Walking in April: Of Multimodal Miles and Museums

Over the years my work has given me the opportunity to get to Washington, DC, every so often. These trips started with a "DC Fly-In" sponsored by Greater Spokane Incorporated for congressional office meetings back when I led communications and public affairs at WSU Spokane, through attendance at the National Bike Summit as executive director at Washington Bikes, and now I go for events like the Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting and participation on research oversight panels for the National Cooperative Highway Research Program.

Given the distance, time zone differences and flight schedules, even a one-day meeting in DC involves three days: one to get there, one to be there, one to get back. And so it was that on a Sunday I started my multimodal trip for an NCHRP panel I'm chairing. 

Multimodal went like this: 

• Leave at 9:30 a.m. Pacific time to ride as passenger in car to the Olympia Amtrak Centennial Station (thanks for the ride, Sweetie!). 
• Train to Tukwila. 
• King County Metro Rapid Ride F to Tukwila light rail (insert commentary here about how nicely logical it would have been to have Amtrak and light rail connect directly the way DC Metro and Amtrak do at Union Station in DC, but also yay for my Orca card working seamlessly for bus and light rail trips). 
• Light rail to SeaTac Airport. 
• Walk-walk-walk because the light rail station is a ways from the terminals (insert more commentary here about the time and labor cost imposed on nondrivers in order to provide storage for personal belongings close to the terminal, and also a bit of gritching about how the TSA Pre-Check security is always clear at the far end, hence a bunch more walking). 
• Fly to DC. 
• Catch DC Metro to a stop about 15 minutes from my hotel, feeling grateful for transit frequency so I didn't have a long wait to leave the airport. I could have transferred to get a tiny bit closer but the time difference was minimal and by this time I really needed to move my legs!
• Walk to hotel. Arrive at last around 11 p.m. Eastern time. Sure, that's only 8 p.m. home time, but that's a loooong day.

Monday held a bit of walking to and from the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine building where we met, and a walk at lunch to pick up takeout from Shouk, my absolute favorite DC restaurant for both its outstandingly delicious 100% plant-based food and its sense of purpose and mission. Thanks to the time zone difference I worked into the evening for meetings that were in the afternoon for folks back home and took a whack at the email undergrowth. I took myself out to dinner at the nearby Busboys and Poets (a Langston Hughes reference), got a couple of books of poetry by Rita Dove and Nikki Giovanni, and enjoyed a delicious vegan red curry risotto.

Tuesday—ah, Tuesday! More email whackage to start the day. My plane didn't leave until 5:35 p.m. Eastern and I'd be getting home around 9:30 p.m. Pacific. I didn't have meetings so part of Tuesday became my Sunday as a form of schedule adjustment. I left my heavier backpack at my hotel and started racking up the steps.

When I have time in DC I try to get to one place I haven't visited before and get back to a favorite. I visited:

The new-to-me Art Museum of the Americas, housed in the original residence of the Organization of American States Secretary General. Not too far from the White House, this includes a stunning tiled wall influenced by Aztec art and displays of work by artists from Latin America and the Caribbean.

From there I headed to the Lincoln Memorial. Packed with people reading the words of the Gettysburg Address and his Second Inaugural Speech carved on the side walls, it never fails to move me as I wonder how things could have gone differently in Reconstruction.

Next stop, the memorial for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. A giant rock cleaved in half leads to a statue and several of his powerful statements carved on walls at a location alongside the Tidal Basin. The water sparkled in the sunshine, tourists thronged the walkways and wobbled past on bikeshare and rental bikes, a light breeze moved the leaves on the trees. Peak cherry blossom season had passed, but petals still drifted about.

April is #30DaysOfBiking month and I had thought I might make use of a bikeshare bike to get in some pedaling, but it kept being easier to just keep walking rather than find a bike, install the app, and ride a relatively short bike distance to places I wanted to stop. As I trudged along to my next planned stop, the National Museum of the American Indian, I regretted this decision but that was at a point with no bikes nearby, so hoof it I did.

