What I Learned From My ‘Week Without Driving’

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How would your life change if driving wasn’t an option?

That is the question posed by Week Without Driving, an annual campaign — running the first week of October in 2026 — that aims to help those of us who do own a car interrogate our transportation habits. And learn to practice new ones.

Launched in 2021 as a Disability Movement Initiative, #WeekWithoutDriving encourages registered participants to put themselves in the shoes of people who can’t afford a vehicle, who have aged out of driving, who don’t qualify for a driver’s license or who are physically unable to drive.

“For people who can grab their keys and go, transportation often isn’t a major concern,” says the Week Without Driving homepage. “But for those of us who can’t drive or can’t afford to, transportation is something we think about daily.”

As the owner of a plug-in Prius and an active transportation advocate who aims to drive as little as possible, I decided to design my own Week Without Driving ahead of the actual event. I tracked my progress — and my setbacks — along with a few learnings that I hope will help others navigate the challenge.

Week Without Driving challenges you to rely on riding the bus, walking, biking/scooting or asking for rides to understand what it takes to get where you need to go without driving.

Prepare for a series of decisions.

In hindsight, I was smart to start my self-imposed Week Without Driving on a Sunday — when traffic is lighter and the world moves more slowly, when I could savor moving outdoors in the 70-degree sunshine.

I was scheduled to meet a friend for an outdoor brunch at W.A. Frost, long considered to have the best patio dining in St. Paul. Since I was headed that way, why not pick up a few groceries at my favorite food co-op? Both are on a Bus Rapid Transit line that stops three blocks from my house.

Photos by Amy Gage

And so began my planning for the first day of not driving:

  • I consulted the bus schedule the night before and put the options in my iPhone calendar.
  • I dressed carefully, ensuring that I wore shoes I could move in, but not too casually given the potential formality of a Sunday brunch.
  • And I skipped an 8 a.m. yoga class because I would have had to drive there after spending 45 minutes walking my two dogs. I opted instead to work in the kitchen and do my own hip-stretching routine at home.

None of it was hard to do — in fact, choosing to walk the 8 blocks between the restaurant and food co-op energized me after the leisurely meal — but active transportation did require more time and initiative than simply hopping in my car.

Would my willingness hold for the next six days of Week Without Driving? Truth be told, it didn’t. Walking that much (24,000 steps on my first day) eventually wore me down, and both transit and biking proved harder to manage on a couple of busy weekdays.

“Some short car trips are necessary; for example, health and mobility issues might limit our ability to walk. Other times, driving is convenient,” says the Environmental Protection Agency.

Aim to both inspire and inform.

People who refuse to take mass transit or to walk or bike on at least some of their errands and activities — generally have little experience with active transportation.

Day 2 of my self-imposed Week Without Driving was rainy and chilly, and I probably would have driven had I been less committed to this challenge. Instead, I donned my raincoat and Oboz hiking shoes (the best) and walked to a neighborhood coffee shop to meet a fellow Planned Parenthood volunteer.

After I announced that I had to catch a bus in 70 minutes for another commitment — information that I like to share at the top of a meeting, so as not to appear rude when I have to bolt away — he said he rarely uses the city bus line a block from his house. He drove to this meeting mere blocks from where he lives. He and his family even drove to the Minnesota State Fair last summer and paid 40 bucks to park on someone’s lawn because they didn’t want to wait in line for the event’s free bus network.

Later that afternoon, my banker expressed surprise that I had walked to our meeting during a heavy rainstorm. He told me he had driven to work rather than walk less than a mile because his legs were tired from refereeing his children’s soccer games the day before.

At age 69, I get it. I also understand that personal actions alone won’t solve the climate crisis. But first, can we agree that Americans’ obsession with driving is an unhealthy practice, both for our bodies and our environment?

I-94 in St. Paul (left); student housing near the University of St. Thomas

Consider:

  • The Environmental Protection Agency, even in the anti-climate Trump administration, encourages biking or walking to activities under a mile away. “Car trips of under a mile add up to about 10 billion miles per year,” the EPA says.
  • St. Paul’s Climate Action and Resilience Plan calls for 40% of all trips within the city to be taken by bus, bike or transit by 2030. That’s only four years away.
  • A 2025 study from the World Resources Institute says that “living car-free,” making a commitment to “walk, bike or take transit more,” and carpooling or bundling your errands into one trip when you do have to drive rank among the top 10 ways that individuals can make climate-friendly choices.

