My good, car-free friend (whom you’ve heard from occasionally on this blog), is continuing his work in Nutrition with a new job in Colorado. He is traveling with his longtime friend and roommate this week but plans to stay car-free once he arrives in Glenwood Springs. I received this from him yesterday and wanted to share his tried and true tips for more sustainable travel - even across the country. Here he is, Greg Gillette ~

As Connie and I depart for Glenwood Springs, Colorado, we are doing our part in smart, low impact travel.

Besides the diesel fuel that the moving truck will burn, we will be eating from our cooler, which is filled with local raw milk, local eggs, local peaches, local cheese and local bread. The avocados are not local, nor the plums, but they are organic. The only stops will be for fuel, bathroom and stretching breaks.

We have arranged to stay with friends in Clinton, AR, Lawrence, KS and Breckinridge, CO. Not only will we save money, but we will be staying with friends who share the type of lifestyle that we live. Plus, they can show us the cool hip eco-conscious parts of their towns.

Once we arrive in Glenwood Springs, we will be staying in the Glenwood Hostel for several days as we look for a place to rent.

Glenwood Springs boasts many commuter bike lanes, including a bike/pedestrian trail that goes all the way to Aspen, which is 40 miles south of Glenwood Springs. There are also several hiking trails that start from the town and go into the mountains.

The local bus service within Glenwood Springs is free and service is also available to Aspen and other towns and to the local ski resort, which is 15 miles from town. I plan on continuing to live free, without my own car.

We have already found a local source for raw milk, eggs, cheese, and cream and there is a local farmer’s market in town.

More to come from Glenwood Springs as we settle in to our new abode.

by Tao Oliveto, Carrboro, NC

I have a lot of cool neighbors in Arcadia, my co-housing community. But, the pair shown here, who live next door, are some of the coolest.

Giles and Ginger live off-grid, using solar energy for electricity and a wood stove for heat. Their back yard is a masterpiece of stone and wood sculptures, wildflowers and fruit trees - not a blade of grass to be found - Giles will be the first to tell you that he hates grass. Far beyond the typical idea of water conservation, they recently teamed up with the household next door and installed an underground cistern that holds LOTS of rainwater, harvested from two rooftops. (They’ll use it for irrigation and whatever else comes up in the next drought.)

Giles is a green Architect and a national leader in co-housing and sustainable design. He works downtown and before he teamed up with Ginger on this double-seater, he used to do a solo bicycle ride to work almost every day. I even remember when he added goggles and a rain/wind shield to his gear for the wet/cold weather - in fact, he is the one who inspired me to move beyond my own fair-weather riding habits last Winter (see this post).

Ginger also works downtown - a little longer ride and a LOT earlier start - she has to be there before the city buses run. So, they put their green heads (and helmets) together and came up with this plan involving a really unique bicycle built for two! Now, Ginger and Giles load up and are off to work together at 6:30am on this cool green machine. He drops Ginger off at work and then pedals on to breakfast at the co-op before landing at his office on Main Street. Ginger hops the bus to get home in the afternoons and then you’ll see Giles pedaling back in the evenings, his briefcase riding in the spare seat.

I usually hear them near dawn, giggling outside my window as they load up. Really - Ginger says she has so much fun getting to work this way that she can’t stop giggling. This morning I rushed out to get their photo before they took off down the road. Eco-heroes. Road Warriors. Happy People.

by Jeannie Newell, Crested Butte, CO

Trouble in Paradise…

I haven’t been intentionally misleading these last several blog entries, I have had a sort of awakening living in Crested Butte.  I’ve met some really amazing people, lived some moments of synchronicity and learned that people can step away from seemingly fundamental truths about how to live and think with relative ease if they are just shown the way.  I’ve been having some really happy times.  But while I’ve been having this time learning new things about myself and the so-called American Dream (stuff really isn’t everything, or even anything) other things in my life have been falling apart.

It led me to ask myself:  Why do things fall apart?  It led me to ask my friends:  What does it mean when things fall apart at the same time?

Followers of the Dalai Lama believe that when many things in your life start ‘breaking’ or going wrong at the same time, it is because something new is trying to become born into your life, and it needs for you to be distracted so that it can be born as perfectly as possible.  A wise friend - who’s initials are TAO ;)  - told me that you can never know why bad things are happening until the smoke clears and you can look back on them.  I guess you have to go through the fire, if you want to become someone new.  The phoenix can’t rise from the ashes without one.  I am just saying, I hope we become newer and more perfect humans (oxymoron there, I know) after the trouble has passed.  I asked my Mom, who possesses the most grace and strength in times of adversity of anyone I know, and she said to me “sometimes it just pours.”

So even in Paradise, transition is hard, people are in and out of the emergency room, dogs are in and out of the veterinary ER, phones break, trucks break, people get flus and other bugs, couples end (and start again, and end again, and start again…) and the most loving and loved companions struggle to live.  All at the same time.  At least when I sigh here, I am surrounded by mountains that seem to sigh with me.