Which was fine! Beautiful sparkling day, after all. Along the way I stopped at the National Museum of Asian Art (the Freer and Sackler galleries) and spent time with the gorgeous Peacock Room, the metalworking of Iran, Chinese and Korean porcelain, and more. 

I love looking and learning. And yet, all museums now make me think of the theft and exploitation that underpins the acquisition of items on display (even more so since recently watching What Was Ours, about Shoshone and Arapaho people seeking to reclaim sacred artifacts from museums). The scene in "Black Panther" when Eric Killmonger talks to the museum curator about the theft of the items in those cases comes to mind. I simultaneously mourn the way these beautiful items came to be in those cases, and appreciate what I learn about their cultures, uses, and peoples.

Thinking about this, I also recognized that some of the people I saw visiting the exhibits were discussing how their own cultural history and the works of their ancestors were in these rooms. We weren't all going to take a trip around the world to experience these cultures and places directly; a bit of the world comes to us in museums.

The day was warm and I had long since stuffed my jacket and scarf into my small backpack. Arriving at the American Indian museum, I paused outside to appreciate the running water cascading down, just as people coming upon water in a dry landscape have done for eons.

I've been to this museum on a past trip and the clock was ticking toward my departure time so I wasn't there to look at exhibits. This time I had my heart set on having lunch in the Mitsitam Native Foods Cafe, rated one of the best museum cafes by more than one reviewer. I wish I'd grabbed a photo of the display that showed how many foods native to North and South America have made their way around the globe. I had no idea peanuts originated in Peru, for example.

After a delicious lunch—wild rice with cranberries, a Brussels sprout salad, and of course fry bread with honey and cinnamon—I headed back to my hotel. At this point I really would have switched to a bikeshare bike, but the Capital Bikeshare kiosk I stopped at was having some kind of problem with the app. I watched others try to grab a bike and shake their heads in failure, and kept walking. When all other modes have issues, if you're able to walk you count on your feet.

Back at my hotel I wondered briefly why I had gone to museums that were about as far away as I could have chosen. I did a bit more email, swung my heavy pack onto my back, and headed to that closer Metro station. This time I was more than willing to make a transfer to spare myself a few steps! Metro to the airport, long walk through the terminal to my gate, and then hours of sitting before the final steps from gate to baggage claim to the car my sweetie brought to pick me up since there are no feasible late-night transit options from SeaTac to Olympia.

Total steps for the day: 19,035, or 8.48 miles as calculated by my phone app. For comparison my Sunday and Monday steps hit a bit over 7,800, and a typical Saturday walk downtown with a bus trip back gets me around 10,000-11,000. As the saying goes, my dogs were barkin'.

A little light reading: Yes, more on transportation…..but really about society and time and happiness and big stuff like that

I can’t help it! I went to read the Creative Class blog, where I find all kinds of coolio urban trend stuff, and there it is—more transportation—The Great Car Reset by Richard Florida.

My own #2 Daughter is part of this trend away from cars as the be-all, end-all for the next generation. She turns 16 in a matter of days. Family budget constraints are such that she had to choose between driver’s ed this summer and an advanced theater camp at the Spokane Civic Theater.

She picked the camp; driving can wait. So not my attitude at her age, when I was especially annoyed that--because I started first grade at the age of five--I couldn't take driver's ed sophomore year with my friends. I had to wait until my junior year to turn 16 and grab those keys to freedom.

I would call this next link the “great minds think alike” category but that would be utter hubris on my part. Still…..

I started a draft blog post back in late April on the whole notion of ownership, which we’ve pretty well sanctified in U.S. society. I parked it in Blog/Drafts to come back to “someday” when the idea grabbed me again.

Lo and behold, there goes Chris Brogan (a great social media guy whose work teaches me so much) responding to that same Richard Florida piece on cars and questioning the whole notion of ownership. Dang it.

Then about 30 minutes later this turned up via Twitter: Millennials Are Not Romantic About Their Wheels. This transportation stuff follows me everywhere! So I finally got mine written and out there asking whether we can develop new models based on use without ownership.

