A Bicycle Built For School

For the first time in 23 years, I have no child attending school. My sadness about this caught me off guard. Believe me, I do not miss those monthly tuition payments, but I do miss how the back-to-school time marks the end of summer and sweet new beginnings. It's the rhythm of parental life.

Melancholy melted away when I saw this school bus over at Inhabitat:

“Attending school everyday has never more eco-friendly and fun! Dutch company De Café Racer developed a pedal-powered school bus that turns going to school into a happy, healthy and cooperative experience. This friendly and bright vehicle can accommodate up to ten kids and an adult driver, and even features a music player to blast all those sweet school bus tunes. The bus also comes equipped with an auxiliary electric motor just in case kids get tired. And if it starts raining, a sailcloth roof can easily be mounted to ensure the kids arrive at school nice and dry.”

Can I just say, I LOVE THIS!

I first uploaded the post onto Econesting’s Facebook page (you all “Like” Econesting’s FB page, right?) and received a comment from FB “Friend” Katja:

“Actually here in the Netherlands there are loads of those things - mostly for adults, there are groupbikes equipped with a bar and fridge, biketrains that you can use in offroad routes trough the woods and more. After all, the distances here are a good deal less then in the USA.”

Hey, do you think we could do this here in the States? I’m game. How cool would it be to grab a few friends and head off-road with that bar and fridge! OK, we could leave the bar and fridge out for the school kids and add helmets. But really, what a fun and ecological idea for areas where climates could accommodate an open-air school bus. Plus, it might wake up a few high schoolers when they hit the pedals at 6 AM.

Credit: Inhabitat via De Cafe Racer

Graduation Shakes Deep Environmental Roots

As my youngest child graduated college last weekend, I sat sandwiched between my mother and daughter while my husband's camera clicked away. A sea of black caps with pink tassels faced the stage with heightened expectancy. Speaker after speaker approached the podium to impart pearls of wisdom to the graduates. They spoke of fueling passions, finding patience, proceeding with integrity, working hard, accepting failure, and being kind, grateful, humble and ethical. Each speaker concluded by noting the future belongs to the graduates.

I observed the young guys with their freshly shaved faces, and the flatly straightened hair of the young women, as they sat tall, cell phones in hand. They looked like the lungs of the planet - soaking it all in.

These children have experienced so many of nature's gifts: days at the beach digging for buried treasure, astonishing rainbows to paint, spring flowers to pick, trees to climb, bugs to catch, strawberries to gather, birds to feed, and stars to wish upon.

As parents, many of us have been fighting to protect the environment since before our kids were born. We've educated ourselves, and our children. We made sure they grew up with Earth Day, and learned about the issues of conservation, pollution and climate change. We taught them that our planet comes with a simple set of instructions:

Take care of the water, land, and air.

Even those of us who have given our children deep ecological roots, somewhere along the line these simple instructions have been misplaced...

WATER POLLUTION has come about because of the dumping of chemical, biological and physical matter into the oceans, rivers, and streams. This has polluted our waterways and degraded the quality of life for people and wildlife who depend upon clean water. We discharge into U.S. waters 1.2 trillion gallons of sewage, storm water and industrial waste every year.

LAND POLLUTION has eroded the Earth’s natural surface. Industrial, commercial, domestic and agricultural activities have caused the land to lose 24 billion tons of topsoil each year. Some energy practices disrupt natural fault lines, pollute drinking water and accelerate climate change.

AIR POLLUTION is produced from energyemissions that accumulate and spew hazardous substances, harming humans and other living things. Every year, 335,000 Americans die of lung cancer. Air pollution is both physically damaging and costly.

When my family left the graduation ceremony, both my kids were "dying" for coffee (they had gotten up at the ungodly hour of 7AM). With the same urgency of "needing" ice cream as young children, they ran to get their caffeine fix. I noticed the blackboard on the wall of the cafe read:

"Some people feel the rain. Others just get wet." ~ Bob Marley

I hope the planet-saving roots that anchored so many of these young college graduates to fertile ground will not be shook to the core by greed, politics and apathy. The future is theirs and they are going to need to get very, very wet.

Credit: Jorge Mayet, Saatchi Gallery via Garden Design

Ski Stories With Kids, Cute Dogs (and a video)

As a skier, I've written a bunch of ski and snowboard related posts…

I’ve accused the ski-industry of eco-unfriendly practices, asking how skiers and boarders can possibly schuss down the mountain with a clear conscience as they stomp their expensive mega-carbon footprints all over the environment?

“The ski industry notoriously gets a green thumbs down for being unfriendly to both the environment and our pocketbooks. How ski resorts deal with snow-making guns, high-speed lifts that suck up epic amounts of energy, parking lots that are amass with gas guzzling SUV’s, extravagant ski homes and the exorbitant cost of individual lift tickets over $90 at some areas, are under close scrutiny. The ski industry needs an eco-facelift.”

With that in mind, I offered up 10 Tips For Skiing On A Budget and shared an account of how my family managed to ski without breaking the bank: “Here’s a true story: Every Saturday afternoon during the winter months for years, my family loaded up the car with ski/snowboard equipment (purchased at ski swaps), food and drink (a lot of it), and kids. Many kids – my own and as many as we could squeeze in (legally). I volunteered to coordinate the school ski program that met every Saturday from 5-9 pm. Classmates and friends descended on a small ski area in the Berkshire Mountains for a few hours of night skiing (the cheapest time to ski). This rewarded my whole family a season pass each year. Yes, it was a bit of work, and one or two of those below zero Saturdays, I would have been more contented staying home by the warm fire with a hot toddy. Still, I wouldn’t have done it differently and we looked forward to it all year.”

I even dug deep into the hip DIY ski and snowboarding world and unearthed an array of ski and snowboarding projects. Did you know you could build your own skis, snowboards and roof racks? I also added a recipe for snowboarding wax, and a few knitting, sewing and woodworking projects to round out the post, 10 DIY Ski and Snowboard Projects.

This was all fun, but until last week I had yet to write about one of the most harrowing skiing experiences I ever encountered – being stuck on a ski lift at Squaw Valley during an avalanche that cut off power to the lifts. To find out how I managed to not scare myself to death for 5 hours high above the freezing Lake Tahoe snow, while waiting to be rescued, read: Rescue Pups Find Adventure And Fun In The Snow. Here’s a teaser from the video that accompanies the post (believe me, it was not nearly as much fun as these pooches are having):

Thank you, John Snyder for sharing this video on Facebook last winter.

Main Image: Ski Pup by Don Freeman

I Feel The Chalk

As the summer winds down, price cheap I feel, taste and smell the chalk. See, I was a teacher for many years and chalk was a constant companion. I stumbled on this whimsical video over on Poppytalk and it made me smile. Maybe some of you who are heading back to school or putting kids on the bus? Are you feeling the chalk too?

https://youtu.be/6gvOVWKKxmo

Image: Keith Haring Chalkboard

Reading With Kids Makes Them Smarter

Books are like passports that open up new worlds for children. There is little debating the fact that, children who are read to at home have a higher success rate at school. Reading to young children promotes language acquisition, literacy development and achievement in reading comprehension, and overall success in school. For young children (ages 3-5), being read aloud to daily by a family member is one of the indicators of success. A recent GOOD article via this Salon article questioned whether just having lots of books in a house makes a difference in children's performance in school. CLICK HERE FOR MORE