The Doughnut Economy - Going Local!

Well... this is exciting! I read a book a few months back, The Doughnut Economy by Kate Raworth and have been meaning to blog about it ever since but... it always got bumped to the back of the blogger to-do list.

Now though... it's front and centre again because Nanaimo is going to implement the Doughnut model! The first municipality in Canada to take it on! That is excellent news. And, here's a link to their planning paper (opens as a pdf). Nanaimo is not the first city to take this on... Amsterdam was first out of the gate on that one... but still, first in Canada is something!

So, here's the doughnut model in five minutes or less. The idea is that there is a lower and an upper limit within which we can live a sustainable life, not just for ALL humans but also for the environment which is not infinite.

The author, Kate Raworth (an economist) calls the lower boundary the Social Foundation (that's the dark green ring in the middle). It includes things like social equity, gender equity, health, food, water, income, education, resilience, voice, jobs and energy.

The upper boundary (the outer dark green ring) is the Environmental Ceiling and includes things like chemical pollution, atmospheric aerosol loading, ozone depletion, biodiversity loss, land use change, climate change, freshwater use, nitrogen and phosphorous cycles and ocean acidification.

This is an out of balance model - essentially
the state of the world today. Red means not good.

The goal is to live within those two green rings - the safe and just space for humanity that is built on inclusive an sustainable economic development. So, take care of all humans but not at the expense of the earth. Take care of the earth but not at the expense of humans.

This is very exciting news. When I read the book earlier this year, it really gave me hope that we can see our way forward through this environmental and humanitarian disaster that is looming over us.

For those interested, I blogged about the book on one of my other blogs (yes, I have more than one!). It was while I briefly resurrected my 2019 book reading challenge (which took a hiatus at the end of June 2019). I found that reading was fine... but reading AND taking notes AND blogging was not sustainable. But... I did an 8-part series on the Doughnut Economy book by Kate Raworth.

Here's the link for the first blog on the book. To read the rest of the series, scroll to the bottom of that blog post (not this one), and just below the Comments, you'll see a line with "Newer Post" on the left and "Older Post" on the right. Click on Newer Post and it will take you to the second part of the eight-part series... etc.

I highly recommend the book. I know, I know... economics... ick! So dry, so boring. But, no! Not this one. It is really good and very much worth a read. It's gonna be fascinating to see how Nanaimo implements this!

Mushroom Hunting

My partner and I hate mushrooms. With a passion. It's a texture thing for us. There's nothing worse than putting something into your mouth and getting that squitchy mushroom texture. Ick. People have tried to sneak mushrooms into meals before and we are swift to pick them out of the crowd.

On the other hand, I LOVE hunting mushrooms! I've been foraging for them since I was knee high to a grasshopper. My mother came over from Germany with a good repertoire of edible mushrooms in her head but, for many years, she was limited to hunting the boring boletes. We called them Birch mushrooms and they are good edible but they tend to stain blue and they aren't choice edible. But... any port in a storm. Over the years, we found other ones... all good edibles: shaggy manes, false morels (a bit tricky that one), meadow mushrooms (another tricky one) and bear's tooth mushrooms (easy peasy but rare - see pick at right).

But then... about twenty years ago, she was hiking up on The Mountain (our town was surrounded by mountains but this was the one at the end of our street and was just called "The Mountain" by us) and... she went through a vale that had birch trees. And then she spotted them... a handful of gold scattered amidst the ferns... chanterelles! Super easy to identify, choice edible and quite prolific.

Golden Chanterelle

Over the years, we ranged across our slope of The Mountain and identified a few other spots. In the last few years, as my mother has gotten a bit slower, I've gone up to visit in the fall and would head out into the woods for happily forage for mushrooms, bringing home bags and bags of chanterelles. Too many sometimes. But my mom had a slew of German and European acquaintances who always jumped at the chance to get free wild chanterelles.

We even found a few spots with the incredible Steinpilz (King Bolete). They have to be picked young though, otherwise you're sharing them with a slew of maggots and worms. My mother would fry up the chanterelles or steinpilze in butter and try and convince me that they were super yummy. "You should try some, just a little bit!" Nope. No thank you. Not this kitten. I'll just stick with being a mushroom hunter.

Moving to Prince George in the mid 2000s, I had a couple of friends who would happily eat whatever fungi trophies I foraged. But a subsequent move to Calgary for a few years ended up being a mushroom free zone. However... upon moving to Vancouver Island in 2013, I had high hopes of finding some chanterelles since they are apparently quite abundant here. No luck. While I knew the particular ecosystem that chanterelles loved up north - birch trees and old forest fire areas - down on the Island there are no birch trees. All was not lost however since I could always go visit my mom in the fall and usually satisfy my foraging instincts.

Until the fall of 2020... the year of the pandemic... with no travel nowhere. And something clicked... it started with one patch of white chanterelles that I found by accident. Just growing along the side of the trail under a few salal leaves. I almost walked right by them but something made me stop and check. Yup... chanterelles! I picked them with glee and then asked a few mushroom-eating friends if they wanted them. Nope and nope. One didn't know what they were and the other didn't have time to cook them. Hmph. What to do?? Well... I bit the bullet, diced them up small (like tiny) and sauteed them into a stir-fry. Neither my partner nor I noticed them. We were on our way...

Chanterelle bonanza

A few weeks later, I found another spot with golden chanterelles... and saw people leaving the woods with armfuls of chanterelles and lobster mushrooms. I came across a blog that said second growth Douglas Fir forests were the ticket... so I tried a few new trails and kept my eyes peeled. I found one spot... then two spots... then three and finally the jackpot spot!

Every weekend, I would leave the woods with bags of chanterelles... far too many to mix into the occasional stir-fry. But, as luck would have it... our massage therapist was an avid mushroom eater who (a) knew what they were and (b) loved to cook with them. So a fair few were diverted to him while we dried a bunch more in the dehydrator. The idea is that we can re-hydrate them during the winter, run them through the blender with the water and use it as a base for gravies or what not.

Hedgehog mushrooms

Just as the chanterelle season was drawing to a close though... I discovered a nice little patch of hedgehogs... they look kind of like chanterelles but have teeth on the underside of the cap. Another choice edible and... they got diced up into another stir fry.

There's something about eating our own foragings that just warms the cockles of my heart. And, as my mother has been telling me for years... mushrooms are very good for you. Lots of minerals and nutrients and just general goodness. I know that she might gasp to think that delectable chanterelles are being buried in some stir-fry instead of savoured on their own but... Rome wasn't built in a day. Baby steps... dice 'em small and maybe we'll get to the point where we can actually eat them when we can see them.

