No impact week :Day 3 :: Burn calories, not fossils fuels.

( basquiat :: photo taken at the Moma in Paris)

VERSUS

( my husband going back and forth in our little paved street :: hence NO helmet. 

And Tessa sitting  atop  the bike since no child seat on it!! 

But she really wanted to go for a short ride...)

We are lucky to live in the heart of a small town nearby Paris. Everything is within minutes of a brief walk. Local stores ( boulangerie, cremerie/fromager, poissonnier, you name it). So we usually walk everywhere or when needed we use our awesome TRIKE to go groceries shopping to our local organic store. We even used it in 2008 for a huge Trike rally in Paris. We had lots of fun!

 In Paris by Notre Dame. I was VERY nervous in this traffic. 

Where we live it is much more peaceful...

(In our neighbourhood)

(on the way back from school along La Seine, 3 years ago)

(doing errands with the trike :: sometimes there is groceries, 

load of books from the library and the 2 girls in there . 

a friend of mine trying it out with all the girls!

My husband commutes to work by public transportation. Everything will be wonderful if i did not have to DRIVE a total of 2 hours a day to get to our girls school.... 

No school around closer ??
Oh yes 5 of them..! But all of them are French schools. Our girls are bilingual and it is important that they attend a international shcool where english is the primary language.  So the closest one from home to be an international shool is about 20 to 30 minutes drive ( one way and back) in the morning and again for pick up time...  Here you go 2 hours of MY time spend in THE car...
Luckily, I work from home... my studio is across our courtyard...

This school being quite a driving distance away  is our {I should say : my) daily big challenge.
There aren't any buses going there, no subway, no bike lane and no carpool possible since we are mostly the only one in this town going to that school.
When we fist move to France, our oldest used to go a darling French school where I was going by trike at least once if not twice a day. They had snacks, blankets and books for the 30 minutes ride to school . The  usually my youngest was going for a little catnap on the way back...
But this time is over and commute is by car... I do try to associate as many errands as possible while being in the school areas. It works.

So my today challenge was not met.
Plus Tuesday is our CSA day...
A little more driving to do compared to the rest of the week to go get our veggies from our super nice farmers.  At least it is a short and really nice drive in the woods.

But my ideal world :: it would be to go to school like this ::