Sunday, August 2, 2009

August Challenge - Don't ride to work in a car by yourself

Before we get to the August challenge, I have a few notes on the July challenge. First, I had the opportunity to watch television yesterday! It sucked. I surfed channels for about 20 minutes and realized that I wasn't having any fun and I wasn't enjoying myself, so I turned it off. Second, about halfway into the challenge, Janell caught me watching YouTube videos of old baseball players. Does that count as watching TV?

Now for August. This month's challenge is to not ride in a car by yourself to work. There are several options available.
  1. Ride your bike. If you live within 10 miles of work, this is actually a pretty good option. I live 8 miles from work, and it takes me 35 minutes to ride there. Considering that my drive home is 25 minutes due to traffic, this is a pretty nice way to get my exercise (see the February challenge) and my commute in at the same time. It also helps that there is a gym with showers at my workplace. One thing I've learned from doing this in the past is that it helps to leave clean clothes and shower supplies at work so you don't have to carry them all on your bike or on your back.
  2. Walk. This isn't an option for most people, but if it is take advantage of it!
  3. Carpool. This is a very underutilized option. The two biggest gates for carpooling are not being willing to compromise with somebody else on a schedule and not being able to find somebody to carpool with. As for the schedule, all it takes is a bit of communication and a bit of effort. As for finding somebody, try carpool postings. There are plenty of them out there.
  4. Public transportation. We are quite lucky to have a good public transportation system in Portland. Although I know that it will take me quite a bit longer to ride public transportation than to drive, or even to ride my bike for that matter, I'll give it a try this month and report my results.
As always, this will be easy for some, challenging for others, and impossible for a few. For those of you who don't work (retirees and stay-at-home parents) and those of you who simply can't carpool (real estate agents), I suggest you revisit one of the previous months you'd like to improve upon or pick something of your own!

June - Minimize your impact (there is a lot of information in various posts)

Good luck!

Jason
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2 comments:

  1. Sheila PhelpsAugust 5, 2009 at 5:13 AM

    July challenge was way difficult!!! I failed miserably. Since I won't be able to participate in the August one due to location, I'm going to reevaluate July and see if I can at least reduce my TV experience. I know there were several evenings I wondered why we were watching this -

    I started taking violin lessons and need a lot more practice time - substitue meaningless tv time with practice time will be a very good thing!!!

    I am planning on continuing our school's recyle project this fall. The custodial staff was great over the summer - saved all the cardboard, mixed paper and plastic bottles for recycling instead of dumpstering them.

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  2. GooneyAugust 9, 2009 at 1:16 PM

    Get that violin going! :)

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