been a champion walker—my impatience and inveterate multitasking are not easily compatible with the pace. But when I strip down my to-do list to one thing for a whole day (Saturday: Walk home.), I find I love the simplicity. To extend our range, we caught a Friday afternoon bus to Ashland. The bed and breakfast had stacks of interesting books, and a hot meal got us started on the right foot in the morning. Our route home followed railroad tracks and back roads, and we were rewarded with an abundance of warm blackberries and firm pears gleaned from harvested orchards.
   One thing I noticed about walking a route I normally bike or drive is that there's no obstacle to stopping when I'm on foot. Even on my bike, I seldom brake to explore something right beside the road; but during our walk, we paused to watch goats, smell flowers, read signs, and wash the blackberry stains from our fingers in cool water. We arrived home Saturday evening before sunset, after hours of unhurried conversation, with hearty appetites and the very clear feeling that we'd found the escape we wanted. That feeling was richer for having come home under our own power, without a gas tank to fill or a trunk to unload.
   We haven't decided to get rid of our car. Before our car-free getaways, I thought if they went well it would be easier to imagine living without the Honda. They went very well, but the fact is, the closer I've come in my mind to the idea of having no car, the more radical it seems. What I can say, however, is that after these outings and several months of commuting to work by bike and bus, I feel different about our car. Though I feel less attached to it, I actually appreciate it more than I did before. I'm aware of it as a tool, and I'm aware too of my ability to move and explore and arrive without it.
   Thanks go to the Medford Sneak Preview for offering me a place to share our explorations with you in the coming months.