A humble start to the Wild Ride Homestead

Patio garden design!

I recently started to design a patio garden for Michaela and my flat over here in the UK. I have been reading about Peak Oil for about three years or so and Climate Change for over ten. I think in many ways I have been stuck on the problem and not making the steps towards taking action and solutions. Michaela and I have made some changes in our lives and cut our consumption a lot but it feels different now. Partly because while we had cut our consumption a lot relative to the average American we were still only about equal to the average UK citizen. We had still not truly challenged the structures that our society is built on. Well now I'm hoping to not just bend the rules but start breaking them.

I have been watching videos from the Peak Moment TV online program. Through this I have seen many examples of real community based solutions and heard people's stories. This has inspired me to move out of my comfort zone. The first step is starting Michaela and my Wild Ride Homestead!

Volunteering in the chalk grasslands

I had some fun today volunteering with the East Sussex Wildlife Trust doing what they call "practical conservation." At 10.00am today I headed out with a group of nine other people to work on restoring a small patch of English chalk grasslands. Apparently about 97% of the English chalk grasslands have disappeared over the years. Sheep used to help keep the grasslands from being taken over by tress and bushes but people here are apparently razing a lot less sheep then they used to. I was fascinated by this and I was eager to learn more about it all.

We got to our work site about 10.30am and started getting ready to work. I got my first surprise when I discovered that the area we were going to be working on was a very steep hillside covered with loose chalk rocks and soil. Towards the top where I ended up spending most of my time it was practically a cliff face. My next surprise was that it turned out that our task was to remove all the trees that were growing on this hillside! What sort of conservation was this I thought!?

My Awesome Commuters Bike

I have decided that I never want to have my own car. For me its just not worth it and with Peak Oil around the corner (or already here) its not the sort of investment that I really want to make. So where does that leave me for getting around?

Well of course there is mass transit such as buses, trains, ect... But I still like having my own personal transportation device. So for that I have a bike. But not your traditional bike. My bike is designed to make commuting easy and comfortable.

What makes my new bike so awesome for commuting is that it has small design tweaks and extras that really help out.

Great Britain's electrical sockets are just awesome!

One of the awesome things about living in the UK is how easy it is to make simple changes to ones life in order to live in a more sustainable manner.

This ranges from more walkable communities to the fact that hang drying clothes is the norm here. But one area that I was not expecting was with their electrical sockets.

One of the big energy drains is the fact that all of our appliances tend to stay on standby mode when we are not using them. Essentially just draining power 24/7 and raising our energy rates. In the States people are encouraged to buy serge protectors so its easy to just hit a switch and stop the energy drain.

Great Britain has taken it a step further. All and I do mean all of their electrical sockets have switches built into them. This means that when your done with something you just hit the switch and no energy drain! No needing to buy serge protectors or trying to unplug your appliances when they are not in use.

Its a great simple way to save power and I really wish the States would adopt this system.

Six items or less - Moving forward

So as I mentioned in my last post I have just finished a month of the six items or less challenge. Now what? Well first off the great thing about doing challenges like this is that it proves to yourself that you can do it and that its really not that bad.

When trying to live a more sustainable way of life it is incredibly easy to get to overwhelmed and give up before even starting. Secondly, a lot of the arguments against living more sustainable is that somehow our quality of life will be lessened by doing it.

What tends to happen when people take challenges like the six items or less is that they realize that its really not that hard and in many cases people report feeling like their quality of life had improved.

For myself I did not notice much of a change one way or another. Really this was due to the fact that the challenge was only one month and that I had already committed myself to consuming less in general. But by choosing to do the challenge and completing it I was able to prove to myself that six items or less was something I could do long term.

Plus one big quality of life improvement that came out of all this is that my closet has a lot less items in it. To me this is just awesome! More after the break.

Six items or less... Its over!

So its now August 31st and that means the end of the six items or less challenge for me! Its been a fun and wild ride but really not as hard as I expected.

I had written out a whole long break down on how this went for me but then my internet connection messed up and I lost all of it. I will be writing a more extensive post later on but for now enjoy the following video about six items or less:

There and back again... on a bike!

I just had to make a reference to The Hobbit aka There and Back Again by J.R.R Tolkien. I still have not read The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings trilogy but I did just add them all to my Kindle and my goal is to read all four books while Michaela and I are in the UK. Should be awesome reading these books in the country where they were written!

But anyways, onto the point of this post. I just hit a couple days ago the one month mark at my job as Volunteer Coordinator for the Campaign to Re-Elect Bonnie Mager! During this time I have managed to put a little over 400 miles on my bike.

Not sure if there is enough time left but I really want to try to hit the big 1k mark on my bike before Michaela and I head off to the UK.

With gas prices averaging around $3 a gallon and the average US car getting 20ish miles per gallon I have saved $60! Of course that is not taking into account the cost of car insurance. Plus this is only for one month.

Basically biking is awesome and I encourage you all to bike at least some of the time!

Six clothes for one month

So today was the first of August and that means I get to start my Six Items or Less challenge. I am actually looking forward to this challenge. Not only is it a great way to help break my own addiction to consumerism but it is also means less laundry! I really hate folding clothes so this will be great for me. But back to seriousness after the break.

Six items or less

Michaela recently showed me this awesome site www.sixitemsorless.com. Starting on June 21st according to the site:

... "a group of people from California to Dubai are going to take part in a little experiment: each participant gets to choose six (and only six) items of clothing and pledge to wear only these six items of clothing for a month."

What is really awesome about this is that everyone who is taking part is encouraged to share their experiences over the course of the month on the Six Items or Less blog.

For the love of stuff (part 2)

I had meant to write this blog post a couple days ago but three flat tires and work took priority. Life has a way for throwing twists and turns into your path in even while doing the simplest things.

In my last “for the love of stuff” post I talked about how I was going to get rid of my extra stuff. I even made a pledge to get rid of 66% or two thirds of my stuff. I realized that I did not really go into why I wanted to do this. I am not crazy really I'm not!

A while back I learned a little bit about the ideas of voluntary simplicity and the transition movement. Both ideas have their differences but essentially they gravitate around the idea that we can live a life style that may have a lower traditional standard of living (in terms of gdp per capita) but will be higher in quality of life. This goes against our traditional ways of looking at the world but here goes.

For the love of stuff

Today I gave away my blob. Now for those wondering what the heck a blob is... well essentially its a bean bag chair that also opens up into a bed. I bought it a couple years ago to serve as both a bed and a couch while I was living in the KA House.

I will really miss that blob. Its strange how attached you can get to objects like the blob. Its big and heavy, hard to move and I would have no use for it for at least a couple years and most likely not even then.

Giving away the blob was just one of many things or stuff that I am either recycling, donating/giving away or throwing away. Part of this has to do with Michaela and I going to the UK but another part is that we are both trying to break our addiction to a consumer way of life.

Chronicles of a wild ride

Welcome to Michaela and Daron's Wild Ride!

For those of you seeing this on facebook we setup our blog so that all posts made by me (Daron) are also posted on my facebook wall and all posts made by Michaela will be posted on her wall. Make sure to click the link and check out our blog!

As some of you know Michaela and I are heading off to Great Britain in September. Michaela applied for and received the Fulbright Scholarship to start her masters studies at the University of Sussex. This blog is our way to help keep in contact with our family and friends in the states and to share our wild ride through life.