N.B. This is NOT a comprehensive blog on mushroom identification. Please don't eat wild mushrooms unless you are 100% sure you know what they are. I have 40 years of mushroom hunting under my belt and a repertoire of 12 mushrooms that I know to be good/choice edibles. I ignore ALL other mushrooms. I'm not 100% of the majestic Pine Mushroom and so I don't pick those. We had some mushrooms growing in our backyard that, at first, I thought might be shaggy manes but I wasn't 100% sure. I let them grow a bit bigger and they were most definitely NOT shaggy manes. Find an expert mushroom picker to take you out picking... don't just rely on books... There are WAY more inedible/unpalatable/poisonous mushrooms than there are edible/choice ones.

Waste Not, Want Not at Christmas

The average Canadian tosses out 50 kg of garbage during the holiday season. That's 25% more than normal. Which means... we toss out about 12 kg of pure Christmas waste. Which, for those of us who are not quite metricized with weights yet... about 25 lbs of Christmas waste. That's an awful lot of wrapping paper...

When I was a kid, my Mom had us save everything! She grew up during the war and learned "waste not, want not" from her parents. At Christmas, we'd take a paring knife and carefully slice under the tape wrapping each gift. No wild tearing of wrapping paper. We would then carefully take off the bow and the name tag (which was taped to one of the bow's tails). We would then fold the wrapping paper carefully and set it aside. Paper went into one brown paper bag. Bows went into another. Ribbons went into another. Name tags into another. All saved for next year. We had the most organized Christmas unwrapping you've ever seen! And we hardly ever had to buy reams and reams of wrapping paper. We would just sort through the old paper from previous years and find a size that worked for the current wrapping project. Eventually, of course, the paper would die but by that point, it gone through at least five, possibly ten Christmases.

Nowadays... things are different... there's only my partner and I and we tend to have different Christmas wrapping systems. My partner is more in the gift bag with tissue paper camp. Whereas I tend to be more in the wrapping paper camp. We do still try to unwrap carefully but... it's not always possible. Although... the gift bags are reused from year to year. And we do try to reuse the tissue paper as well. On top of that, we generally only buy gift bags and rolls of gift wrap from the thrift store and never new. Same with bows and ribbons. It seems like a waste to buy new wrapping paper that will only have a few days of glory before it is torn to shreds and tossed in the trash.

Which got me thinking... what exactly is recyclable when it comes to Christmas waste? The list is shorter than you might think.

Bows

We all have these in our house. We have a whole shoe box full of them. But we never really use them. They don't mail all that well... And for our own presents we tend not to use the bows. They just leave a ripped paper spot where the tape was used to hold them down. And be-bowed presents don't stack all that well.

And they are most definitely not recyclable. Once these bows die (too bedraggled to be reused), they have only one final destination... the garbage.

Instead of a ribbon... maybe put a sprig of cedar or fir on the gift... or a flattish Christmas ornament... All sorts of different ways to spruce up a gift that don't need plastic...

Ribbons

We have another box full of spools of various ribbons. Different colours, sizes, textures. All of them are made from some form of plastic. None of them are recyclable. And if they end up in the recycling stream, they can stop the whole production line when they get tangled around the machinery. Every gotten a string tangled in your vacuum cleaner roller brush? Or around your weed whacker? You know what I mean. Ya gotta stop and spend five or ten minutes trying to untangle that rats's nest. Now scale that up to a recycling facility. Not fun.

Back when I was a kid, we tended to use fabric ribbons, satin or velvet or tule that could be untied and reused over and over again. But fabric ribbons tend to be a bit limp... not like those vibrant plastic curls you get when you pull a ribbon over the edge of a scissor... Those are so much more exciting and sparkly! Not.

We don't really use ribbons anymore except for some mailed presents... but even there... I'm thinking it might be better to ditch the ribbons completely and swap it out for rafia or twine or something equally rustic. Heck, maybe even some satin ribbon from the thrift store! The thing I've noticed is... if we have it in the house, we'll use it. So maybe the trick is to  get rid of it... donate it to the thrift store and swap it out for something more eco-friendly. If you're looking to buy plastic ribbon... don't but it new... go check out the thrift store. Odds are they'll have reams of the stuff.

Wrapping Paper

Not all wrapping paper is paper. Nope, some of it is plasticized and that stuff is most definitely NOT recycable. Here's the no-go list:

• no glitter - none. Not on the paper. Not on the ribbons. Not on the gift cards. As anyone who has used glitter knows... that s*%t gets everywhere!
• no velvet - I thought velvetized paper went out of fashion in the 70s but... apparently not.
• no foil - if you can see vague reflections of yourself in your shiny wrapping paper, odds are it has foil in it or on it. Not recyclable. It's not aluminum foil. It's plastic foil. If you crumple it and it doesn't stay crumpled... it's plastic.
• no holographic material - plastic...
  

Sooo... what's the solution? Plain old gift paper - made out of 100% paper CAN be recycled.

Best place to buy gift wrap... your local thrift store. They usually have rolls and rolls of the stuff and odds are you can find something that fits your theme.

For a few years, my partner and I just bought white wrapping paper and used different colours of ribbons and bows on it. That looked really sharp but... that means using ribbons. Although it would work with fabric ribbons too.

I'm thinking that brown paper tied with string and maybe stencilled with some cool ink stamps would look really nice too. And then a sprig of evergreen with a Christmas ornament or something.

As for us... we are using up our stash of wrapping paper (no glitter, foil, velvet, etc) but I think we are going to be making a pact not to buy anymore wrapping paper. Or ribbons. Or bows.

I know I said up there that actual paper wrapping paper (!) can be recycled but... there are caveats. Winnipeg, for example, says no to wrapping paper because the ink is too intense and it's too hard to get it out. So check with your local municipality...

Oh... and tissue paper can be reycled as well, as long as it is straight-up tissue paper with no extras. No glitter. No sparklies.

If wrapping gifts is your thing, fly at 'er! Just keep the above in mind...

Gift Bags

Most gift bags are plasticized. Even if they look like they're paper... unless you can tear it easily... it likely has a plastic coating either on the inside or outside. Which means most gift bags are NOT recyclable.

A better option is pure paper bags. I was looking online and am starting to see brown paper bags with handles and Christmas decorations. The question then becomes... what are the bag decorations made of? Any glitter... not recyclable. Any velvet? Or anything 3-dimensional? Not recyclable.

I'm also seeing some gift bags that might look like fabric (they aren't like the regular stand up bags but more flowy) but are really foil or some variation of plastic. Not recyclable...

But... gift bags made from real fabric, with real cord (not plastic ribbons) are a definite alternative. If I was a sewer... er... a seamstress... I'd be making gift bags out of fabric from the thrift store. Fabric bags can last forever and are washable and reusable. Just not recyclable...

Gift Cards

We haven't bought new holiday gift cards for years. I just trot down to the thrift store around Christmas time and stock up on different cards. They're usually $0.25 each and I know that my money is going to a good cause.

