As I’ve mentioned here before, I’ve been super busy planning my wedding. One of the things that popped up on my wedding planning checklist is to book transportation for the wedding. Fortunately, that’s not an expense we need to cover or a task we need to deal with. Unfortunately, our wedding is going to involve a whole bunch of driving, since it’s at Chabot Space and Science Center and there’s no bus service there on the weekends.
If only we could leave our wedding like this:
I can dream, right?
But more importantly, I can make up for our wedding’s dependence on car travel by taking TransForm’s Car Free Challenge. I took the challenge last year, and going nearly carless for a month was harder than I could have imagined (and I don’t even own a car!). This year, they’re making it a bit easier by running the challenge for a week instead of a month, June 1-7.
I’m going to take the challenge again. It’s going to be a struggle to set my goal because I have a meeting in San Leandro the first Wednesday of every month. I usually BART there and get a ride home, but a ride home would change my goal from zero miles to 13.4 miles. So I might just have to suck it up and take BART to the bus and get home after 10pm.
Whether you’re carless, extremely car dependent, or somewhere in between, consider taking the Car Free Challenge. You’ll bring attention to an important issue, have a real impact on the environment, and probably will save some money.
If you plan on taking the challenge, let me know. Last year they had teams and I thought it would be fun to start a blogoaksphere team this year. I’ll coordinate it if there’s enough interest. (Update: I’ve set up the blogoaksphere team. Please join!)
Does the car free challenge mean no taxis?
Yeah, if you’re going for completely car free. Though you could also just commit to only traveling a couple miles by car during the week.
I heard from someone that taxis don’t count against the car free challenge. Then again, that person does work for a taxi company.
It really wouldn’t make sense for taxis not to count, as they are cars and they do take up the same road space as cars and have the same impact as the environment. If taxis didn’t count, I could just take a cab all week and still only be at zero miles, which clearly isn’t the intent of the challenge.
Great video! I’m planning to do the challenge, live in Oakland, and have a blog. Sign me up if you do a team!
Awesome Beth! I’ll definitely create a team and will let you and others know about it.
piece of cake. i probably own the only 2006 model year car with less than 12.5K miles.
I’ve set up the blogoaksphere team here: http://transformca.org/team/blogoaksphere-team
I hope some of you will join.
We had a fabulous car-free wedding — not just for us, but for our 90 out-of-town guests as well. The bridal party had hair done and ate lunch around the corner from our apartment. We walked through the park and took two gondola’s to the Cameron Stanford House for the wedding and reception. Guests stayed a block from the wedding site at the Lake Merritt Hotel and we had 4 days of wedding activities all within walking distance or by Bart. Gotta love livin’ in the O!
how’d the guests arrive, all by train?
Great.