Our blue, Volkswagon Vanagon and our first child were both born in 1983. Thirteen years later, out child had turned into a cruise-control teen but our Vanagon was wheezing and gasping for life. While my husband and I awaited an estimate for the latest car repair on our aging vehicle, I wondered which was more costly to maintain: a teenage girl or a teenage Vanagon?

The mechanic’s estimate of $1300 was even worse than we had expected. Paul and I were glum and worried as we began to brainstorm: “I guess we could skip the family vacation this summer . . . We might be able to tighten up our food budget . . . Do you think we should postpone Kelsey’s orthodontist appointment?”

Silence. Then I looked at Paul and said THE WORDS: “Maybe we shouldn’t get it fixed. Maybe we should try riding our bikes instead.”

I expected to see bright eyes, a big smile and back flips from my big-time, bike-loving husband but all I saw was big-time doubt. Recklessly, I continued: “You already ride your bike everywhere you go, and the kids and I ride more than 50%. The car sits idle in the driveway for days at a time.”

I didn’t realize it at the time, but now I think we were doing the Venus and Mars thing. I jumped first and thought later. The next day: What was I thinking?? It’s the middle of winter and we have three young kids. We need our car!

Paul thought first and jumped later. The next day: “I calculated that, with $1300, we could rent a car 39 times, whenever we need one; let’s do it!” (Back flip)

In the end, we agreed to go carless as an experiment. We were believers in a cycling lifestyle in theory. Paul had owned and operated a bicycle store for 15 years and he rode his bike, for transportation and recreation, every chance he got. Although I did not love and commune with bicycles the Paul did, I could see clearly that cycling was a wiser choice for the environment and for our well-being – financially, physically and mentally.

But could we do it? Our Vanagon was towed home to our driveway, dejected but hopeful, to wait out The Experiment.

Our children, ages 13, 11 and 9, were not thrilled with our choice but they understood our reasoning and they did not give us too much grief. Because they were already steeped in the cycling tradition, their day-to-day lifestyles did not change much. The biggest difference was that our cycling expanded to include nighttime and rain so we bought bike lights and rain gear – jackets, pants and booties – in sets of five. A bonus for Paul and me, was that all negotiations – “Can’t we take the car this time?” ceased.

We pedaled through winter and spring, tweaking our lifestyle and solving minor problems as they arose. In the summer, day trips to lakes were traded in for passes to Amazon Pool. We rented a brand new, smoothly running mini-van for our vacation to California. No leaky, sputtering stops at small-town gas stations! No worries! In September, just when the kids were hitting a cycling-is-not-cool plateau, a news reporter approached us to do a story about our lives without a car, and there we were on T.V. Cool!

Each of us learned. Kelsey learned to haul her baritone saxophone in a trailer to her music lessons. When Courtney’s class went on a bicycling field trip, Courtney learned that she could beat everybody to the top of the dreaded Dillard Hill. In a near miss at an intersection, Dustin learned that cars don’t always watch out for cyclists, and he learned how to watch out for himself. Paul learned that he could have the cycling family of his dreams. I learned how to fit a week’s worth of groceries into a bike trailer. I learned the bike routes to every soccer field in Eugene and Springfield. I leaned how to captain our Family Tandem so I could drop our kids off at birthday parties and sleepovers. I have not learned how to combat helmet hair and I have not quite learned how to navigate socially, without embarrassment, in our car-centered culture.

The Experiment continues, seven years later. The Vanagon gave up on us long ago and went to live with someone who was more conventional and “driven.” The driveway is filled with benches and pots of flowers, with just enough room for bikes to pass by.