As for off the grid and off the beaten path, we might be moving to town to be on the beaten path.  We are talking to a man about renting a room from him in his solar home, so we will still be off the grid.  And we’ll have a hot tub in the middle of a green house where I can hopefully keep some veggies and herbs to use for cooking.  This place is a really great deal if we decide to go through with it.  Although we have only been camping for 3 months now, and I have really fallen in love with it, we are both working so much that we are using the truck a lot more now than we ever wanted.  This way at a 2 mile bike ride from town, we won’t need to use it AT ALL (that will be so fabulous!!) until it gets really cold.  Then we can ride into town and take the bus around.  This is sort of the time to grab rentals around here, and we don’t want to miss the window on places.  Or we may camp a little longer and find a different place, but it’s starting to get cold here.  Summer is close to officially over around this time.  People frown when you mention the cold.  I’ve been wearing my cords and sweatshirts around, especially in the morning and evenings.

When things slow down in a couple of weeks and I have a little more free time, I am going to start working on Nancy’s farm and getting paid with food.  I will work for food — especially organic, local, fresh food, grown by a friend.  Even when times are tough, there are always things to look forward to, great friends to have those long conversations with, family to check in on you and you realize just how truly blessed you are.

That’s all for now…  Love to all,

Jeannie

by Tao Oliveto, Carrboro, NC

Most of us want to curb our consumption, to be less wasteful, to conserve resources, to be kind to the earth, to stop global warming, to save the polar bears (and the rest of the animal kingdom), to ensure the availability of clean drinking water and healthy food, to save the environmental future for our children, to be a part of social change. There are many different ways to look at what we are reaching for when we consider changing our lifestyle habits. And some of us think about all of these things every day.

But there’s a problem with these ideas - they are, for the most part - invisible to the average person on a daily basis. It’s a bit like car exhaust - we don’t think about it too seriously since we can’t see it. (I’ve always thought that if car exhaust were black, we would all probably all drive a lot less!) Well, the same goes for our individual energy use. We may think about it when the electric bill arrives, but overall, it’s hard to relate to in the busy, distracting moments. So, how much could a visible use of energy change the way we use it? As it turns out, around a big, fat 20 PERCENT.

PowerCost Monitor, manufactured by Blue Line Innovations and introduced by The Green Office (see my prior post), is a wireless energy monitor for homes or small offices. By the picture, it looks like a thermostat but displays moment to moment - and total - energy use in dollars and cents and in kilowatts per hour as well as the highest amount you spend on your energy usage in a 24 hour period. It also displays the time, the temperature, signal strength and the battery strength of both the display and sensor units.

Cool. How helpful. No more “out of sight, out of mind”. Affordable, easy to install. Check it out at TheGreenOffice.com. Because good intentions are not enough.

by Tao Oliveto, Carrboro, NC

Happiness experts agree that people are happiest when helping other people and engaged outside themselves. They also note that increased material gain does not increase happiness.

“The unhappy person resents it when you try to cheer him up, because
that means he has to stop dwelling on himself and start paying attention
to the universe. Unhappiness is the ultimate form of self-indulgence.
When you’re unhappy, you get to pay a lot of attention to yourself. You
get to take yourself oh so very seriously.”

- Tom Robbins, Jitterbug Perfume

by Tao Oliveto, Carrboro, NC

I hope that you are still following the blog of No Impact Man. He has a lot to say about changing the world. He also talks a lot about how change can make us happy. Lately, he’s been asking us to not just talk about change or to simply give up some of our excessive consumption habits, but he’s asking us to take the next step - to be pro-active. So, if you have already changed your lightbulbs, stopped eating meat and driving your SUV, but don’t know what to do now - read this post where NIM says, “When It Comes To Saving The World, Just Try, Try, Try.” (Then search the word, “happy” and see how often his efforts have made him feel that way.)

It’s something that’s been in my thoughts a lot lately. I’ve been teaching some new yoga students and I’m reminded of what it’s like to be a human trying to do something new - something that we know will benefit us in the end, but in the moment it mostly seems inconvenient, awkward and/or difficult. Because I’m the old-school trained teacher, I emphasize the importance of using discipline and will to move through the hard parts.

In fact, by watching and listening to many yoga students over the years, I’ve written my own account and philosophy of the 3 stages that we all go through. The first stage is Arrrgh  - the hard part, the second is Ah-ha, when things start to make sense, and the 3rd is Ahhh, when you find the ease in the effort - the happy. I’ve also emphasized that without the struggle, yoga would be useless. For example, one student thought she was simply not cut out for yoga, coming to me to say, “I’m not strong, I’m not flexible, and I can’t focus. I don’t think yoga is for me.” My response went like this:

“If you came to me and said - I want to do yoga because I’m strong, I’m flexible and I have great focus - I would tell you that you don’t need to be here.”

I’d also like to share one simple definition of yoga that comes from the ideas of the great and enduring teachers. Yoga is simply doing something you could not do before.

