These People Are My New Heroes

Diaper change whilst bike touring. Sign us up for an Xtracycle please!

Check out Pedal Powered Family.  I only wish that I will someday be as cool as they are.

The link takes you to a posting about diapering while on their upcoming, yearlong bike tour with their children, ages not-quite-two and four.  An excerpt:

While planning our Big Adventure we faced the reality of 12+ months on our bikes with a diapered toddler in tow. During that time period, Harper would be using five or six diapers a day, or almost 2,000 diapers in total. The idea of producing that much landfill waste was too much for us, so we began to consider using cloth once again. After a little research, we discovered a cloth diaper system that would potentially weigh less and be less bulky than the pocket diapers we already have. We had found Little Beetle diapers made by Better for Babies.

There are several amazing things about this post:

• First, the speedy rejection of the “compostable diapers will break down in the landfill” myth that, frankly, drives me nuts.  Shit, wrapped in cornstarch, wrapped in all your other trash in a trash bag, surrounded by everyone else’s trash, will not break down in any meaningful amount of time for human existence.  Maybe in 10,000 years, but I’m skeptical.  Don’t get me wrong, compostable diapers are a decent idea – the materials they’re made of are likely less toxic than regular disposables, and theoretically you could compost them somehow.  Just not by throwing them in the garbage, people!!  Don’t let the greenwashers sell you that lie.
• Second, the fact that they are planning a 12+ month bike tour with two small children.  Huzzah!  I am adding this to my list of things to look at when I get sad and afraid of how irreversibly my life will change when the fruitbat arrives.  Okay, I don’t have a list yet, but I’m going to start with this.  Of course, since they’re Canadian, taking a year off from work doesn’t raise the troublesome “how do we manage health care?” question that we would be asking ourselves, but I’m not going to think about that until we decide to go on a mega bike tour.
• Third, while I am TOTALLY excited and grateful that our family and friends have basically gifted us a full year of cloth diaper service (THANK YOU!!), I am very interested in the self-service cloth diaper route and the lightweight, organic system they are promoting sounds amazing.  It’s way cheaper to wash your own cloth diapers, and I don’t think the diaper service uses organics – so hopefully once we figure out some of the other essentials of baby care (feeding, putting diapers on, encouraging lengthy sleep cycles, etc) I am very interested in shifting to the DIY version of cloth.  Plus, this sounds like a great option for continuing to use cloth while traveling.

Okay, now that I’ve ruined the experience by telling you everything, go read their blog.  I will commence research into how to acquire Canadian citizenship.