I mentioned none of this to the banker: Virtue signaling and shaming don’t motivate anyone to change. But maybe by cheerfully shrugging off a rainy walk, or explaining the convenience of Metro Transit’s BRT system to the Planned Parenthood volunteer when he inquired, I inspired them to rethink their choices.

“Transportation is often discussed as a service gap, but it is also a dignity issue. Mobility is not merely getting from point A to point B. It is the freedom to remain part of the world,” says age-friendly advocate Dave Beal.

Allow exceptions and grant yourself grace.

By 5 p.m. on the second day of my self-imposed Week Without Driving, I have 22,685 steps, and I’m done. I cancel my plans to hear “James” author Percival Everett at the University of St. Thomas that evening — it’s chilly and damp out, and it would have meant walking another couple of miles to and from campus it’s — and instead settle in for the evening.

That highlights another reality of car-free living: You can’t overschedule your time, a habit that I find more difficult to manage as I age.

The next day, my husband and I ran errands in the Prius because I couldn’t persuade him to bike or take the bus. Excuses come easily when driving is more convenient. Still, Week Without Driving “is not a purity test,” a friend at the Bicycle Alliance of Minnesota reminds me; in fact, the initiative’s guidelines assure participants that they didn’t “fail the challenge” if they set foot in a car.

Three factors make active transportation possible for me:

  • I am strong and healthy, thanks to a lifetime of health insurance coverage and parents who encouraged physical fitness, helping me develop a love of movement.
  • I live in an urban neighborhood conducive to not driving. Four bus lines and one light-rail train are within reasonable walking distance of my home, and the bicycle infrastructure slowly is improving.
  • I have the means to afford two bikes, various exercise shoes, a gym membership and strength-training equipment in my basement.

Not everyone enjoys all those advantages. Week Without Driving seeks to remind privileged people — those who have reliable transportation options and the physical means to move — what life is like for people who, for a variety of reasons, cannot drive.

The initiative asks us to advocate for systems change that will improve mobility, which the Mobility Lab, a research center in Arlington, Virginia, defines as having the time to get where you need to go, the ability to afford those transportation options and the safety to walk, bike or drive.

“Living by a bus that comes once an hour isn’t mobility,” the Mobility Lab says, which is one reason why so many suburbanites drive everywhere. “Owning a car in a city with congested highways isn’t mobility either. To have mobility is to have access.”

Food for thought as we all prepare to vote this election season. Mobility, like other forms of equity, won’t just happen unless we work for it.

Advice on Being a Grandparent: Don’t Give Advice!

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It’s been over a year since Arthur’s birth on July 22, 2025 — and I still smile when I see how my home has morphed into a grandma’s house. A little here, a little there: one purchase, one donated castoff, one lucky discovery at a time. The metal wagon with fat wheels, perfect for storing toys in the garage and then hauling them around the yard, was my best “alley find” yet.

The metamorphosis of what had functioned as our empty-nest house in the city, 40 miles from the small town where my husband and I raised our children, has happened gradually, mirroring the time it has taken me to evolve from anxious grandparent to active, engaged Grandma.

A green Duplo dinosaur adorned with red and blue Duplo blocks — saved from our own boys’ childhoods — has replaced the decorative candle in the living room. The plants on a window ledge in my workout area in the basement have made way for Fisher Price toys that a friend passed along once her grandkids had outgrown them.

Because my husband and I had children in our 30s, which our son did as well, we haven’t had to invest much in baby supplies. At 75 and 69, respectively, we are old for first-time grandparents. Friends and neighbors who have been on this path for years are only too happy to offload old toys, a plastic backyard chair, a baby-sized comforter, even a crib. For the essentials — a highchair and a three-wheeled Thule jogging stroller, my proudest purchase and a delightful way for Arthur and his athletic grandmother to spend time together — Facebook Marketplace has been a godsend.

“Don’t buy any toys without checking with the parents,” said Mary Carlsen, a professor emerita of social work and family studies at St. Olaf College, whom I knew as a “soccer mom” way back when. “Young people have strong opinions about them these days.” That prompted me to lay out the various toys and thick-page books I had accumulated so my son and daughter-in-law could review them and approve.

