National Week With[out] Driving, take 2

It's Thursday, Day 4 of the first National Week Without Driving, and my week isn't going as planned.

Yesterday afternoon, a friend phoned to say that her broken wrist wasn't staying properly aligned in its plaster cast, so she had been scheduled for surgery today--could I drive her? 

The correct answer in such situations isn't "I'm not supposed to drive this week"--it's "absolutely, at your service, glad I can help."

The surgery had been scheduled for mid-afternoon today. This was fortunate for me, since I have a teaching commitment at Claymakers on Thursday mornings. But even if I planned to drive to work in the morning, I wouldn't have enough time after my class to pick up my friend and get her to the surgical center by her check-in time.

We brainstormed solutions. The surgical center is located ~11 miles from my friend's home, and ~8 miles from Claymakers. 

Solution 0: We could take mass transit to the surgical center. (Hahahaha. This one's just here in the spirit of Week Without Driving. We didn’t actually consider it.)

For me, traveling from Claymakers, assuming I could time it right and buses were running on time, taking mass transit would mean a 35-minute bus ride with 5 minutes of walking on each end--about 45 minutes total. That would make me late for my friend's check-in time.

For my friend, from her home, with the same assumptions, taking mass transit would mean about 20 minutes of walking combined with two different bus rides, plus some waiting time between buses--about 1.33 hours total. 

Getting home together, after her surgery, with friend possibly feeling some pain and possibly still loopy from anesthesia, would require almost 1.5 hours, including two bus rides, some waiting, and 20 minutes of walking.

If a bus were running early, we might miss it; if a bus were running late, we'd be late. Mass transit would not be a reliable way to get from point A to point B.

Solution 1: I would drive to work. My friend would drive herself to the surgical center, and I would show up in my own car a little late. 

Assuming the surgical center would even allow her to check in without an accompanying human, this proposal would mean having two cars there, and only one able driver for the drive home.

Solution 2: I would drive to work. She would take an Uber to the surgical center, and I would show up in my own car a little late. 

She phoned the surgical center to ask if I could arrive late. They said they'd give me an extra 30 minutes max.

Solution 3: Friend realized I could walk to Claymakers, she could pick me up at the end of my class, and she could drive us both to the surgical center. I could then drive us both home after the surgery. 

This sounded so optimal, we never got to Solution 4, which presumably would have involved other Uber configurations or other friends.

So for Day 4 of this avid walker's Week With[out] Driving, my friend and I are trading driving places for a few hours. I hitched a ride with her to her surgery, and after her bones are properly pinned in place, I'll drive her home.

Once I get home, I'll hopefully have time for a long walk before the sun sets (or after--I'll take what I can get), because I'm now two days-worth of miles down from where I need to be to reach my weekly walking goal.

I'm typing in the waiting room...

The soothing view outside the waiting-room window: a parking lot.

Postscript 

The second photo bugs me. The parking lot is largely empty. All that impervious surface, designed to accommodate more drivers than typically need it (assuming today is a typical day). I can't see a sidewalk beyond it, although there's one across the street. 

Google says the closest bus stop is 0.4 miles away. When I click on Google Maps' proposed route from the surgical center to the bus stop, I'm shown a wee orange warning triangle with an exclamation point inside, and the text "Use caution - may involve errors or sections not suited for walking."

"Not suited for walking." Of course this area isn't suited for walking. Suburban commercial development is designed for cars, not people. Thankfully, though, some optimists--or realists--put a bus stop on a wide, well-traveled street running through a commercial area not suited for walking. The location isn't ideal if you need surgery a 0.4-mile walk away, but at least the stop acknowledges that people need alternatives to driving.

National Week With[out] Driving

This week, thanks to motivation from Bike Durham, I am participating in the first National Week Without Driving, a movement that encourages participants to reflect on what it's like to navigate the world without the privilege of being able to drive a car.

Before I get to how this week is going, here's some background.

I have spent the past two years seriously upping my walking game and intentionally avoiding driving. You can read more about that here.

It's a privilege to live in a neighborhood where my needs can generally be met within walking distance--although my definition of "within walking distance" has expanded over the past two years. Now, it generally means less than 10 miles round trip (15 miles on occasion if absolutely necessary and if I have the time). Distances greater than that often mean either skipping the trip or combining a drive with other errands so at least I'm maximizing bang for the carbon-footprint buck.

Where do I need to go to meet my needs?