Being Productive on the Bus: You may remember from an earlier Light Reading that I just had to comment on a Planetizen post that seemed to treat all travel time as equal. This post, also on Planetizen, is the rebuttal from someone who, like me, considers transit time a great opportunity to read, deal with those pesky emails, and in general be more productive than I would be fuming behind the wheel at a red light.

And while we're on the subject of time, a sort-of-related post: Money makes you less likely to savor small pleasures according to research reported at Miller-McCune, because you don’t slow down and savor the everyday joys. Since I don’t have much money, it’s a good thing I have some time.

What about you--where do you find your happiness? What's the value of time?

A little light reading: Lots on transit & transportation, a bit on cities, and a side of grammar

I like this idea so much I’m stealing it shamelessly (highest form of praise, right?) from Human Transit blogger Jarrett Walker. He runs a “weekend reading” post with links to other blog posts he finds interesting or insightful. Since I do most of my blog reading on weekends it works better for me to make this your Monday reading assignment for the week.

Why transit and transportation when this is BiketoWork Barb’s hangout? I read a fair amount on transportation and urban planning because:

• It informs my work representing my campus as we engage in development of Spokane’s University District.
• It interests me as someone who loves our downtown, neighborhoods, open green spaces and nearby farms and wants to see all of them thrive and maintain their distinctive qualities.
• It fascinates me as a student of public policy that we so often fail to recognize the ways that policy has shaped our current landscape and yet people fight the idea of using policy to shape it further. (Think that trying to plan and encourage shifts in people’s transportation choices involves “social engineering"? Well, what formed the habits they have right now? That’s right—social engineering.)
• My mental shift to full-time bike commuter took me out of full-time driver mode. When it’s too icy or seriously windy and I don’t bike, my first instinct is not to reach for the car keys—it’s to head for the bus stop four blocks from my house. When I compare the three modes, bike or bus beat car for me most of the time.
• More recently, as a result of my interest and engagement in active transportation in our community I was appointed to the Transportation Advisory Committee of the Spokane Regional Transportation Council, then appointed by the SRTC Board to serve as chair of the committee. My responsibility there is not to be BiketoWork Barb—it’s to bring an understanding shaped by bike and transit commuting as well as years of driving (and years of buying and using stuff brought here by rail and truck freight—ever stop to think of that as part of your personal transportation system?) to think about all modes of transportation.

With that really extended intro, here’s some of what I read (and commented on) recently:

• Engineer Scotty’s Dead Horse Times (don't flog a....) on transit planning and hierarchy of needs: The first post in this related set of three.
• Human Transit responding to Engineer Scotty on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and transit planning.
• Cap’n Transit Rides Again refining Engineer Scotty’s list of factors (“needs”). Comments on all three of these blogs are well-informed and extend the discussion—exactly what you hope for as a blogger.
• The Urbanophile on a recent speech by Federal Transit Authority chief Peter Rogoff. I’m quite glad to say that Spokane Transit is much better run than the systems cited here, which is why I was happy to be part of their recent ad campaign (some of it viewable on the Spokane Transit Facebook page).
• More on that same FTA speech by Human Transit. (Can you tell I totally got sucked into following links to discussions playing out over several blogs? That’s the Web for you.)
• Human Transit wrote about the choices we make about our commute when we choose where to live. Transportation for America launched the site My Commute Sucks where you can register your complaints. Since my commute doesn’t suck I was glad to see they also have a section where you can talk about what you like about your commute.
• A piece in The New Republic on the “livability moment” that calls on us to stress policy outcomes over individual transportation delivery modes.
• Ped Shed on intersection density and what it means for walkability.

Cities and Economic Development

• Urbanophile again on creative destruction and what it will take to be relevant as a city hoping to attract and keep economic vitality. He writes about the Midwest but it applies to us too.
• What’s So Urban About Agriculture? on the Sustainable Cities blog. This one caught my eye because I just finished reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by my beloved Barbara Kingsolver (Amazon link to buy or you can just go to Auntie's if you're in Spokane or your public library) and I’m more committed than ever to supporting local agriculture with my food dollars. This post is more about Dar es Salaam than anything in the US but the principles apply.