A more broad-based version of that advice came from my neighbor Kate Barr, who has two grandchildren. “As [your children] learn to be parents, I advocate that you follow their lead on parenting,” she said, in response to a query that I emailed to experienced grandparents two days before Arthur’s birth. “I’ve never been in the ‘grandmother who spoils the grandkid’ camp.”

“It’s hard to remember sometimes to respect boundaries and not just step in and take over. These are your kids’ kids, not your kids.”

Our son insisted that the four older adults who would routinely provide care for Arthur — his dad and me, along with his mother-in-law and her youngest sister, Aunt Carol — take a grandparenting class at a center in Edina where Nate and his wife had taken a daylong parenting class.

“I had no idea there were grandparent classes,” said my childhood friend Janey Gislason, who helped us through the birth of both our sons. “I didn’t know that was a thing.”

Neither did I. But in hindsight, it makes sense; our younger son was 30 when Arthur was born, which meant I hadn’t fed or changed a baby in nearly three decades. At the time, however, I viewed it as a cheeky demand, one I would not have presumed to make of my own parents — who raised five children — or of my stepmother, who was the most caring and competent grandparent of them all.

I detailed in my blog’s New Year’s letter back in January some of what the class taught us about how parenting trends have changed:

  • No baby blankets for sleeping, due to fears of suffocation. Instead, you zip the baby into a “sleeping sack” that costs up to $45.
  • No stuffed animals in the crib, which had helped my son (and me, so many decades ago) feel nurtured and secure.
  • Although Arthur initially resisted “tummy time,” it was required to help him “develop the muscles of the head, neck and upper back.” I never did intentional tummy time when my boys were babies, and they’re both huge and healthy. But no matter. As one of my sisters succinctly put it: “Learn to know which subjects to keep your mouth shut about.”

A year later, as I reviewed the notes I took in class, one comment from the teacher stood out: “About half the people in any class have been ‘voluntold’ to come,” she said to a round of laughter. At the time, I rolled my eyes. Now I get it.

Millennial adults aren’t having children until their late 30s and early 40s, and they have fewer than the Midwestern, middle-income, small-town families in which my husband and I were raised. Do you value each child more when you don’t have as many? Are you more careful with each precious package because babies’ arrivals are now carefully planned around work and other “adulting” considerations?

Whatever the social or emotional reasons, the power dynamic has shifted between parents and their grown children. The wisdom and expertise that I sought from my own parents, the idea that our baby’s grandparents had something to teach us — Mom urging me to soothe Sam and Nate by holding them cheek to cheek against my face, Dad advising me on circumcision for the boys — is as outdated as a copper penny. And worth about as much.

Our children are in charge. “If I want to be allowed any alone time with grandbaby — without his parents hovering over me like prison guards — I need to at least pretend that I share their worries and fears,” quips one of my former colleagues, like me a first-time grandmother.

“As the child gets a little bit older, find something to do that’s just yours alone to do with your grandchild. That will create special memories.”

None of us gets out of childhood and adolescence without having survived at least one family tragedy. For my husband, it was his mother’s death from cancer when he was 12; for me, it was my parents announcing their pending divorce on my 14th birthday. For my daughter-in-law, Tess, it was her father’s drowning when she was just 13.

And yet her family has endured, in a way that mine did not after the divorce blew it all to pieces. Three of her mother’s four sisters live nearby, whereas mine reside in separate time zones. The aunts and uncles and cousins all celebrate Christmas and Thanksgiving with white elephant exchanges and other traditions, along with holiday cookie bakes, game nights and an annual summer gathering at her mother’s log cabin lake home in northern Minnesota.

Arthur, of course, has become part of it all — including a multi-generational celebration of his first birthday at the lake this past July. My son sent photos. I have had to work to sidestep jealousy, an ugly emotion that makes me feel inadequate and insecure, and elicits painful memories of how my own extended family has either scattered or died, including, many years ago, the one sibling who lived in town.

Again, I have turned to friends and loved ones for perspective:

  • “The more people who love that child, the better chance he has in a frightening world,” my friend Helene Haapala told me. That advice made so much sense, and her compassion struck me so deeply, that I have taken to whispering to Arthur: Do you know how many people love you?
  • “At times it can be hard to have a relationship with the other grandparents,” my friend and neighbor Noelle Jacquet-Morrison wrote in response to my emailed query. “Trust yourself. You will be amazing and amazed at what you can do.”
  • “Start your own traditions,” my friend David Fortney advised. I took part in Tess’s family Christmas last year when her mother kindly invited me because my husband was out of town, but I don’t want to always be a guest at other families’ celebrations. This December, I am going to drive my dog to Colorado to spend Christmas with my widowed sister, and I want to establish December 29 — my late brother’s birthday — as the day we celebrate the holidays with Arthur and his folks.

