Julie Pecenco’s Life in the Little City

Tomorrow – Monday, September 22 – is World Carfree Day.  If you’ve ever thought about leaving the car behind as you go about your day, why not give it a try tomorrow?  Hop on the bike, take a walk, or use public transportation.  Use combinations of the three – do whatever you can to take a break from your car.

Out of the big cities, it can be hard to avoid driving.  I’ve been working towards a car-lite lifestyle.  I try to avoid driving around Oneonta, but personal and professional obligations require me to drive several times a month at minimum, to get to appointments in Binghamton, Syracuse, and other areas outside the reach of my legs or public transportation.  All of those little trips add up, however.  Since June, I have ridden my bike over 300 miles, most of it utility cycling, and saved around $65 by not driving.  That’s a carbon offset of 0.1 tons.  All from rides around town, many right around five miles round trip.

There is public transportation here in Oneonta, aptly named Oneonta Public Transport, or OPT.  Unfortunately, since it’s such a small area, the frequency of service isn’t always adequate.  When Leah was unable to drive due to medical reasons last year, we looked into her taking the bus, and it would have taken her two buses and an hour to get the four miles to campus.  I can walk there in about that amount of time. Buses to Cooperstown only run on the hour, and every two hours on Saturday.  (I did take the bus up to Cooperstown for an appointment a few weeks ago, riding my bike downtown to catch it, and it was nice.  But I had the luxury of time that day.)   Worse yet, there is no OPT service at all on Sundays.  Getting to the nearest big cities is only possible via Trailways, which is expensive and impractical, if not impossible for meetings.  I know how hard it can be to not drive a car, even some of the time.  But every little bit counts.

So celebrate World Carfree Day tomorrow.  If you have to drive, think about carpooling, and other ways to reduce your impact on the earth.  Go carfree another day, and enjoy the ride.

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As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I’ve been trying to avoid using the car for local trips whenever possible. It’s been a good month in that regard; I reached 100 miles for the month today. I had several errands to run today, one of which was taking one of the cats to the vet. The vet is just over a mile away; I often walk or ride by it on my way to the post office. The cats, however, are indoor cats, and only leave the house to go to the vet. It seems silly to drive for a one mile trip, but I wasn’t sure how I could get Squeaker there safely. I don’t have a trailer, or a (much dreamed of) Xtracycle, and the cats don’t travel outside of their carriers.  We have two carriers, but it’s pretty tough to get Squeakie into the smaller one, and the big one would never fit on the bike with my current setup.   All the same, I decided to try.  Lo and behold, she barely put up a fight and slid right into the carrier.  A few bungee cords later, and we were off to the vet.

Squeakie seemed no more traumatized by the bike ride than by a car ride.  Actually, she seemed calmer than she usually does in the car, and I’d like to believe she enjoyed seeing a bit of the world.  It was a surprisingly successful outing in the end, and one more car-free trip.

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I first encountered the game of soccer when we moved into a house with a soccer field across the street.  I had just started second grade, and I wanted to play this new game.  That was thirty years ago (yikes!) and before the sport had swept the nation.  For some reason, it happened to already be huge in our town.  The next year, I was part of the Clarence Town Soccer Club, and I continued to play the sport until I graduated from high school.

When our niece Molly showed an interest in the sport, we bought her a soccer ball for her birthday last summer.  This summer, she too joined the Clarence town league, like her aunt and father had when we were kids.  They now have a special division for the really little kids, ages 5 and 6, with special rules.  It’s 4-on-4, on a tiny field with tiny goals and no goalies.  The coaches are on the field with the kids, coaching and refereeing at once.  Leah and I drove out to visit this weekend, to celebrate Molly’s fifth birthday and her starting kindergarten earlier this week, and we also got to watch her play in a game this afternoon.

Watching five and six year olds play soccer is hilarious.  They run at each other, take the ball from their own teammates, dance around on the field, and often get distracted by the fans, the weather, and their own little worlds.  It is all adorable.  Our girl Molly was easily distracted, but when she got down to business, she was a little spitfire.  She even scored a goal!  Alas, none of us realized this fact until looking at my photos after the game.  The ball went right through a gap in the net, and looked to have been a near miss.  There’s no instant replay in kiddie soccer, nor is there score keeping for that matter, all of which is as it should be at that age.  But I want to recognize Molly for her accomplishment.  So here, in all it’s glory, is the stop action rendering of her first goal.

It’s nice to see Molly enjoying the sport that brought me joy as a kid.  Having grown up in a soccer town, and now living in the soccer town – Oneonta is home to the National Soccer Hall of Fame, and the sport is huge in town – it’s nice to see the next generation enjoying it as well.

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