I have two paid jobs. I'm a potter/pottery instructor, and I'm a science-writing consultant/instructor. Usually I get to and from those jobs by foot.

It's a few yards from my front door to my home studio; 2.77 miles (quickest route) to the community studio where I teach; and 3.5 miles (more leisurely route) home. Usually I walk. I drive to the community studio when I need to purchase clay, and I time those trips to coincide with other errands that require driving. I usually teach during the day. If I sub for nighttime classes, I drive.

It's zero miles to my laptop for Zoom consultations, and 3.5 miles to and from campus on days I work with writers in person. Usually I walk. I typically give two out-of-town writing workshops annually that require traveling by plane. One of those workshops--ha--is later this week.

It's about 2 miles each way to the food co-op and about 3 miles each way to Costco. I've learned how much I can carry in my 27-liter backpack and shop accordingly.

I usually drive or fly to visit family and for vacations. My son, E, is a student at NC State. When he takes the bus home to visit his doting parents (45-100 minutes one way to the downtown Durham bus station, depending on time of day and day of week, plus a 25 minute walk home), we'll usually drive him back to school (60 minutes round trip).

Now on to how this week is going...

Monday was an atypical workday, but an expected part of my seasonal work cycle. I was in Zoom meetings almost continuously from 8:30am until 5:30pm. I had a short break for lunch, and 1.5 hour break in the afternoon, when I worked in my studio. I had no time for walking (bad), and no need to drive (good).

On Tuesday, I worked from home in the morning. In the evening, I was scheduled to give a demo presentation for the Triangle Potters Guild.

I live in Durham; the Guild meets 26 miles away in Raleigh. The distance is not walkable. (Obviously, of course, but don't laugh! Figuring out a way to walk all the way to NC State has been on my recreational to-do list for a while. But even if I could split the walk into two days--it's 26 miles by car, but would be farther on foot--I have yet to find a route that anyone in their right mind would consider safe. Urban sprawl is designed for cars, not pedestrians.)

For the Week Without Driving, I needed to aim for alternatives to driving to Raleigh myself.

First option: mass transit. You'd think that with an international airport between Durham and Raleigh, we'd have easy mass transit options. We don't. We have no light rail, and taking the bus point-to-point would require at least two hours in each direction. Add in having to transport a heavy, awkward load of clay, tools, and pots: taking the bus becomes unfeasible.

Second option: Uber. Hiring a ride would have cost me ~$70-$120 or more round trip, depending on the time of day, and would have been worse for the environment than driving myself. My own car was waiting in my driveway, while an Uber driver would have had to drive to my house to pick me up.

Third option: ask a friend to take 4.5 hours out of their day to chauffeur me. Wasn't gonna happen.

So I drove.

To make the trip more productive, I combined it with three other objectives: picking up Durham Pottery Tour postcards at another potter's studio on the south side of Durham; stopping at Umstead State Park to fit in an out-of-town walk; and having dinner with E before the demo presentation.

Rush hour meant a lot of waiting in long lines of traffic...

What I gained from driving to Raleigh--other than getting to Raleigh with 35 pounds of stuff--was empathy for folks who have to commute every day, and irritation that this part of the country is not set up for alternatives. As an avid walker, I'm already intimately familiar with the lack of alternatives, since the lack limits my options for destinations, but having to drive yesterday certainly reinforced the point. We need alternatives.

My errand to pick up postcards added 20 minutes to my trip. From there, getting to Umstead State Park--which is directly en route to Raleigh--took an unusually long 30 minutes, thanks to heavy traffic and slow-downs caused by two different crashes. This left me less time to walk than I had intended.

Pretty, but traffic congestion en route left me with no time to linger.

Getting to NC State then took another 20 minutes due to rush-hour congestion, leaving me with less time than originally planned for dinner with E. He ended up driving with me to the Craft Center and then took a campus bus back to his apartment (hooray for NCSU's campus bus network!). Driving home after the Triangle Potters Guild meeting took a mere 30 minutes.

Total driving time so far this week: ~2 hours. Via [non-feasible] bus, it would have taken at least 4 hours, and I would have arrived home around midnight instead 10:15pm.

I immensely enjoyed meeting members of the Triangle Potters' Guild, discussing my work, and demonstrating one of my wheel-throwing processes. The experience was energizing and engaging and fun, and I'd love to attend more meetings--but that opportunity will only be possible if I drive (or find another potter to commute with from Durham).