As for whether or not they are recyclable... some are and some aren't. If you read the no-go list for gift wrap above... it's the same with gift cards. Musical gift card? Not recyclable. Glitter or foil or velvet or three dimensional doo-dads and weird textures? Not recyclable. Although... you likely can tear off the paper half that is recyclable.

Christmas Trees

Real or fake? That is the enduring question. Basically... either one is not great on the environment. The best option would be to have a real tree in a pot that you then plant in your backyard. If you already have a fake tree, then keep it and make it last for at least 20 years. If you get a new fake tree every few years, you'd be more eco-friendly if you just got a real tree every year. Or... go down to the thrift store, odds are they have a number of fake trees on display... and you can save one from being landfilled. If you are going to get a real tree... make sure you don't drive a long distance to get the tree and/or buy it from a local Christmas tree farm (not one of those Home Depot trees that come via rail from across the country!).

Our fake tree is about 15 years old and still going strong. It's a tall, skinny tree with faux fir, spruce and pine twigs - a very unnatural combination! But it works and we like it. So we'll keep it. If it ever dies... we'll likely go with either a thrift store tree or a local Christmas tree farm one. Or maybe cut our own under the power lines... Oh, and just to be clear, fake Christmas trees are not recyclable, too many different plastics and metals all tangled together...

If you do get a real tree, for goodness sake, dispose of it responsibly. Most municipalities have some form of real Christmas tree recycling options. Bring it to a central collection point and they will be chipped to form mulch.

But here's the thing... tinsel is NOT mulchable. If your tree looks like this (pic at right)... with tinsel tossed willy nilly everywhere... you might want to reconsider your use of tinsel. Because odds are, you won't be able to get every single piece of tinsel off of the tree before you take it to be mulched...

Growing up, we always had tinsel (or lametta) on the tree but it was hung in small bunches on the branch tips, the final touch to decorating the tree. At the end of the Christmas season, we carefully gathered up every bunch of tinsel and placed it in organized bundles in paper towel, to be reused the following year. And the year after that... and the decade after that. I still have our childhood bunches of tinsel (decades later). The stuff lasts forever! Except... we never use it because cats and tinsel do NOT mix... So, the tinsel is going into the thrift store donation box where hopefully someone else will use it... in a sustainable and eco-friendly way.

I'm not even going to touch on Christmas tree decorations. So many of them nowadays are plastic. We have quite a stash of vintage Christmas balls that are made from thin glass... love them.

We don't buy new Christmas tree decorations every year, but just keep reusing what we have. We don't have themed Christmases or any particular colour that we go for. In fact... you don't need a lot to make a cute tree...

We spent one winter on Salt Spring Island at a vacation rental (our five month foray to see if my partner could survive a rainy West Coast winter). We got our tree from under the power lines (a first for my partner), put it in a pail with rocks and decorated it with strings of popcorn and rose hip berries. We scrounged some bits of holly, baby's breath and shreds of arbutus bark. And tucked a few small stuffed animals into the branches.

It was the cutest tree ever and we still remember it, and the whole adventure that went with it, very fondly.

We don't have to buy into the Christmas marketing fiasco... we can choose to go simple and rustic. It's usually cheaper and better for the environment.

Counter-intuitive Padded Envelopes

It's the Christmas season and, like many people, we were madly mailing things off to friends and relatives. Our packaging of choice was padded envelopes. I know I might be a bit of a weirdo but I save padded envelopes whenever we receive one, unless they are completely destroyed in the unpacking! So, several of our padded envelopes where recycled ones - an Amazon Prime envelope and a couple of used golden coloured one (there's a story coming on those). As well, I had a stash of brown padded envelopes which do not use plastic bubble wrap, but some sort of shredded cardboard fluff (recycled material).

I was feeling pretty proud of myself for going relatively eco-friendly in the parcel-shipping department. Except... some of those options are not as good as others... So, here's a question... if you're in Staples (or whatever office supply store you hang out in)... which of these options would you most likely purchase?

Option 1 - Traditional Bubble Pack Envelope

Nice paper exterior with plastic bubble wrap interior. Get them in a multi-pack and save money. Easy pull tab strip and self-sealing. Perfect for mailing things.

Option 2 - Fluff-padded Envelope

These are like the ones I had in my stash. A coarser brown exterior and interior. The padding is sandwiched between the exterior/interior layers and glue is used to hold it all in place (so you don't end up with all the fluff at the bottom and none at the top). The thing is... these tend to be heavier, are thicker and can push up postage costs...

Option 3 - All-Plastic Envelope

Nicely waterproof, this envelope has a plastic exterior with plastic bubble wrap on the inside. Lightweight so you're not paying of a surcharge on envelope weight.

Best Choice?

So, what would you choose? Do we even really give it that much thought? Well, if you chose Option 2, that is likely the best option, as long as the padding is paper based. Many envelopes will now say if/how they are recyclable.

Canada Post bubble mailer

If you chose Option 1 - the paper exterior with the plastic bubble interior then, unfortunately, that is the worst option. It is made up of mixed materials (paper and plastic) and unless you can separate the one from the other... then it all goes in the garbage.

Second best choice, in a weird way, is Option 3 - the fully plastic envelope. Like the ones that Amazon Prime uses... or Canada Post for that matter. Because they are all made up of one material - #5 Plastic in Canada Post's case, they can be recycled with crinkly plastics. At least in our jurisdiction. Other jurisdictions may just have you toss it in the trash as well. But, for us... the all-plastic bubble envelopes can be recycled (pilot project). That is, of course, assuming that the outer shell of the envelope and the interior bubbles are made from the same plastic. If they're not... then into the trash it goes.

I just had a crash course in this because, along with mailing a variety of bubble packages, we've also been receiving several. And I have been shocked to find how many of them are in the Option 1 category. I usually try to save them for future mailings but, in this instance, they were too small or got damaged in the opening. But, for heaven's sake don't buy those golden coloured mixed material envelopes new!

See... this is what we can recycle... all plastic shipping envelopes, bubble wrap and those little air-pocket padding thingies. Cool!

What we can't recycle... those pesky gold coloured envelopes and (still) those 6 pack rings!  Argh...

But we are getting there... Apparently 98% of the plastic that we put into our green bins or return to the recycling depots is recycled right here in BC. That is impressive and I want to make choices which will reduce the amount of plastic but... if I have to use plastic, I want to use stuff that can be recycled or reused or repurposed... I know that there are compostable bubble mailers out there but...as you can see on the Not Accepted pic... those are not accepted for recycling. So, unless I want to put those into our garden or compost bin... I'm not sure that they are the best option for us... I have to come across anyone who has tried to compost them. One outfit said their mailers would decompose in 90 days in a commercial facility and in 180 days in a home compost bin. Hmmm... if ever anyone mails me one of those, I'll be sure to try that out.