“Focus on your own relationship with your grandchild, and let the other grandparents focus on theirs,” says an article from the grandparenting website “More Than Grand.” “Be the best grandparent you can be, whatever your circumstances, and you will be a loved and important part of your grandchild’s team.”

Through the eyes of a grandchild, you get to see the world anew. I arrange to have Arthur spend one day a week at our house, during which we visit the public library, go on stroller rides to look for flowers, share blueberry scones from a nearby bakery and watch WNBA games on TV as he eventually nods off on my lap.

Here’s what I have to offer him: homemade eggs and hugs, goofball games and laughter, music on the stereo and movement outdoors. Like the Duplo bricks I gather from our yard and living room once Arthur has gone home, those are the building blocks of a grandparental bond, an evolving relationship. Our relationship, and the joy it brings to both of us.

Should You Keep Social Media After Retirement?

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One aspect of retirement that I never considered was how it would affect my profile on social media.

Nearly a year after leaving the last of my two part-time jobs, now working a contract gig that averages only 20 hours a month, I’m not sure I see the point in continuing to create and curate an online profile. At least not on a professionally oriented site like LinkedIn.

This is no small decision for a careerist who’s held public-facing positions.

I’ve been active on Facebook for years (true to my Boomer demographic) and a more occasional presence on LinkedIn and Twitter, pre–Elon Musk. Nine years ago — at the urging of young adults at work — I began toe-dipping into Instagram, which I had written off as a visual playground for photos of food, pets and sunsets.

Now that I no longer have professional contacts to impress, or any particular public image to maintain, is keeping up with social media still worth my time? To answer that question, I’ve come up with a set of criteria to evaluate whether I will retain any of these platforms at age 69, with my full-time, full-bore career four years behind me.

LinkedIn logo
Instagram

The following considerations will help me decide:

  • Can I be my whole self on this platform? This is important given the 21 years I spent as a communications professional for private colleges and universities, when any social media musings — even with the disclaimer that “posts are my own” — potentially reflected on the institution and once got me into deep trouble with my employer.
  • Do I enjoy and learn from other people’s content? This has become an issue for me in the progressive echo chamber that is Bluesky, where I silenced myself in declaring preferences for mayoral candidates in the Twin Cities, for example, because my views seemed more centrist and nuanced than the people I am following. Given the acerbic tone on Bluesky, I pause as I review political or policy discussions — the latest being the Democratic U.S. Senate race in Minnesota between Peggy Flanagan and Angie Craig — and ask myself: Are pissy exchanges with strangers worth this much emotional energy?
  • Does this feel like a creative outlet or an obligation? I posted a reel on Instagram the other day for the first time since late March after my weekly volunteer shift at a local food shelf. It gave me a little thrill, and I was proud of the message (“just show up”). But given that my first post on Instagram was in March 2017, and I’ve posted only 125 times since then, I am unlikely to become an influencer or even attract many followers beyond my friends and family.

Cutting the cord, deleting the accounts, wiping the slate clean just feels so . . . final. Like a concession to being old and out of touch. It’s the digital equivalent of burning journals — and eliminating a piece of my history that once felt important.

This is where the three criteria are going to help me.

News source or entertainment?

I’d never thought of Instagram as a news site until Trump’s ICE agents invaded Minnesota last January, detaining and assaulting immigrants and other people of color and killing two white citizens on the street in broad daylight. The horror, the family separations, the economic impacts of that brutality will never leave our collective consciousness.

Amid it all, as I used the newspaper and public radio and neighborhood Signal chats to follow the violence and resistance, I noticed that my older son in London, then 35, seemed to have a better handle on the goings-on than I did.

Younger people are more likely to be regular news consumers on TikTok, Instagram, Reddit and X. Democrats are also more likely than Republicans to say they get news from Instagram.

Pew Research Center, September 25, 2025

“This ICE stuff in the Cities is insane,” he wrote me on WhatsApp on January 17, 2026, a week before agents murdered Alex Pretti. “I’m seeing at least 3–4 new videos every day of something horrible. Two people have been shot, one kid permanently blinded. Shot from point blank with a pepper ball and dragged away by his collar.”

