We got these license plates for our bikes for Christmas. We will be installing them on our bikes this week. Car free living is working out good. We certainly aren’t getting out as much, but we aren’t wasting time and money at gas stations and fast food places either. I think going carfree has helped us keep our priorities closer to where we want them to be.

Our kids are getting ready for Christmas break. They hauled a Christmas Tree down off of the hill on the bike trailers (one tied behind the other). We received snow and ice and they’ve even had the chance to go sledding. We’ve been keeping the wood stove warm, and the inside activities are keeping them pretty busy too. Kidical Mass – a Pizza Get Together – and a ride around town to look at the Christmas Lights and have some fun with other families. Dare is missing from this photo, but check him out at: our Photo Gallery.

Happy New Year! All is well here in Eugene. Wet to say the least. Kitchen remodeling, bike advocacy, math and geography fills our days. I’ll write more here very soon, but I wanted to get this picture in.

As many of you know, I work at Sunnywood Design Collective. We just completed a project for The Nature Conservancy where we created a carbon calculator that simply helps you determine the size of your carbon footprint. It is a bit different than some of the other calculators out there, in that it is based primarily on your lifestyle choices and your behavior— the things that you can easily change to positively affect your impact. Our family contributes 43 tons of CO2 equivilant per year, that is roughly 1/4 of the US national average for a family of six. But we are still slightly over the world average. So, we’ll keep working on creative ways to reduce our carbon emissions. I’d like to get us down to 10 tons. Then I’ll work to cut more from that. You can help the cause too. I suggest you ride your bike to work or to the grocery. For every day you ride your bike you can cut ‘rising’ fuel costs by 20%, and cut your carbon emissions for the day as well.

So take a look at the calculator at www.nature.org, and figure out your impact.