Cholesterol Metrics

What a difference a year makes... a year of dietary changes, mind you! I had my cholesterol tested at the end of September 2019. I was a happy carnivore and we had been using ghee (clarified butter) and coconut oil in our cooking (at my partner's request). Cause coconut oil and ghee are "good for you". Uh-huh. Not so much.

Here's my numbers from September 2019...

• Cholesterol 7.10 - should be between 2.00-5.19 mmol/l - eek!!!
  
• LDL 4.98 - should be between 1.50-3.40 mmol/l - nooooo!!!
  
• HDL 1.48 - should be greater than 1.19 mmol/l - check!
  

So... while my HDL (good cholesterol) was good... the rest of the numbers were bad. Very bad. LDL cholesterol is the bad cholesterol and it was clearly in trouble. And let's not even talk about the total cholesterol number.

For Americans, who use a mg/dl system (still metric but different than Canada and the UK)...

• Cholesterol 274 mg/dl - less than 200 is good, more than 240 is high
  
• LDL 192 mg/dl - less than 100 is good, more than 160 is high, more than 190 is very high
  
• HDL 57 - more than 60 is ideal, but 40 or more for men and 50 or more for women is acceptable

Sheesh... no wonder my doctor was freaking out and muttering things about statins and what not. Last year, after we got my results, I told him that I wanted to see what I could do with dietary changes and he agreed. He gave me three months... 

But... from September - December, we also went on a modified Keto/Paleo eating plan because a chiropractor (I know, I know!! Face-palm...) told us that it would be good for reducing my partner's inflammation and chronic pain. No carbs or sugars but eat as much meat and fats as you want. I don't even want to think what my numbers would have been in December.

Let's just say... the Keto/Paleo thing did nothing for inflammation and sent my gut into a tailspin. I even went and saw a dietitian at the hospital because my doctor thought I might be having a flare-up of IBS. The dietitian almost squeaked when she learned what we were eating and showed me all sorts of charts about the dangers of coconut oil and ghee. Not to mention the carnivorous diet we were on. Luckily... we were near the end of the grand Keto/Paleo experiment and... went back to normal eating in mid-December.

At the same time, we started reading a book by Dr. Michael Greger - How Not to Diet. We aren't normally diet people but... in trying to get the inflammation and chronic pain under control, we were experimenting with different eating plans. At the end of January 2020, we decided make a lifestyle change and embrace whole-food plant-based eating. No meat, no eggs, no dairy, no fish. No animal products of any sort.

We've been on that now for 10 months or so and I am 16 pounds lighter... and, had my cholesterol tested again in mid-November...

• Cholesterol 4.76 - should be between 2.00-5.19 mmol/l - check!
  
• LDL 3.01 - should be between 1.50-3.40 mmol/l - check!
  
• HDL 1.11 - should be greater than 1.19 mmol/l - hmmm...
  

 And... in the American scale...

• Cholesterol 184 mg/dl - less than 200 is good, more than 240 is high
  
• LDL 116 mg/dl - less than 100 is good, more than 160 is high, more than 190 is very high
  
• HDL 43 - more than 60 is ideal, but 40 or more for men and 50 or more for women is acceptable

My cholesterol metrics from 2014-2020

Right then... doing not too bad for LDL (bad cholesterol) and total cholesterol. The HDL (good cholesterol) is a bit low. I could start eating more good fats - olive oil, ground flax, avocado and... coconut oil.

I can already hear the people saying... "eat coconut oil - it will raise your HDL"! But... take a look at my HDL history... I was eating a tonne of coconut oil from 2018-2019 and... my HDL wasn't much better than in the previous years with no coconut oil. So... I'm not sure that's the solution.

The best way to raise my HDL is apparently high-intensity exercise three times a week. Or I could lose weight. Or I could quite smoking... except I don't smoke... I'm thinking that my HDL number is a reflection of an uptick in a sedentary lifestyle thanks to rainy autumn weather, no gardening activity and generally sitting around in front of the computer.

So, them's my options at this point. In the middle of a pandemic no less... Sigh. I think I see some interval training on beast hill coming up... maybe it's not enough to trudge up the hill once a day (8 minutes)... maybe it's better to go up 2 minutes, down 1 minute... up 2 minutes, down 1 minute... etc. And stutter my way up the hill... It certainly qualifies as high intensity... gasp... wheeze...

A Tale of Two Toothbrushes

A few months back, we invested in bamboo toothbrushes as a way to reduce our plastic footprint. When the toothbrushes finally arrived,  I had just started using a new plastic toothbrush, a freebie from our dentist. My partner's toothbrush, however, was ready for a change and so she started using a bamboo toothbrush.

Several months later... we are ready to do a comparison. My partner's well-used bamboo toothbrush is on the left and my plastic one is on the right. As you can see... the plastic bristles of the bamboo one are bigger and they have a bit of a contour to them. But they've held up quite well to the wear and tear of twice daily brushings.

When you look full on... you can see that both toothbrushes are quite frayed out, my partner's more so than mine. This could be a brushing habit though. My partner tends to brush for a least two minutes twice a day while I generally only do 30 seconds twice a day. Soooo... the bamboo has more mileage, so to speak. Normally, I wouldn't change out my toothbrush until the three month point... which is what is recommended by dentists and manufacturers. As the bristles get more worn out, they are less effective and more likely to harbour bacteria. For me... this is the two month point in my toothbrush's life sooo... it'll be interesting to see if my bamboo toothbrush looks like my partner's one after two months of use.

The only other difference we noted was that bottom of the bamboo toothbrush had some staining since it sits in a tiny bit of water in the bottom of the toothbrush cups. The handle also looks a bit paler than before. But other than that, it's stood up quite well.

We have both now started using new bamboo toothbrushes... Time will tell how my bamboo toothbrush fares in the future. At least I have something to compare it to! And... at my next dentist appointment, I'm going to ask them point blank about recycling the plastic toothbrushes, dental floss containers, tooth paste tubes etc. I never did get a response to my email to them about the Terra Cycle boxes... And I want to ask them about the possibility of giving away bamboo toothbrushes instead of plastic ones. We'll see what response I get... stay tuned.

Tempted by Scribd

Oh geez... after lauding the benefits of library membership, I find myself being sorely tempted by a service called Scribd. Just a small monthly fee and... I could have instant access to unlimited ebooks and audio books. Ooohhh... darn...

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I've discovered the magic of audio books and we have had trials with Audible and Kobo... but Scribd is a game-changer. Because while Audible and Kobo limit you to one free book credit per month for a monthly subscription fee of $15 CAN (or so)... Scribd is unlimited... for the same fee (or less!).

I signed up for a free 30 day trial with Scribd and... have been happily splashing around in audio books and ebooks. I think the thing I like most is that it recommends other books I might like and lets me easily save them to my "To Read Later" list. I have quite a lineup of saved ebooks and audiobooks...

