So Girl on Foot grabbed her honey and got the hell out of town.
We cut out of work early on Friday, packed some grub and fled 96 miles west into the Shenandoah mountains.
Without. A. Car. (er, sort of).
After going car-free some months ago, I became a member of both Zipcar and Flexcar, two of the major national car sharing companies with brilliantly green business plans based on the idea
of helping folks like me (and you) get around. Like a rental company, but 1 billion times more convenient and less corporate-feeling. It's a slightly more complicated version of Amsterdam's famous bike share scheme.
So, we checked out our car and braved sleet, snow, bumpy roads and the occasional wrong turn (I can totally reverse over the tiny bridge in the snow in the dark ... no problem) to get to our cabin. We reserved the cabin, nestled in a hollow on the edge of Shenandoah National Park, from the Potomac Appalachian Trail Club, of which we have recently become members. We joined up because they are an awesome group, and because you can share a bunch of so-cute-it-hurts cabins that cure you of the city faster than you can say Paul Bunyan.
So, the theme of the weekend (other than finding the outhouse, listening to mice plot their revenge on humanity in the walls, and sawing downed wood until my hands cramped) was sharing. Just like Kindergarten.
We even shared in the cabin log book, where the woman who'd stayed before us has recorded some really incredible soul-searching thoughts about her life, her dog, and the recent death of her mother. Big stuff. There was also a little too much sharing done in the log by a visiting Ice Capades troupe (I'm not making this up), and a man who went into far more detail than I would have liked about the effect of the cold on his, er, anatomy.
All in all, it was a great adventure. Good, clean fun. And while it did involve some travel by car, rest assured, it was a shared car.
We cut out of work early on Friday, packed some grub and fled 96 miles west into the Shenandoah mountains.
Without. A. Car. (er, sort of).
After going car-free some months ago, I became a member of both Zipcar and Flexcar, two of the major national car sharing companies with brilliantly green business plans based on the idea
of helping folks like me (and you) get around. Like a rental company, but 1 billion times more convenient and less corporate-feeling. It's a slightly more complicated version of Amsterdam's famous bike share scheme.So, we checked out our car and braved sleet, snow, bumpy roads and the occasional wrong turn (I can totally reverse over the tiny bridge in the snow in the dark ... no problem) to get to our cabin. We reserved the cabin, nestled in a hollow on the edge of Shenandoah National Park, from the Potomac Appalachian Trail Club, of which we have recently become members. We joined up because they are an awesome group, and because you can share a bunch of so-cute-it-hurts cabins that cure you of the city faster than you can say Paul Bunyan.
So, the theme of the weekend (other than finding the outhouse, listening to mice plot their revenge on humanity in the walls, and sawing downed wood until my hands cramped) was sharing. Just like Kindergarten.
We even shared in the cabin log book, where the woman who'd stayed before us has recorded some really incredible soul-searching thoughts about her life, her dog, and the recent death of her mother. Big stuff. There was also a little too much sharing done in the log by a visiting Ice Capades troupe (I'm not making this up), and a man who went into far more detail than I would have liked about the effect of the cold on his, er, anatomy.All in all, it was a great adventure. Good, clean fun. And while it did involve some travel by car, rest assured, it was a shared car.
