The mission to abstain from the use of our vehicles for an entire month has been completed! For the entire month of July we biked, walked, rollerbladed, ran, and on the rare occasion carpooled every where we went. Whether we were getting groceries, going to the beach, or going out to dinner we found another way to get there than using our vehicles.

I'd like to note that while we did carpool on a few occasions we had certain criteria we followed to whether or not the carpool was necessary and not being wasteful. If a friend was already going to a certain place and asked us to tag along we would carpool if the distance we were traveling was excessive or the weather was bad.

A big lesson I learned from not using my vehicles is that I don't really care about them that much. I spend a lot of money to pay for, maintain, and gas up my vehicles each month and I realized that I hardly missed them at all the entire month!

Another very important lesson not using vehicles taught me is to slow down, relax, and appreciate all that I have around me. Appreciation is really key in this lesson. Much of the time we zoom around failing to appreciate everything, whether it be our cars, our neighborhoods, our families, or lives. We must take the time to appreciate what we have instead of dwelling on what we don't.

Me in After Riding in the Rain to Farmers Market