FC ADVENTure CALENDAR Day 12, and 12x12in’12 Party!

A favorite book from my childhood is Go, Dog. Go!, by P.D. Eastman. It features dogs in all colors, utilizing all sorts of vehicles to get around. We didn’t have a car in Hannover, but we never needed to own one. In moving to Fort Collins from Germany we had to make a big adjustment. When we first arrived it was really important to me that we choose a place to live that allows for accessibility with a bicycle, or on foot. So we rented a house in Old Town, and finally bought one two years later. We only had one car for a few years, and with the trailer on the bike I was able to manage pretty well.

Bike paths in Fort Collins

We are fortunate that Fort Collins has a great bike culture, and many of the city’s streets are marked with bike paths. If you are looking to get somewhere via bike, the city has a Bike Coordinator to help you find the best route, bicycle safety resources and classes, route maps, a bike-and-ride program( buses that can carry up to two buses on the front at a time), status updates on bike trail conditions, bike cage access in one of the parking houses, bike-to-work-day and bike-to-school-day events, and more.

The bus system cannot be compared to any in Europe, but the city puts a lot of effort into promoting it’s use, including offering free bus fare for all students under 17, and all university students with a RamCard. They also work with neighboring communities to establish affordable regional transit services, for we may have train tracks, but no passenger trains. Unbelievable to us at first, but true. And at this point, with our barely stable economy, I only hope to see that happen. I’ll be sharing the story of our trolley in another ADVENTure post!

It’s Wednesday, and time for another idiom (WIX). I’ll keep ‘in motion’ with the thread of today’s post: on the home stretch: approaching something such as a task, race or journey. And I am! It’s the 12th day of the 12th month in 2012, a perfect day to celebrate! I have almost (19 days left!) successfully completed Julie Hedlund’s 12x12in’12 Challenge: 12 rough picture book drafts in 12 months in 2012! I am finding it too hard to express my gratitude to Julie and all my fellow participants – I am overflowing. So here is another Mr.Poppenfuss illustration, for IF: Explore, which expresses how I feel:

PS: Happy Birthday Beth!