CicLAvia
Sometimes, my son and I carpool with an older girl who goes to his school. I do have to leave the house a couple of minutes earlier than usual, but I'm glad to be helping out another mom and getting another car off the road. Since the weather has been lovely lately, I wanted to bike to school one morning and include this other child in our ride. The mom was fine with the idea, but her ten-year-old daughter wasn't. The poor girl was mortally terrified, it turns out, of being hit by a car. I tried to reassure them that it would be an all-sidewalk ride, with only two street crossings, one of which would have a signal, but she was just too frightened to attempt it. I found this terribly sad, especially when reflecting on my own childhood, that a ten-year-old girl would be afraid to attempt a four-block ride. It wasn't that long ago that it was a commonplace occurrence for kids to bike or walk to school, but in the intervening years, car culture has become so much more deepl