And... I have been tempted to actually sign up for Scribd... It's "only" $13 per month and I could for sure read or listen to more than one book a month... And, there is no waiting for a title to come available, like at the library... Oh, it's so tempting... But that's $156 per year and... I'm not sure about it.

I am, however, tempted to sign up with another one of my email addresses and get another free 30 day trial... With enough email addresses, I could sign up for a few months and really see if I get the benefit from it that I think I would...

Or... is it worth it to just bite the bullet and get a subscription... sigh... decisions, decisions.

 

 

Loose Threads

Sometimes I get the feeling that overwhelm... or rather Overwhelm, comes in waves. There are days and weeks where I am just ticking along nicely. I have a good little system in place, getting shit done and still taking time for me and then... it starts to creep up on me... this feeling of malaise... or something. I've gotten behind on some things... didn't get the vacuuming done on the weekend... or whatever. And... I sense the Overwhelm lurking in the bushes, ready to leap out and consume me.

I'm not entirely sure that it is Overwhelm... perhaps it's the fact that Covid cases are going up in our neck of the woods. We've been pretty protected, living on Vancouver Island but now... there are several cases in a number of local schools... which means it's now spreading in the community. On top of that, numbers are going up in general - across the province, across the country, across the world.

And everything just seems harder. Picking up my PC Express grocery order on Friday was a hassle. My window was 8 am to 9 am. I had other errands to run and didn't want to go too early (8 am) because then I'd be sitting around waiting for the other stores to open at 9 am. So I showed up at 8:30 am and learned that there were 6 people ahead of me. I ended up waiting 45 minutes for my order to be brought out. The guy apologized... they had had some people call in sick and were short-staffed and had a tonne of orders to get prepped... and, there you go... the best laid plans go out the window.

And then... there's the local grocery store which doesn't have online orders so apparently allows people without masks to shop there. People who don't seem to see the need for social distancing either... [Although that has now changed in the last week with mandatory masks!]

And this gets repeated at Bulk Barn, Rexall, Home Hardware and a number of other shops... I sometimes think that perhaps I have too many errands to run... but... some things can only be purchased in these places. Perhaps I just clump too many errands together in one day... maybe I should split them up over the course of the week and go out every day? No... that doesn't seem like a good idea either.

We've been reading a book called Burnout by Emily and Amelia Nagoski and they talk about the Stress Response. That, when something happens that triggers our fight/flight response, our body goes into a stress response... and while we might not fight/flight... the stress response is still there. And it need to be completed otherwise it gets stuck. Every encounter with a naked-faced person in a grocery story is a moment of danger... they might have Covid. Every errand is a foray into the wild world in which I might encounter someone who has Covid. I can try and talk my brain out of this alertness but... it knows better than me. It knows that danger is danger and reacts accordingly.

I'm beginning to realize that I can't just shake off these moments... the stress response gets stuck... I need to walk, run, move when I get home. I need to talk about it. I need to cry. I need to write. I need to release the stuckness. Otherwise this is what happens, it builds up oh so slowly and manifests as overwhelm. It's not so much the overwhelm roller coaster or the Covid roller coaster... it's the stuck-Stress-Response roller coaster.

It becomes challenging to just get up on a Monday morning and keep on going... as if nothing has happened. Because things are always happening and I am never quite releasing what has happened. Or if I am... that release happens in waves. I release some of the stuckness and then am ticking along again nicely, ignoring the small annoyances/dangers and their associated stress response until... it gets too much again.

So... really... it's not the overwhelm that I need to handle... it's not all of the little unfinished to-dos on my list... it's the pent up anger, frustration, fear, sadness, disgust at the events that have happened over the course of the last few days/weeks/months. Be they related to potential Covid dangers or to other things... the heat pump remote that isn't functioning as it should... the never ending rain that keeps me cooped up at home... the aftermath of the US election results...

While I started this post thinking it would be about all of the loose ends that are niggling at me... it's turned into something much deeper and more real. Everything is upside down with this virus. Going around, pretending that everything is just fine is part of what ails us. Things aren't fine. We aren't fine. We are having our emotional buttons pressed repeatedly, day after day, by things as simple as going into a store. Activities that were safe before Covid are no longer quite so safe. Our brain knows this... even if we resist it. But resisting just keeps us stuck.

And so... I walk... I journal... I breathe... I meditate... I write... I talk with others. I work at releasing the stress responses... and try not to let them build up. But... I am clearly still in development with this.

Exploring Tofu, Tempeh and Seitan

 If you're going to go whole-food, plant-based... you are likely going to come across three "meat alternatives": tofu, tempeh and seitan. And... just so you don't freak out... it's pronounced say-tan NOT say-ten or say-tun or sayt-in. Seitan is NOT evil personified. A very small but important phonetic difference!

Tofu

Going into this whole-food, plant-based eating thing... we kind of knew that we would eventually need to incorporate tofu into our diet. But... we had had a bad experience with a recipe that called for frying up a slab of tofu (basically half of a tofu block). It was a gross textural experience. Never to be repeated... or so we thought.

But... if you dice up tofu into 1 cm (or so) cubes, dust them with some corn starch and then fry them up... they are quite palatable... especially if you bury them in a curry or stir fry. You could almost think they were just a chunk of well-cooked, tender chicken. Almost...

We kind of actually like tofu now... but there are a few caveats... get the Extra-Firm Tofu... unless you are planning to make a dessert. Some people say you need to get a tofu press and squeeze out all of the extra moisture but... we just pat ours dry with a paper towel and run with it. Adding the dusting of corn starch also tends to help reduce the moisture. And... you can now buy pre-pressed tofu - the ones I've seen look like four smaller squares of tofu shrink-wrapped in plastic with no liquid bath. Drying out the tofu basically ensures that it will crisp up nicely in the frying pan instead of just turn into a sad, soft disaster.

We eat tofu at least once a week... sometimes twice if we have leftovers.

Tempeh

We discovered tempeh thanks to a FreshPrep (a meal service) recipe - General Tso Style Tempeh. I was a bit skeptical about this recipe once I opened the package of tempeh. What were the black flecks in there? Apparently just a normal part of the aging process of this fermented soy bean cake. Basically... good mold.

Ick.

But... I soldiered on with the recipe and didn't show my partner the uncooked tempeh... or the black flecks. Sometimes too much information can be a bad thing!

The final product was... absolutely amazing. We ate it gingerly at first... with our lips pulled back... nibbling tentatively at the chunks of tempeh. But... oh my god... it was super yummy!! The texture was more substantial than tofu and made for a more interesting eating experience. We gave that recipe 10+ out of 10!