English Grammar

I majored in English and Linguistics and love word play and thinking about words. My future-English-teacher Second Daughter asked about the use of the conditional tense (“If I weren’t so cute, I would never get anywhere in life”).

• That led me to this page with a nice explanation of the conditional tense.
• There’s also the grammar tips site maintained by @GrammarGirl.
• No list of grammar/usage sites would be complete without WSU’s own Paul Brians’ page on common English usage errors (the most popular page on the site, I’ve heard).

That should keep you busy for a while.

Car, bike or bus? Transportation snapshots from different perspectives

I’ve already written about the shift in perspective I’ve experienced that makes me view driving as a nest of factors that cost me time, money and frustration. I thought I’d break down my bike ride into a few more comparisons that come to mind once in a while on my morning or evening pedal. Your mileage may vary.

Red lights

In a car: Damn it! I almost caught that yellow light. I would have been able to arrive at work a full 120 seconds earlier if I hadn’t gotten stuck at this stupid light.

On a bike: Oh, good, a chance to catch my breath.

In a bus: Light? What light? I’m in the middle of a really exciting part of this book.

What it means to go fast

In a car: Am I pushing the speed limit so much I’m going to get caught? Those tickets are expensive.

On a bike: I feel so strong! I’m flying along at almost 25 miles an hours and doing it all myself. This is exhilarating! And I’m not even going downhill.

On a bus: Speed? What speed? I’m in the middle of a really exciting part of this book.

Snow on the ground

In a car: Dang it! First I had to shovel the driveway just to get out. Then I had to shovel off the car and scrape the windshield. Now I’m going to rethink this whole “I don’t believe in studs because I don’t want to be part of the problem grinding down the city streets” thing. I’m not sure I can stop at the bottom of this hill.

On a bike: So glad I switched to the bus—I don’t think that driver’s going to be able to stop at the bottom of this hill.

On a bus: Snow? What snow? I’m in the middle of a really exciting part of this book. I’m just glad (or, I just wish) my neighbors shoveled their walks for the trek to the bus stop.

Smells

In a car: Smells? What smells? All I get is the exhaust from that oil-burning smoke bomb in front of me.

On a bike: The lilacs are in bloom! And the coffee roaster must be doing her thing today—I can smell the beans when I pass that block. Last night’s rain sure made everything smell fresh and clean.

On a bus: Smells? What smells? I’m in the middle of a really exciting part of this book. Although that girl next to me really needs to learn the meaning of the word “subtle” when it comes to perfume.

Speed limits

In a car: You know, if they made the speed limit here 35 instead of 30 I bet I could get to work faster. I could still stop in time if one of those pedestrians wanted to cross the street--it's not as if I'm going to kill someone or anything like that.

On a bike: I love it when I can keep up with the speed limit. Especially when those cars that jack-rabbit through downtown have to stop at all the lights because they speed, and I can just catch up at each red light. 

On a bus: Speed limit? What speed limit? I’m about to finish this really exciting book. Then I’m going to check my email on my phone and delete the spam before I get to work. Oh, but there was that driver who zoomed by on my way to the bus stop--just glad I had time to jump back to the curb. I wish he knew that at 35mph, he's twice as likely to kill someone as he is at 30.

Parking

In a car: Shoot, there's nothing close to my building. I'm going to have to look for a spot and that's going to make me late to my meeting. Wonder if I have change for the meter?

On a bike: I'll just hitch to that sign and be inside in a jif.

On a bus: Parking? What parking? Not my problem. I think I'll stop by the library in this little gap between buses and get another book to read. Twenty minutes is just right for me to squeeze in one errand before heading home and I'll have a nice walk to boot.

Happiness

In a car: Happiness? What does commuting have to do with happiness? This is the worst part of my day (and there's research to support this).

On a bike: I love riding my bike!

On a bus: Happiness is a good book and time to read it.

