From the category archives:

Problems and issues

On sometimes driving.

by Dorea 02.05.2012
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With one notable exception*, most of our living is done within a couple miles of our home. R’s daycare is about six blocks away. H’s school is about four blocks away. Groceries are about a mile away in Porter Square for the store we don’t like, or a little over two miles for the store [...]

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Unpredictable Driving

Thumbnail image for Unpredictable Driving by Dorea 01.31.2012

Angela and I are both mathematicians. Inevitably, when either of us mentions math, either that we do math, teach math, or studied math, the response we get more often than not is “Oh, I hate math.” You get used to it after a while, and we can usually find ways to move conversation back out [...]

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Kids’ walking personalities

by Dorea 01.23.2012
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Rebecca wrote a great post recently at Green Baby Guide that got me thinking about the impact of kids personalities on walking for transport with small children. Rebecca is a carfree mom with a fantastically unmotivated walker, and she bemoans the constant judgment of parents who push “big kids” in strollers even though no one really bats [...]

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Car culture and kids toys

by Dorea 01.02.2012
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Like many families, we’ve just had a channukah-induced influx of toys into our house. Recent improvements in storage mean that we actually do have space for these toys, and they have been keeping our kids delightfully busy. We are also blessed with considerate grandparents who remember our space constraints, often giving our kids craft sets [...]

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Sad to see him go…

by Dorea 10.28.2011
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We never got around to posting here about our new favorite bike mechanic, Tim Ennis, a.k.a. The Rolling Wrench, Boston’s first and only mobile bike shop, and Tim does it all by bike. You may have seen him out on the Minuteman bike path over the summer or by the Davis square T stop. Tim [...]

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Family Bike Shopping part II: The first bike we almost bought, Sun Atlas Cargo

by Dorea 10.25.2011
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Back in part I, I described why we decided to wade back into family bike shopping. At first, we were just looking to find a longbike that would be easy for Angela (5′ 1″) to get on and off of, and possibly be a more stable ride with two kids. That approach led to the [...]

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Family Bike Shopping Part I: Why another bike?

by Dorea 10.19.2011

At long last, we’ve settled on a new family bike. Family and cargo bike shopping can be a daunting process, with limited access to test rides (see our previous desperate plea), limited knowledge available at local bike shops, conflicting info available online, and a confusing set of options that have different strengths and weaknesses, and [...]

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True Life Stories of the Carfree — Stacy, Brent, London (9), Elliot (7), Avery(4) & Oliver (1), Huntington WV

by Dorea 10.06.2011
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As the third in our series about families living carfree (that aren’t us, see also part I and part II), we have a wonderful contribution from Stacy, a mom of four (four!). Her family decreased from two cars to one over the summer, and recently completed a carfree month. We hope the insights she provides [...]

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We Love Our New-and-Improved Tiny Condo: Part I

by Angela 08.29.2011
Renovations to the porch of our tiny house

My wife and I live in 650 square feet with two kids and we love it. We’ve written about our small home before, a tiny condo in North Cambridge, Massachusetts. We live in a neighborhood full of small houses and condos — the average home or condo around here is about 1,000 square feet. But [...]

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Seeking test rides — Zigo Leader, Madsen, Nihola, Sun Atlas Cargo

by Dorea 08.10.2011

We’re considering adding a bike to our fleet (more details on why will follow, presumably when we figure out what we’ll get, if anything), but alas, Cambridge is not Portland, and rustling up test rides of family and cargo bikes is quite a challenge. If you live in the Cambridge/Boston area and have a Madsen, [...]

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