Today, Wednesday, has been another work-at-home day. I took a break to walk downtown for an errand, and I will walk to the Co-op this evening to pick up some groceries.

Winged Winner Cake

In 2009, I invented and tested and finally submitted a recipe to an Ocean Spray cranberry recipe contest. The recipe didn't win, but it should have.

This winter, I was in a hurry to make a tasty dessert for company, and I decided to make what shall henceforth be called Winged Winner Cake. I was in such a hurry that I didn't bother digging up the old finely-tuned cranberry contest recipe. Instead, I found a simple applesauce chocolate cake recipe online and replaced the oil with butter and reduced the amount of fat, added two eggs and spices and an apple and pecans and chocolate chips and cranberries, and reduced the amount of applesauce only because we didn't have enough on hand--basically, I winged it. Turns out Winged Winner Cake is way easier than my original 2009 recipe, because nothing has to be precisely measured, so I'm putting it here for future reference. 

The recipe for the carefully crafted, very fussy non-winged version follows below the winged version. It tastes fabulous, but what a pain to make. The winged version takes maybe 20 minutes to throw together (if you remembered to pick up a jar of applesauce the last time you were at the food Co-op and don't have to add in time for a shopping trip), vs. I dunno, way longer for the un-winged version.

----------

Winged Winner Cake

1.5 cups sugar 

1/2 - 3/4 cup melted butter 

2 eggs

1.5 - 2 cups unsweetened applesauce

2 tsp vanilla (to taste)

1 T ground cinnamon (to taste)

1 tsp ground cloves (to taste) 

1 tsp salt 

2 cups flour 

½ cup unsweetened cocoa powder 

2 tsp baking soda (not sure this actually does anything, since it's a pretty dense cake regardess, but I haven't tried making the cake without it yet)

2/3 c. ground pecans (this is the amount that comes out when I fill the top of our nut grinder)

1 apple, whatever variety you like, grated (don't bother peeling)

1/2 c. semi-sweet chocolate chips (or more, or less)

2 cups whole cranberries (that's what's in a bag, right?) (or more, or less)

Y'all, you know how to make cake batter. Mix all of the ingredients together, but don't overmix. Yadda yadda. Pour/spoon into a spring form tube pan and bake ~350oF until knife or toothpick emerges without goo (which tends to be ~50 minutes plus hmm, maybe 10 more minutes, plus hmm, maybe another 10 minutes. Just keep a casual eye on it.). Best served with homemade whipped cream, but also tasty without.

Update 5/4/25: For perfection, coat this baby with the fudgy ganache my mom used to make with unsweetened chocolate and sweetened condensed milk: 1 can SCM, 2 squares unsweetened chocolate, pinch of salt if desired, cook on low-med heat on stovetop until thick, thin as needed with a little milk or water. Oh my.

---------

Non-Winged non-Winner Cake: The Ur-rezept

Cranberry Chocolate Apple Cake 

1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened 

3/4 cup white sugar 

3/4 cup brown sugar, packed 

3 eggs 

1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce 

1 tablespoon vanilla 

2 1/4 cups flour 

1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder (preferably "natural," not "dutched") 

1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda 

1 tablespoon ground cinnamon 

1/2 teaspoon ground cloves 

1/2 teaspoon salt 

3-5 Granny Smith or other tart apples (aiming for about 1 1/2 cups lightly packed grated apple, see instructions below) 

1 cup semisweet or bittersweet chocolate chips 

1 cup broken pecan pieces 

2 cups fresh or frozen whole cranberries 

Preheat oven to 350oF. Grease and flour a Bundt pan. Cream butter; add sugar and eggs and beat 3-4 minutes or until smooth. Add applesauce and vanilla; beat until smooth. In a separate bowl, combine dry ingredients and spices. Peel apples. Using a cheese grater or food processor, coarsely grate apples, discarding cores and seeds. You will need 3-5 apples, depending on the size of the apples. The water content of the apples affects the cake; juicier apples will produce a denser, moister cake, while drier apples produce a "cakier" cake. If the apples release a lot of juice while you're mixing other ingredients together, drain off the juice before adding the apples to the cake. Beat the dry ingredients into the butter mixture until combined. Stir in the grated apples, chocolate chips, pecans, and cranberries. Spoon into Bundt pan. Bake 75-85 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean; it may take a little longer if the cranberries were frozen. Allow the cake to cool before removing it from the pan; it will tear if it's too warm. The cake is good served slightly warm with whipped cream (lightly sweetened and with a little vanilla added), but it improves with age and is great cold.