Inspired by Jonah Lehrer's post and comments on commuting and happiness, Matthew Yglesias's post on congestion pricing, and the smell of roasting coffee on my ride to work.

Why should Spokane settle for incomplete streets?

Some people are asking why we need complete streets. Let’s turn this question on its head: Why would we ever put in place designs, approval processes and funding streams dedicated to making our streets INcomplete?

What possible rationale could anyone suggest with a straight face for designing streets that make it difficult to get to a bus stop, unsafe for a cyclist to share a lane with a driver, treacherous for truck drivers trying to make a delivery to a grocery store, impossible for someone in a wheelchair to travel a few blocks?

That’s what we did, though.

Complete streets are designed and operated to enable safe access for all users. That’s all.

Streets for all of us. When you have complete streets pedestrians, bicyclists, motorists and transit riders of all ages and abilities can move safely along and across the street.

Who’s standing up to argue in favor of UNsafe streets?

Who thinks it’s a good idea to have street designs that encourage use of a car for the shortest of trips? 50% of all trips in metropolitan areas are three miles or less and 28% of all metropolitan trips are one mile or less – distances easy to walk, bike, or hop a bus. Yet 65% of the shortest trips are now made by automobile, in part because of incomplete streets that make it dangerous or unpleasant for other modes of travel.

Who wants us to keep spending our money on gas imported from other countries? We could be spending it instead on food grown right here, books from a local book store, coffee roasted by people you can meet and talk with to learn more about the people they know who grow the beans, clothing from a one-of-a-kind store or a local thrift shop that supports a local nonprofit, and yes—bike stuff at great local bike shops. That’s money that stays here more than it leaves town.

Who wants to make sure we don’t get the health benefits of walking or biking for transportation so we can keep packing on the pounds and ending up with diabetes, heart disease and premature death?

Who wants to keep property values down by leaving streets and sidewalks unfinished and unpleasant for all users, instead of adding the connections that increase curb appeal as well as usability for everyone?

Who wants everyone to drive a single-occupancy vehicle because we’ve made it too scary to ride a bike, too muddy or impossible to get to a bus stop because there are no sidewalks, too unthinkable to walk a mile?

Hey, that’s it—let’s put more cars on the street to create more traffic jams and competition for parking spots and air emissions—especially air emissions because we really want to go back to the old days of being a non-attainment area under EPA regulations.

A really radical notion: streets for everyone.

Monday April 5, 2010 the Spokane City Council votes on a resolution by Councilperson Jon Snyder supporting the development of a Complete Streets Ordinance as a component of the City’s street standards (more info and a form you can customize to send the council members an email)

• CNN story April 1, 2010: Americans rebuild for the 'new urban century'
• Complete Streets national organization
• Complete Streets Spokane on Facebook
• New federal policy announced March 15, 2010 calling for Complete Streets (aka how federal transportation dollars will be directed in the future--don't we want some of those dollars?)
• Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood's blog post of March 15, 2010 at the National Bike Summit
• Complete Streets bill in 2010 legislative session made it partway through the process (Transportation Choices blog post Feb. 5, 2010)
• Transportation Choices (Washington statewide organization)

Sweeping generalizations are always false, Mr. Professional Traffic Engineer

Since I’m not an “invited participant” I can’t respond to comments on a National Journal piece about transportation funding for bike and pedestrian infrastructure. I’ll have to say it here, where you are all invited participants who may comment freely whether or not you have a snazzy title and professional head shot.

D.J. Hughes, a professional engineer from Delaware, had this to say in his comment (there’s more, so read the whole thing to be fair. And while you’re there, read the comment from Keith Laughlin, president of the Rails to Trails Conservancy—much more optimistic):

“Commuter bike trips are not realistic for people with kids in day care, who have a 10-15+ min drive at 40-50 mph avg speed, or who have to take things such as a laptop and files to/from work.  Bad weather also prevents commuter bike trips even for the most avid bicyclists.  People also cannot accomplish essential tasks such as grocery shopping via bikes.”