I have since made the recipe again, on my own... FreshPrep helpfully includes all the measurements of the various ingredients in their recipes. The stumbling block was finding the tempeh. I had seen some nestled next to the tofu in our local grocery store's produce section. But when I wanted to buy it... there was none. What was there was flavoured tempeh in various processed forms... bacon tempeh, etc. Not what I was looking for. Another grocery chain also had none... nor did Superstore. But... I struck pay dirt when I visited the local health food store. They had four different varieties of tempeh cakes! Some in the cooler and some in the freezer. Yay!

I made the General Tso Style Tempeh recipe and... it was as scrumptious as the original. I delved into the internet and dug up several other tempeh recipes for us to try. I can see this being another one of our weekly staples... now that I know where to buy it... and that it can be frozen!

Seitan

We now come to the great unknown... seitan. What the heck is this stuff? It is made from vital wheat gluten... so if you suffer from celiac disease or are gluten intolerant... this is not for you. But... for those of us who can eat wheat gluten, it could be a serious game changer. Vital wheat gluten is 75-80% protein... so you can see why seitan would make a great meat-alternative.

Buying seitan in the store (if you can find it... and I haven't found it yet...) means you are paying a premium price. It is, apparently, not cheap. You'll also find things like Tofurky sausages which have vital wheat gluten as one of their primary ingredients... also not what I am looking for. We don't want to trade one type of processed food for another... if we can help it.

While seitan might be ridiculously expensive to buy... it turns out that it is quite easy to make... or so the internet says (here's one recipe). You just buy some powdered vital wheat gluten... mix it up with some water.... knead the resulting dough... simmer it in some sort of broth (for flavour)... and.. voila... seitan fit for a queen.

Seitan is the thing that is apparently most meat-like in texture and flavour (depending on your seasoning) and mouth-feel. I seriously want to try this stuff and just need to hunt down some vital wheat gluten. We could make beef style seitan... or chicken style seitan... mmm... shish-kabobs!

The thing I like about home-made seitan is... you know exactly what goes into the flavouring... be it soy sauce or miso or mushrooms or whatever. And, if you make too much... the remainder can be frozen. What's not to like?

Sooo... on my next foray to the health food store... I am going to have a look and see if pre-made seitan exists and... if I can find some vital wheat gluten... Down the baking aisle I think...

Stay tuned for our experiment with seitan! (Ya just really gotta watch how you pronounce that...)

To Crush or not to Crush

It's almost time for me to do a recycling depot run. I've got 4 huge bags of assorted cans and bottles ready to go to the depot for a deposit refund. I don't really relish the trip. You see... while some recycling depots have strolled into the 21st century... ours has not. In some depots, you just drive up, hand over your unsorted bags of beverage containers tagged with bar code labels from your online account and... that's it. After they have sorted and counted your offering, the funds accrue in your online account and can then request an e-transfer (min $10) or a cheque (min $50). Sounds super simple and civilized. But our depot isn't there yet... although it has rolled out in some nearby communities as a pilot program. I am waiting patiently...

I've also heard that our provincial ReturnIt system will be introducing reverse-vending machines in some locations which would be awesome! Can you imagine if they were more common... just bring your cans or bottles, pop them into a machine and have it spit out money.

I did a bit of digging and there's one ReturnIt recycling centre in Burnaby which has had a Tomra reverse-vending machine since... 2017 (see pic at right)!! Sigh... be still my beating heart! But we're not there yet either... Our local depot's process is still rather antiquated... here's how it goes...

Drive to the depot and park in the parking lot. Go and get some rolling carts, load them up with cardboard flats (from beer cans or pop cans) and take them back to the truck. Open the back hatch, which conveniently acts as a rain shelter, and dump a bunch of cans and bottles onto one of the rolling carts.

Before Covid, one would load up the carts with all the bags of cans/bottles, take them into the slightly heated depot building and sort on tables but... not during Covid.

Then, strategically arrange the other rolling cart(s) with a series of cardboard flats and begin sorting... beer cans in one flat, pop cans in another, brown beer bottles here... green cider bottles here... clear beer bottles here (than you Corona beer, why do you have to be different?)... wine bottles here... small pop and water bottles here... bigger pop bottles here... tetra packs here. Yes. I need a LOT of cardboard flats... and sometimes two or three rolling carts. Fill up a flat, put it on the bottom of the rolling cart and then start another one.

There are some items though which are sorting resistant... crushed cans and squished plastic bottles. How does one arrange these in nice tidy ranks in the cardboard trays? It's virtually impossible... although I try... I've noticed lately, on my forest strolls to various "hang-out" spots, that a lot of people seem to think it's a good idea to crush their beer cans... either crush them into little biscuits with their feet or just squish them with their hands. While I gather this might be fun as a display of strength... it's an annoyance for the sorting process! And let's not even mention the plastic bottles that get dirty because someone's tossed them out their car window and they've sat in the ditch for weeks. Apparently these are not well-suited for recycling into new food-grade plastics and will get down-cycled into something like plastic chairs.

On top of that... if crushed beer and pop cans end up in a one-stream recycling bin (a bin that has everything including paper, plastic and cans)... they can contaminate the system. A super-flat beer can (that's been driven over) can be sorted as paper... not a good thing. And crushed cans can also fall through the rollers of the conveyor system and gum up the works...

Sooo... for the sake of the environment... the recycling system... and the sorters who bring the cans to the bottle depot... please don't crush your beverage containers! And... I'm not sure what a reverse-vending machine would make of a crushed can either...

Neatly sorted...

All of this sorting of cans and bottles naturally takes time... but finally... I'm done and I very carefully and gingerly pull my rolling carts through the parking lot, over the threshold of the door (bump!) and into the big sorting room.

Thanks to Covid... no one really sorts in here anymore... those days are probably gone forever if the new systems get introduced everywhere.

I then join the line-up of other customers and make sure that all of the beer bottles haven't gone all higgle-dee piggle-dee thanks to the bumping they've endured from the car to this point. And let's not even talk about the smaller plastic bottles which aren't as stable as the heavier glass bottles. It's hopeless to try and keep them marching in ranks of 4 x 6.

But... it all pays off when the attendant scans my cart and very quickly tallies how much I've got of each variety. And... $50 is nothing to sneeze at! I have to say, I am looking forward to the future when the new ReturnIt Express & Go system takes off everywhere... or the reverse-vending machines. Our deposit-return system might not be perfect but it's a darn sight better than jurisdictions which have no system at all.

The Life-Changing Magic of AudioBooks

I don't know that I ever tried audiobooks before. Did I?

Well... maybe once. For a long, 16 hour drive from northern BC to Vancouver. Rather than just listening to my self-made collection of music cassette tapes, I borrowed an audiobook (on cassette tapes) from the local library. I think.

See, I can't really remember... it was that non-memorable an event. No idea what the book was... or if I even finished it. After all, rummaging around in a cassette holder, looking for the next cassette, while still maintaining eye contact with the 100 km/h road... well... not such an easy thing.