When I asked Sam about his news source, he replied instantly: Instagram. “Everyone is recording and posting everything,” he said. And then he directed me to Unicorn Riot, from which algorithms eventually led me to all kinds of local heroes and local news — on the ground, unfiltered, in real time.

Instagram is the social media site where I am learning the most from other people’s posts and reels. Where I think less about cultivating a “professional” persona and feel most free to get creative with what I want to present, as I did in the first reel I posted, during the ICE invasion.

  • My reasons for staying? Instagram checks all three of my boxes: whole self, creativity and education. News source or entertainment? I like that Instagram is both.

You’re my Bluesky . . . or not

I joined Bluesky by invitation — the only way to get on the platform initially — in September 2023. I was managing editor of Streets.mn, a community-oriented online magazine in the Twin Cities, and up until that time, Twitter had been my go-to platform to build sources and follow trends among the multimodal advocates, urban planners, city zoning experts and climate activists — the self-described “urbanists” — who were far younger than I was.

My Twitter profile, which dated back to 2008, had a photo of my dogs, a description of me as both an employee and a volunteer, and lots of posts about women’s basketball, reproductive rights and local politics. The platform felt more entrepreneurial and less polished and performative than Facebook, and I responded in kind.

Elon Musk changed that. Once the billionaire took over Twitter in October 2022, eventually rebranding it to X with a foreboding black background, the left-leaning regulars already were abandoning it. Progressives started migrating to Bluesky in February 2023, when the platform was being beta-tested as an invitation-only app and a year after Bluesky — which started as a Twitter initiative back in 2019 — had officially spun off from X.

By late 2024, when Bluesky was fully open to the public, major media like Forbes and CBS News were covering people’s exodus from Twitter. I had no interest in associating myself with Musk or the second Trump regime, but the larger reason why I quit posting to X in November 2024 (though I have maintained my account, for posterity, I suppose) was that I didn’t want my Streets.mn sources and writers to think I was out of touch.

In true social media style, I had an image to maintain, in this case as the still “with it” older woman.

Truth is, since resigning from the editorial position, I have struggled to discover who I am on Bluesky. I was there in a role, as an editor who made connections because it served my job. Now the task is to shape and share my own identity. But I don’t find the platform receptive to who I am.

My blog posts on mindful aging generate little engagement, and the one time I tried to reveal myself — describing my despair when thieves ransacked my well-tended Little Free Library — one commenter shrugged: “I thought that’s what Little Free Libraries are for.”

Conservative columnist George Will recently described a progressive politician as being “fluent in the online snark and condescension that clog social media.” Though I take issue with Will on any number of issues, I do agree with those who’ve criticized Bluesky as a “monoculture” that neither invites nor elevates dissenting views.

  • Using my own criteria, what are the reasons for staying? I can’t think of any. I rarely bother to post anymore.

The last ‘Link’ to professionalism?

I recently revised my résumé from four single-spaced pages to a single sheet that emphasizes volunteering, family and personal interests, names me as retired and focuses on the attributes (“well organized, high energy, community minded”) that I hope will land me a part-time job, at some point, at a neighborhood business.

The résumé does list my LinkedIn profile, which these days showcases my blog and freelance writing and the publication I write and edit for the Bicycle Alliance of Minnesota. So, that’s reason enough to keep the account active, even though I’ve posted only six times this year and the “impressions” for each post have been diminishing.

LinkedIn allows professionals, including the middle class, to invest in themselves in order to find the right jobs.

Democratic mega-donor and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman

LinkedIn takes hits for being inauthentic, promoting “humble bragging” and trading in “personal brand growth.” I use it as a professional bulletin board and an online space that feels safe. Because it’s meant for career-building, LinkedIn has a decorum that appeals to my understanding of what constructive dialogue and “good manners” means.

Several of my retired peers have kept their LinkedIn pages, though they rarely post. “I wanted people to know I retired,” says one, “and I don’t see any harm in keeping it. Today it told me my cousin has a new job, and I wouldn’t have known without LinkedIn. It’s interesting to see what people are up to.”

Another friend laughs that her LinkedIn page is “deep in cobwebs. I don’t even remember my password at this point.” I’ve worked in the field of information currency and communications for too long to keep a site active that I never look at or maintain.

  • Reason for staying? That’s a fourth criterion. Because for now, at least, it serves me.