Disillusioned avocados

I was scrolling through Instagram this afternoon, and this photo made me laugh out loud. Apparently I'm not the only woman who occasionally feels like a dried out oxidizing avocado with a big round pit for a belly. Age and childbirth will do that to you. When I think more about this, though, I realize I'm one tenacious avocado.

After I stopped laughing, I strived for empathy. These poor betrayed millennials. Clearly they haven't read the NYTimes article on aging exuberantly. Those of us in the know understand that by upping our exuberance quotients, our lives can continue to be worth living. Toss in a little lemon juice and refrigeration, or a willingness to embrace eating a whole avocado in one sitting: such wisdom comes with age.

It's worth mentioning that the NYTimes article on disillusioned millennials hitting middle age does not mention exuberance even once. That's the real betrayal here.

By the way, I think aging is pretty great. It beats the alternative, of course; and honestly, life mostly just gets better and better.

More exuberance

Claymakers had a Valentine's themed fundraiser fest back in February. S and I went with TS. The fabulous Poetry Fox was there, and T commissioned a poem for me. It's remarkably on-target. Exuberance isn't always easy, especially on dreary rainy days like today, so it's helpful to have this wisdom from the Fox to reflect on.

Walking to Saxapahaw

Since returning from Germany last summer, I have been mourning the lack of easy long-distance day-hikes enabled by convenient mass transit. I finally decided to aim for some point-to-point hikes from Durham, figuring I could select destinations on bus or train lines.

In January, I started mapping out some potential routes. Maybe I could walk to Virginia! How many days would it take to reach the border, or Richmond, or Charlottesville? Turns out about 3 days, 10 days, and 10 days respectively. There's even a designated greenway--the 3,000-mile long East Coast Greenway--that passes through both Durham and Richmond, albeit mostly on roads and intended for bicyclists. 

I got as far as determining that finding places to stay en route would be a challenge. Then I discovered the ODX bus--the Orange-Durham Express--which runs from Durham to Hillsborough to Efland and back on weekdays during the early morning and early evening.

In February, the ODX enabled a 44-mile, 2-day walk starting from home:

    * Day 1: Durham to Hillsborough (19.5 miles), taking the ODX home (+1.5 miles). 

    * Day 2: ODX to Hillsborough (+1.4 miles), then walking to Saxapahaw (21.6 miles). 

There exists no mass transit home from Saxapahaw. S, who bicycles there on a semi-regular basis, kindly offered to pick me up by car. 

Day 1, Tuesday Feb. 21:

The walk from home to Hillsborough was hands down the most gloriously beautiful local walk I've taken since becoming a walkaholic. It knocked happening upon the ECWA Beaver Marsh Preserve on a snowy January day in 2021 down to second place.  

I needed to start our taxes, so my route began with a walk to Costco to buy software. From there, I continued past the strip malls...

For questioning potters...

...to Guess Road, and more commercial strips...

Because Du meine Seele, du mein Herz...

...eventually wending my way into the Croasdaille Farms subdivision.

I may or may not have walked on this path:

From Croasdaille, it was another few miles to the Laurel Bluffs Trail along the Eno River...

Stray daffodil

Trout lily

...then north along Cole Mill Road, past my second favorite fire hydrant in all of Durham (first favorite is described here).

Eno flowing beneath Cole Mill Road

Then the trash started, and didn't let up until the intersection with Pleasant Green. Here's a photo of someone's personal toxic waste dump at an especially egregious spot along Cole Mill Road:

This award-winning sculpture adorns the entrance to a private residence:

Open Hand, by Joe Coates

Eventually I landed in Eno River State Park. There's a short trail that begins just before the parking lot for Few's Ford, and it spits you out on the east side of the suspension bridge. That was an "ooh ahh!" moment for me, since I completely bypassed the bigger parking lot and the stepped trail down to the river. 

Ooh ahh! I'm east of the suspension bridge!

Cox Mountain Trail

Komoot, my route-planning app, told me to head west off of the Cox Mountain trail. Had it not told me to turn, I would not have noticed the un-signed trail. Clearly little used, and possibly non-maintained, it proved well worth the turn.

Old Eno homestead is gone, but daffodils remain.