So, yoga, as life, is about growing up and out and not just accepting change, but making it happen - whether it’s within ourselves, within our communities or in the world. It is about the work. It is about simply trying. And in the end, it’s about the freedom and happiness that comes with discipline. That’s why when my students come to me with all the reasons they cannot fit yoga into their lives, they hear two words - “Practice anyway.”

So, I want to point out that maybe this changing the world stuff is not supposed to be easy. What we can gain - personally and otherwise - just might come from the fact that we had to try. If you struggle to drive less, try anyway. If you struggle to use less water and electricity, try anyway. If you struggle to do something you haven’t done before, like talk to your congressman about change, try anyway.

What you learn from a yoga practice translates directly into how you are in your life. And how you are in your life translates directly into how we are in the world. It’s up to us to make change happen and to make ourselves happy along the way.

by Jeannie Newell, Crested Butte, CO

With my 20/20 hindsight, I have seen a few things I would do differently for ‘off-grid’ living if I had to do it all over again.  I would definitely consider buying a second solar panel ($150 a piece) so I could plug in the fridge - we have a cooler / fridge that can be plugged in or not.  It would be easier than carting frozen water in milk jugs back and forth to the camper every other day.  This worked well in May, but July proved to be much more of a pain

Also, I would have known that our handmade tarp based awning would be no match for the Colorado winds, and would have bought something more durable, because moving our wooden chairs and dog beds in and out of the camper during the daily rains is also a pain.  I might find a little something extra for storing things - the truck occasionally gets filled with crap that we don’t have room for in the camper, and so is annoyingly full when we are driving ourselves / our dogs / our recycling around.  Bigger waste water tank — we use a pretty small one, and dish water fills up the tank so fast, emptying it is a weekly job.  Bi-weekly would be nicer.  Its funny experiencing all of the reasons people sought to live more comfortably and conveniently in the first place.  Let’s see, I would buy  travel size bottles of shampoo & other toiletries, because I need to keep them in my backpack at all times and they can be re-filled by the bigger bottles as needed.  They can be kept for future travels, too!
I would have a back up toothbrush and deodorant.

Just some random thoughts about this so-far adventure that I hope will continue through September.

The summer is coming to an end here in Crested Butte. ‘The monsoons’ roll in this time of year, cooling things off.  The camper and truck have been getting nice ‘n dirty from muddy dog paws and just from mud in general!  I now have cows on my street.  Apparently ‘the cows come home’ - seriously - around this time of year.  They drive them here in trucks and drop them off!  sometimes we drive too fast around a bend in the road and get startled by a big mama cow standing in the middle of the road, hanging out.  I am bummed that I still ride my bike less, but at least I carpool with Michael, and I vow to live somewhere (even if it’s here, just in town) where I can bike everywhere.  I would still bike with toiletries and stuff, I think, just because.

Right now I really need some rest.  I’ve been working sooo much lately.  My sister and her friend, Patti, were up from Boulder this weekend and I was busy working a lot of that time.  Also, our little dog Django has been very sick this past week, and we are waiting to hear what the vet thinks about his condition.  Please send prayers and thoughts if you can…

Love and peace,

Jeannie

by Tao Oliveto, Carrboro, NC

It all started with Big D. I saw him with his water truck, vaccum and rags in the lot behind our co-housing community. He was waxing a car and it was shining. I mean really shining. I felt a brief moment of clean car envy, but I shrugged it off and turned down the road on my bicycle, leaving our dirty little cars behind.

The next time I saw him wasn’t so simple. Big D was wiping down another car, inside and out and and it glittered - almost “happily”. My Pruis and Jerry’s Bio-bug sat nearby, dusty and dull. I took note of Big D’s system - no running hoses (his portable, non-potable water supply seemed to be used extra sparingly), no strong chemical smells, just some good old-fashioned hard work and elbow grease. I know, I’m the girl who thinks the need for clean cars is simply part of our American pathology, but this time, I just had to talk to Big D.

Donald and I had an enjoyable conversation - he smiled a lot as he explained that he wanted to make this his “retirement” job - work he enjoyed, that was much easier than the hauling and loading he had been doing for years. I watched him work on those other cars - not much of it looked easy to me - but I took his word for it. He took a look at my two cars gathering dirt and dust, gave me an offer I couldn’t refuse and I made an appointment for the next week.

Our cars still don’t get out much, but they look darn happy sitting in their spots with a gleam in their headlights. Big Donald explained the importance of an occasional waxing and I will admit that afterwards, my first generation Pruis looks years younger. The best part, of course, is that I’m participating in the loop of local economy and helping a hard-working person work a little less hard and enjoy a new line of work. In fact, I started daydreaming about how to make Donald the official detailer for the neighborhood…

I’m reminded that everything we do is best done on the middle path. I still don’t feel we need to wash and polish cars as often as we do, or justify using large amounts of potable water to do it. I think many of us can reach a point of driving less, car-sharing or kicking the car habit completely, and that that waterless car wash products will play a role in our future. I have managed to drive little and may even go totally car-free when possible. In the meantime, I’m glad I found Big D and I’m glad he can clean more and haul less.