Really? Bad weather “prevents” trips? “Cannot accomplish” grocery shopping?

While he goes on to say that he goes for recreational rides with his kids in their neighborhood, it seems safe to say he doesn’t have the bike commuting/transportation experience of many people I know.

To take just one example, I live 1.6 miles from Rosauers on 29^th Avenue. Much of it is straight uphill so it’s not going to be everyone’s favorite ride. Since Spokane Transit's #45 and #46 run up the hill you could choose that option (did you know that we were the first city in Washington to have bike racks on every bus in the transit system?).

But there’s a bike lane for the majority of the ride and that uphill climb turns into a downhill “wheeeeee!” with my panniers full of bananas, English muffins, apples, and nonfat milk. Oh, and a Lindt orange/dark chocolate bar…. I earned it.

Other easy options: I can stop by the URM Cash and Carry on Hamilton—less than half a mile from the Riverpoint Campus where I work and accessible via the Centennial Trail (some of that infrastructure that could get funding if transportation priorities explicitly included active transportation).

Or there’s the Main Market Co-op on Main—less than half a mile the other direction from work and with a bike rack out front.

Believe me, I can be in and out much more quickly than someone who circles the parking lot for 10 minutes trying to find the spot closest to the door to minimize that exhausting walk.

Another biking bonus: When you bike, as I’ve pointed out before, there’s no time wasted wondering where you parked the car—it’s always in the rack or hitched to a sign post in front of the building.

A 10-minute drive at 40mph, which he considers “unrealistic,” means traveling approximately 6-7 miles-- a ride of around 25-30 minutes at an easy-squeezy pace of 15mph that won’t even have you break a sweat on your way to work. If you chose to ride you’d be getting your recommended 30-60 minutes of activity every day with no gym fees.

I no longer have kids in day care or elementary school but I know people who do (I’m talkin’ to you, John Speare) and I used to haul my little ones in a cart on the back of my bike. We went to the beach, to the store—all kinds of places. I’m not saying it’s easy or feasible for everyone. I’m just saying it’s not impossible the way he makes it sound.

The idea that you can't carry a laptop and some files in a pannier is so laughable I won't even bother to address that point. 

His assumption that we have to be cocooned safely away from a little bit of cold air doesn't make sense when you think about all the people who pay good money to go out into recreational settings like ski resorts and outdoor ice rinks. Why we should be willing to bundle up to have fun but not to get ourselves to work I don't know. (Since I'm not the Wicked Witch of the West I don't melt when I get wet, either.)

Sweeping generalizations? Always false. Think about it. 

And while you're at it, think about the mindset in public policy that created a world in which it seems impossible to someone that you could ride your bike to the grocery store. Change is long overdue, so thanks, Secretary LaHood.

A couple of related posts you may want to check out from cyclelicio.us:

• Bikes="Economic Castrophe"?
• Stewart Udall's letter to his grandchildren: Operating on the assumption that energy would be both cheap and superabundant led my generation to make misjudgments that have come back and now haunt and perplex your generation. We designed cities, buildings, and a national system of transportation that were inefficient and extravagant. Now, the paramount task of your generation will be to correct those mistakes with an efficient infrastructure that respects the limitations of our environment to keep up with damages we are causing."

The official policy from US Dept. of Transportation announced March 15, 2010

Raised by Wolves, or Free Range Kids? Either Way, They Learn and Live. At Least So Far.

Image via Wikipedia

NOTE: This is an older post that disappeared somehow, so I republished.

For years now I’ve told people that my children are being raised by wolves. I’ve now learned a much healthier-sounding term for my parenting approach: I’m raising free-range kids.

I found this term through the Cult of the Bicycle blog, which picked up on a text reference on the Free Range Kids blog to letting kids go out and ride their bikes. (You can buy it on Amazon)


Following that link, I was THRILLED to find other moms like me who don’t make their kids live in an antiseptic, antibacterial, padded, no-sharp-corners, experience-free bubble.