The biggest, reddest open vein of clay I've ever seen runs up a steep hill

It's hard to make out, but the trail was an old forest road

The trail continued to the state park border and, with ominous signage, onto private land; so [TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES] following [TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES] and [TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES], past a pottery, to where I finally arrived at the Mountains to Sea Trail--a.k.a. Hwy 70:

Vroom vroom. Yes, this stretch of highway is part of the MST.

After walking a mile or so north on 70, I missed the turn-off to stay on the MST along the Eno. Because I had just enough time to catch the 5:20pm bus home if I hurried, I chose not to backtrack to find the turnoff, and instead continued on the highway until St. Mary's Road, then turned left, past Ayr Mount and River Park Elementary and into scenic downtown Hillsborough. Shortly thereafter, I was one of only two passengers on the impressively speedy ODX bus back to Durham.

Day 2, Tuesday Feb. 28:

In theory, I was supposed to do this section the day after Day 1. But life and weather and blisters changed that. A week later, and on a day's notice, my friend TS joined me for the walk to Saxapahaw. I'd never been to Saxapahaw, and figured that arriving on foot would be a rewarding way to experience it.

T and I met shortly after dawn and skedaddled downtown to the bus station. T is one of the three fastest walkers I know (hat tips also to RM and CM), so we arrived with ten minutes to spare. 

The speedy ODX dropped us off across the street from the Weaver Street Co-op, where we were instructed to stretch--so we did.

We linked up with the MST behind the co-op. 

Mosaic in a parking garage behind the co-op: "Love Hillsborough"

The MST follows the Hillsborough River Walk for a bit:

The River Walk includes bridges, boardwalks, and paved trails...

...and tons of turkey vultures. 

Eventually we left the River Walk and headed west along a road to Efland. This road did not show Hillsborough at its finest. (I took a photo of some vulgar flags in front of a trailer home, but the image is too uncouth to post here.)

Eventually we approached I-40...

Cotton

The scenic Mountains-to-Sea Trail...

...and crossed to the south side of the interstate. It took another mile or two before we finally left the traffic and noise of the Efland I-40 interchange behind.

Our route followed an approximation of a future planned section of the MST. For now, it's an "alternate" route entirely on paved roads.

At the intersection of Chestnut Ridge Church Road and Buckhorn Road, we stopped at the INFO CEN ER, but learned very little:

We encountered only a handful of bicyclists and joggers over the course of the day.

Look! There's one!

For lunch, we paused near some houses on a scenic stretch of Bradshaw Quarry Road. With a healthy fear of trespassing and gun ownership in rural NC, I was game for sitting on a guard rail with our backs to the traffic, but T insisted on tromping off the road a bit. We found a fallen tree to sit on, and ate lunch surrounded by trout lilies. 

Then it was back to the country roads...

We passed a sign for Yellow Rake Road, although that was clearly a misnomer:  

Shortly beyond Pink Broom Road, it was baby burro season...

We crossed into Alamance County, which looked much like Orange County.

Over our entire route, we saw sign after sign that said "Private Property: No Trespassing." Sometimes these signs made sense, e.g. next to fishing ponds in which one might drown, and on Orange County Water and Sewer Authority land on which one might taint the drinking water. Still, we wondered what secret treasures must be hidden in these here hills to warrant so many signs, and we applauded multiple residential property owners for wisely making their land and wood piles look distinctly non-covetable.

This property looked covetable. What illicit activities would you engage in here?

By way of contrast, here's a welcoming, self-serve, honor-system, wee 24/7 open-door apiary store a few miles outside of Saxapahaw. I Venmo'd the owners $25 and added a 3-pound glass jar of local honey to my backpack, to gift to my honey-loving honey in appreciation of the upcoming ride home.

Signage told us when we arrived in Saxapahaw, although our official destination--the General Store--was still a few miles down the road.

After tanking up on seltzer and a chocolate chip cookie at the General Store, we meandered through Saxapahaw down to the Haw River. 

There's an island in the middle of the river, aptly named Saxapahaw Island, with a park aptly named Saxapahaw Island Park. We hiked a short loop trail around the park before heading back to the General Store to meet S for dinner.

And that was that. I was pleased that the ride home took a good 40 minutes, since it's always disheartening to have a seven-hour hike undone by a mere 20-minute car or train ride. (And for those of you paying attention, the drive to Hillsborough would have been about 30 minutes, which is also more than 20. Whew!)