My car is a ’96 Subaru station wagon with over 200,000 miles on it. It’s not a glamorous car, but I paid cash for it so I’ve never had any payments, my insurance is super affordable, and it has never needed any major repairs {until now…doh!}. I’ve owned it since I was a senior in high school and I’m going to keep on owning it until its dying day.
That car has stuck by my side through many adventures. We’re like old friends. And although my human friends like to call it rude names sometimes {“grocery getter” being one of the nicer ones}, I don’t care what they think. I still drive the Subie with pride in my heart. Sadly, this week, Subie has started making some unusual noises. It appears that I am going to have to bring the old girl in for some repairs. I won’t have time to deal with this until the weekend, so in the meantime I have ‘er parked, and I had to explore other options for transportation to and from the office.
My first instinct was to ride my bike, which is what I normally do in the summer months. But it’s only April. The weather here in MN hasn’t quite warmed up enough for early morning bike rides. And I really like drinking coffee on my way to work. I also thought of taking the bus. Our house is right on the bus route…but the bus takes an hour and a half to get downtown, which means I would have to get up at about 5 am instead of my normal 7 am. I’m not a morning person.
Then it hit me…one of my coworkers lives nearby…maybe he would consider carpooling with me. I have no idea why I never thought of this before {maybe I just enjoy my solitary drives to work…my mug of coffee, my fave radio stations, my embarrassingly-manly-morning-voice when I try to sing along.} But when my coworker happily agreed to pick me up on his way, I thought “this could be the start of something.”
We’ve been riding together all week now, and I quite like it. We’re saving fossil fuels, and we’re more awake and cheerful when we get to the office because we’ve been enjoying pleasant conversation for 20 minutes already. I feel silly that we never even considered doing this before, but perhaps the timing just wasn’t right until now {I have only been working at this place for a year, so maybe I just wasn’t comfortable enough to bring up the idea before.}
Sometimes green lifestyle changes are born from necessity, and I like it when that happens. I had a problem, and the solution hit me over the head like “duh!” So, without further ado, this week’s Itty Bits Challenge is to get yourself to work at least one day a week by means of either bycicle, bus, or carpool. Don’t do it for me….do it for Earth Day. 
Bits of inspiration from around the web:
It’s time to start your garden, folks! Gossip in the Garden talks about some of their fave gardening products.
We Live Simply gets inspired by John December to take stock of their possessions in preparation for spring cleaning.
A homemade eco-friendly air-freshener.
Easy organic lawncare.
Painting with natural materials.
How much food are you wasting at each meal?
Beth’s baby chicks hatched! Warning: cute and fluffy!