I've never been a "smother" and I don't think that makes me either neglectful or crazy. My kids are learning lessons from real-life experiences that I could never convey through verbal instruction (the effectiveness of which, after all, assumes that they listen to you).

One example (and I’m sure my daughters will jump on here with comments to clarify, expand, correct, and shoot down my fuzzy memory and factual assertions)—

My daughters are now 19 and 15. They've been riding on transit in our city of about 200,000 for the last 5+ years.

When my 15-year-old started at age 10, it was because she was attending a citywide gifted program that didn't have school bus service, and I simply couldn't drive her to and from school every day. (My bike commuting habit was not the only factor.)

She had already ridden the bus downtown with her older sister a few times, and we had a bus stop at the end of our block. I rode the bus with her the first day. We got to the central plaza and I showed her where to catch the second bus she needed to transfer to in order to get to her school.

When we came to our stop, we picked out landmarks so she could recognize it again. I showed her how to get from the stop to the school (a 2-block walk), and told her how to get back. I instructed her to sit up front, close to the driver, and tell the driver if anyone bothered her.

Turns out I should have come down and ridden home with her that first time, because she thought it would be easier to just get on the bus on the same side of the street where she got off in the morning.

This, of course, meant that she was riding farther away from home instead of back. The bus driver recognized that she wasn't getting off as he passed stop after stop, heading farther and farther east until she was the only person on the bus.

He asked her where she was supposed to end up, explained that she needed to catch a bus going the other way, and helped her get off at the right stop and cross the street to catch a bus headed back downtown to the plaza, where she could then catch another bus to come home. She got home safe and sound with an adventure to talk about.

Sure, it gave me some heart palpitations to hear about it afterwards, and I kicked myself for not riding home with her that first time. But--SHE MADE IT JUST FINE (and geez, it WAS a gifted program she was heading to/from....).

My kids have had plenty of adventures. No broken bones or concussions, and only a couple of small scars, one set definitely caused by free-range behavior: a wild bike ride down a bluff at dusk when she went off a trail by accident (same Gifted Kid who got on the bus going the wrong way).

Gifted Kid, in fact, started riding her bike to school a couple of years ago, a distance of about 3 miles on some fairly busy streets. My husband and I rode with her the first day and explained the funny nature of the one-way streets she would have to deal with in order to come back along a different street than the one we were taking to get to school.

That afternoon I got a call from her cell phone. “Mom, I’m at some corner.”

Shades of the bus ride—she had gotten turned around or missed a key intersection or some such, and was heading south when she should have been heading west. The steepness of the hill she was facing stopped her, as she was pretty sure we hadn’t come down something quite that steep in the morning.

I’d commuted by bike that day too, so I hopped on my bike and rode to her after determining where she was (not a particularly high-rent district, in case you want to fill in some stereotypes and assumptions about the people who live around there).

When I got there, she was talking to a nice young woman who had gotten concerned when she saw a relatively young kid sitting on the curb with a bike and a cell phone, apparently lost.

The woman smiled at me and said she was just keeping GK company until I arrived. I thanked her profusely, and GK and I rode home.

No kidnapping or rape or assault, no drug addiction, no pregnancies. They have good grades, extracurricular activities, talent, manners—all the characteristics you hope your kids will demonstrate when they’re a few months old and screaming their heads off while they cut teeth.

They also have street smarts, they know how to handle an unwanted come-on much better than I did when I graduated from college, and they have great self-confidence. They've developed an internal moral compass and are quite clear about their values and priorities. They are far more comfortable being around people very different from themselves in age, socioeconomic status, ethnicity, and level of hygiene than I was at their age when I had had no such exposure to the wild, beautiful, and sometimes scary variety of the world.

I share the belief of the Free Range Kids author/blogger that most people are good, and nothing has happened to change this. Statistically speaking, my kids and yours are in more danger from people they know than from total strangers.

I could keep them safe from “everything” and send them out into the world completely unprepared to function as adults, but what would be the point? Better to learn, live, and pick up a scar or two along the way—as well as a better sense of navigation. Right, Gifted Kid?