And so... audiobooks have never really been part of my "thing", so to speak. Until a few months ago.

My partner expressed an interest in getting an audiobook by Clarissa Pinkola Estes. This particular "book" was really a collection of talks that she had given and was only available in audio format. The question became... how does one listen to an audiobook nowadays and... where do you get them?

I, being the Research Digger in the family, did a quick scouting expedition.

Well... one could buy it from Amazon for $90 and get 6 cds. Which meant we would need a cd player...  or use a laptop. But that didn't really fit the need. My partner wanted something mobile.

So I was off to Audible... having seen a large number of Audible advertisements lately. Audible is owned by Amazon and is an app that you can install on your phone (mobile - check!). It is a subscription based service - pay $14.95/month and get one free audiobook credit per month. On top of that, you get a 30% discount on audiobooks while subscribed. And... the books you get via credit or purchase are yours forever. Sooo... via Audible, we could buy the Clarissa book for $60 (less 30%). Still seemed a bit pricey. And then I learned that Audible has a free 30 day trial! Sign up and get 30 days free... including one audiobook credit. Done!

So I used my Amazon account to install Audible on both of our phones... and my partner happily spent hours listening to the tranquil voice of Clarissa, while putzing around the garden.

But... I didn't stop with Audible... I installed Libby, the audiobook app that our local library uses, onto both of our phones as well. What's not to like about free audiobooks! Mind you, their selection isn't as comprehensive as Audible and one sometimes has to be patient waiting for a book... but still... they have quite a nice selection of Jodi Picoult books which my partner gobbles up like candy.

Watching my partner puttering around with ear buds, I decided to give audiobooks a try as well. I knew that Kobo had an audiobook app and also included a 30 day free trial. But before I could deliberate as to which book to get... my partner was already finished Clarissa's book and asking for another book... Burnout by Emily and Amelia Nagoski. There went the free Kobo book credit! Which was fine because I wanted to listen to that book too. But because I had just used my Kobo account... we both had the same account on our Kobo apps... which meant that only one of us cold listen to Burnout at once. Otherwise the bookmarking got all wonky!

Still... we both now had Audible, Libby and Kobo on our phones and a treasure trove of audiobooks just waiting to be tapped. Mind you... Audible and Kobo would require an ongoing monthly subscription ($9.99 for Kobo) if we wanted to stay with them. And... $10-15/month for just one audiobook seemed a bit steep.

And then I remembered Scribd... pay a monthly subscription fee ($10 US) and get unlimited audiobooks, e-books, sheet music, journals and goodness knows what else. It seemed too good to be true but... I am on a 30 day free trial with them and so far... doing OK. I have two audiobooks and one e-book on the go in Scribd and loving it. Mind you, some people say that their ravenous book consumption has been, at times, throttled by Scribd. Remains to be seen if "unlimited" is really that. I guess the romance readers can go through a LOT of books in a month. The one thing with Scribd is that... you only have accesses to the audio books while you are a subscriber. End the subscription and access stops. Which is different from Audible and Kobo.

Will we get value out of Scribd? Is this just a passing fad thing for us? I've always told myself that I'm a visual learner, not so much an audio learner. I learn best when I can see things. If I just hear something, it can be a case of "in one ear and out the other". This might, however, be due to my habit of multi-tasking... doing more than one thing at once. Like listening to someone on the phone whilst typing up an email. Let me tell you... it doesn't work!

But... listening to an audiobook does seem to work well for my early morning jaunts around the neighbourhood. Whether it's just around the block (15 minutes) or up Beast Hill and down several other streets (45 minutes)... listening to an audiobook seems to dovetail nicely with a solo street walk.

I am currently listening to a book by Ken Ilgunas called Walden on Wheels. The story of a young 20-something American college student trying to get out of student debt and settling upon the idea of living out of his van. His narrative style seems to stick better in my brain than some of the other books I've been reading/listening. Marie Kondo's book - The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying-up - rubbed me the wrong way mostly because the narrator sounded robotic! So I'm not so sure I got a lot out of that book... but I read it as a "real" book a few years ago anyhow...

Once our 30 day trials all run out... I'm not yet sure what we will do... Perhaps give Scribd a try? Does anyone out there have any tips or pointers? I like the idea of audiobooks and e-books from an environmental point of view... no trees being cut down... but I miss the permanence of a "real" book... and the ability to easily flip forward and find out what happens at the end!

Is a Gas Vehicle Worth it?

Well, hello there. Have you noticed how many e-vehicles are on the road? I'm seeing more and more of them. Nissan Leaf. Tesla. All of them without tail pipes and sometimes without a front grill. After all, you don't need air supply if you don't have an internal combustion engine. They aren't cheap though... the average new e-vehicle will cost you about $40,000 even including the $8000 rebates from various levels of government.

But... with a 25 year old Toyota 4-Runner... we are beginning to think it might be time to retire Clifford (the Big Red Truck) and look at an e-vehicle. Or... do we even need to own a vehicle anymore?

I have a friend in Winnipeg who relies on a few different means of transportation: cycling, transit and the Peg City Car Co-op, a car sharing service. She lives a block away from a Safeway parking lot that serves as a base for Peg City cars. Given that Winnipeg has some harsh winters I kind of thought cycling was a summertime activity but, no... people in Winnipeg ride their bicycles during the winter too. Hard core Canadians they are.

But... given that car sharing isn't widely available in our city and transit is not well developed in our area... could we just get by with taking taxis everywhere?

All of which got me thinking... how much does all of this cost??

I have to admit, the more I worked on this, the more options started to pop out of the woodwork - like ride-hailing options and car rentals and...more. Here are some numbers.

Owning a 1996 Toyota 4-Runner

These are probably the most solid numbers. Depreciation is based on 25 years of owning the vehicle, for which I paid $30,000. Easy number crunching. Although, does it depreciate by $1000/year at this point? Or is it now considered vintage and a desirable vehicle? Hard to say. But let's just run with that depreciation for now.

Then we have insurance, another easy number. As for maintenance, we put away $200 every month into a vehicle maintenance fund and, so far, we have had enough (and more) to cover all of our maintenance costs including oil changes, engine gasket thingies, new winter tires, new bushings and goodness knows what else. As for gasoline... again... that is a pretty easy number as we track our expenses. With gas being less thanks to Covid, we're probably more like $150/month but I'm leaving it at pre-Covid numbers.

That gives a grand total of $7200/year. Which isn't ridiculous. I tried out the CAA True Car Costs Calculator as well. It only went down to 2010... so I tried a 2010 4-Runner. But then it had added expenses which we don't have, like car loan costs and the depreciation is steeper. But, for newer vehicles... it's a handy tool.

