Surfing the Slack
So i have a transportation problem. I am doing a visitor period at Acorn and i am on leave from Twin Oaks, so i do not have the member privilege of driving the cars owned by the community. But because of Willow and friends and intimates at Twin Oaks, i desire to move between the communities almost daily.
Which means there are times when i watch a car which is signed out to a member who is going to Acorn, or in this mornings case, i diverted Dianne who was going to Cville. As i have described the vehicle system is robust in many ways and part of this is the chronicling of where the vehicles are going.
Vehicle Log tells where everyone is going and when
i call Dianne and ask her if she will take me to Acorn and she points out that it is not on the way to where she is going and secondly that she would happily take me out of her way. Dianne and i are not close, but i am not at all surprised by her answer, the culture is one of helping and she is a quite helpful person.
Ride Board tells you what vehicles are free and in use
The lesson would appear to be that we can all get where we want to go (with fewer resources) if we are willing to go a bit off our originally planned path.
For awhile back in ’96 or so, I was living at Twin Oaks, but had a relationship with Laura who lived at Acorn. I remember riding the 7 miles by bicycle many times, helping her put exterior siding up on the (then) new main residence bldg.
During winter, I hitched many rides between T.O. and Acorn.
The really odd thing about this is that I think the format of the vehicle log is the same as it was in the late 70′s, early 80′s…….
@Audrey – i am sure that this magnet board and vehicle log goes back that far, largely unchanged. It is a clever and well working system, little need to change it. [And we have not really increased the number of vehicles the community has in the 15 years i have been here]