Carectomy.com: Removing Cars from People - Slower Vacations More Vibrant

Slower Vacations More Vibrant

Written by Joshua Liberles

Wednesday, 26 December 2007

Most of us have heard about the Slow Food movement, an Italian-based endeavor to “counteract fast food and fast life, the disappearance of local food traditions and people’s dwindling interest in the food they eat, where it comes from, how it tastes and how our food choices affect the rest of the world.” We’ve even blogged about Slow Cities, which look to bring a sense of community back by, in part, getting cars the heck out of the way. The next logical step is to apply the “slow” mentality to road trips. Rather than a whirlwind tour guided by an overstuffed checklist of places to see, why not spend time in one locale, enjoy the cafés and local hangouts, and take a peak behind a place’s veneer?

Pauline Kenny and Steve Cohen coined the term “Slow Travel” to describe their new mode of exploration.

From National Geographic’s Green Guide:

[They] grew tired of the "10 cities in 10 days" type of trips and started booking long-term vacation rentals wherever they went, spending weeks at a time in one city, lingering in local cafes and strolling through neighborhoods. [They took their] time to develop a sense of place rather than hitting all the touristy hot spots. "Our type of travel slows you down and lets you have more fun," Kenny says.

Much like the way that the Slow Food movement encourages an appreciation for quality, homemade meals which allow for time with family and a less frenetic pace, the Slow Travel movement is all about stepping back from the modern world’s hustle, actually experiencing and getting to know travel destinations, and relishing aspects of a culture which aren’t covered by tour books and brochures.

An added bonus of each of the Slow- movements is the environmental component. The movements are largely reactions to blind mass consumption and the McDonaldization of our diets and cities. With Slow Travel in particular, zipping around in a car or plane day-to-day is not part of the plan. While slow-travelers may still get around by car or plane, they're using them less. Not only do trips have the potential to be more fulfilling, they'll also consume a fraction of the fuel and dump far less greenhouse gases in the process. Of course incorporating trains, bikes, and walking into trips further reduces the environmental impact.

Alan Durning has taken low-impact travel to a new level. He underwent a one-year carectomy (no car use at all) in Seattle. He enjoyed the new lifestyle well enough that at last report, five months into year two, he was still car-less. However, this didn't prevent him from taking trips.

From Green Guide:

Despite being free of four wheels, [Durning] and his family worked in a few vacations, his favorite being a week spent...without traveling at all. Rather than taking a train or renting a car, they stayed at home and became tourists in their hometown of Seattle.

"The rules were that we were we were on vacation, so no chores and none of the home improvement projects that usually take up our time off," he says. They picked a different neighborhood each day of the week, hitting parks and museums and eating at new restaurants. They even discovered a nearby museum they’d never visited that, at the time, was hosting a Maya Lin exhibit; the excursion was a vacation highlight for his kids. “It turned out to be really cool,” he says. Aside from the obvious benefits—time with his family, more money to spend on fun things to do, very few greenhouse gas emissions—there was one other. “We didn’t have to pack,” he jokes.

Should You Get a Carectomy?

Cars are the most inconvenient convenience we have. We're required to have them, but increasingly, we dislike them. At Carectomy, we're trying to figure out how to extract cars from people.

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