Car-Sharing

We don't live in Vancouver or Winnipeg, but in a small city (about 90,000 people) so... our car-sharing options are slim-pickings. Modo is in town and has six vehicles, most of which are in the downtown core. I could walk down there in 45 minutes... if we wanted a vehicle for a getaway weekend or a day trip or something... but it's not the same as having it a block away.

There is a monthly subscription fee as well as a fee per hour of use. It caps off at $52/day which is roughly the same as a car rental place (for a small compact car).

If they were closer to our neighbourhood... it might be worth it, but I don't really see this benefiting us anytime soon, unless they expand their network. Even if it was as 15 minute walk, it might be worth it.

The numbers above are based on roughly 3 hours of use per week - mostly for grocery shopping, appointments or other errands. It's kind of a fluff number because, honestly, I have no idea how much I use the vehicle. Never had to quantify that...

Car Rental

Which leads us to your standard rent-a-car. In this case, Budget, which rents out for about $55/day for a compact vehicle. I'm presuming that includes all the taxes and service fees but you never know with car rental places. They always want to sell you the extra comprehensive insurance policies.

I was thinking this might be something for a weekend getaway as well but... we run into the same problem as with the car-sharing option. There are no car rental places nearby... they are all downtown. Which leaves me with a 45 minute walk again... or a taxi fare. Which is doable but not desirable.

Although, apparently the commercials are true and Enterprise will pick you up for free and bring you back to their car-rental office. Cool!

Taxi

Ugh... taxis... a necessary evil I guess. But damn expensive.

Last week, due to us double booking appointments, and only having one vehicle, my partner had to take a taxi home from an appointment. It's 4 km and about 8 minutes from home. It cost $13 plus a $2 tip. Eesh!

I'm not a big fan of taxis, in case that isn't clear. Unless I'm on a business trip and the company is paying for them. In which case, they are super convenient, mostly.

But... for personal trips... not such a big fan. Which leads us to something similar... ride-hailing!

Ride-Hailing

Ride-hailing is a bit of a moot point for us since we don't have Uber or Lyft or anything else. But it is apparently coming... fingers crossed. This could be a game-changer... maybe.

I just did some number crunching using Uber's trip estimator app and trying a few sample trips in Vancouver.

Huh... it seems to be cheaper than taxis but... still ain't all that cheap. A 10 minute, 4 km trip is around $12... Which isn't that far off from the taxi price above - around the same distance and same time of travel. Sooo... maybe ride-hailing apps aren't all that they cracked up to be.

We will have to wait and see how they shake out across the Lower Mainland and the Island. The thing is... in Vancouver, if you've got the time... you can always take the bus, which is super convenient and usually comes fairly quickly...

Transit

OK, this is a super easy calculation... a monthly bus pass costs $65. Boom, done. And... I do believe they are a tax deduction too, so that's a perk as well.

The only thing in our city, and particularly in our location in the city, is that bus service is not all that convenient. We have one bus that comes by every hour... and the connections to other routes aren't that convenient.

But... to be honest, I've never taken the bus in our city... despite living here for seven years. So, what do I know??!! We would have to actually try it and experiment with it for a while. Something as simple as getting to the ferry terminal, which is a 15 minute drive (more or less) would require two buses and 63 minutes. Not the most efficient mode of transportation but I guess it could be done... I could practically walk there in that time! Wait for it... it only takes 71 minutes to walk there. Sigh. And if I cycled, I could be there in 22 minutes... not that far off from the car trip.

Bicycle

Which leads me to ped-power... in this case an old fashioned bicycle that depends on leg power.

Here... we only have ongoing maintenance costs which aren't ridiculous. I bought my current bike in 1993. It's 27 years old and still going strong. So far.

But even if I bought a new bike for a few hundred bucks, it's not going to break the bank.

The only problem with biking is the hills. Goodness, everything seems to be uphill in our city, it's all humpety-bumpety... which, if you're just oozing out for a bike ride in March, is deadly. Jello winter legs and cycling do not agree.

e-Bike

But then... we have the lovely e-bikes! Buy one for around $2500, keep it for a decade or so and only pay pennies per charge. What's not to like? Oh... and it goes up any hills like nobody's business.

There are other costs obviously... the batteries only last through around 1000 charging cycles... and the batteries are not cheap to replace ($500) but... still. For the sheer comfort of zipping up hills with no effort... it might be worth it.

We don't have an e-bike but a friend of ours bought one and she raves about it. Soo... maybe one day... Once the pandemic is over and I can actually go somewhere just for fun... like Starbucks. Sigh.

Instacart

This isn't technically a mode of transportation but... if it saves me from having to drive 30 km round trip to visit Superstore and Costo and Walmart... well... it could count as an option.

Because, let's face it, with the pandemic and naked-faced people running around... shopping ain't no fun anymore. Particularly big places like Superstore and Costco. So... why not avail ourselves of Instacart where someone does the shopping AND delivers straight to our door!

I have used PC Express for Superstore, but I still have to drive all the way over there and then sit and wait a good 15 to 20 minutes for them to bring the groceries out to me. Not the most efficient use of my time.

We have yet to use Instacart but our behind-neighbour has signed up and loves it. Sooo.... something to consider.

Conclusions

 Soooo... where does this leave us? Well... our venerable 4-Runner costs about $600 a month to run. If I were to dove-tail ALL of the other options into our life, instead of the 4-Runner, we'd be looking at $800/month. But there is obviously some overlap in some of them... like Modo vs Car Rental and Taxi vs Ride-Hailing... not to mention Bicycle vs e-Bike. If I cut out Car-Rental, Taxi and Bike... we are left with $400/month, which is definitely cheaper than running a vehicle.

The real trade-off I guess is in convenience. If I need to grab a carton of soy milk from the local grocery store (30 minute walk, 10 minute bike ride, 4 minute drive)... it is obviously quicker and more convenient to just jump into the truck and go. Owning a vehicle is just so darn convenient... Getting rid of the vehicle and stitching in a diverse set of different options would require military-style planning and execution... as well as patience.

And... in case you're wondering... an e-vehicle would cost about the same (or even more) as our 4-Runner. Mostly because of the high purchase price which results in ridiculous depreciation costs. The Government of Canada did some number crunching of EVs vs ICEs (Internal Combustion Engines) and... considered all sorts of factors like how far you drive in year. For us, with about 15,000 km/year... an EV isn't going to offer great savings. If we drove 40,000 km/year... that would be much better. But, as EV costs come down... it becomes more realistic. It all depends on how far and how often you drive...

Which leads me to this... I really have no idea on our vehicle usage. How many trips do I make in a week? How far do I go? Given I am writing this on November 2... perhaps it's time to start tracking things for a month or so... just to get a sense of it?

Apparently it is. I just downloaded an app called TripLog to my phone and... we'll see what November reveals!