New Goal and Go-Kart

I start to feel guilty if I don't post for a while and then I don't want to do it at all. Also, I was never someone who kept a journal, so blogging is not a natural, easy thing for me. My friend Ronda has inspired me to try blogging more. So I set myself a goal to blog daily for 2 weeks and see if that improves my attitude. Here goes ...

This blog is named Organic Everything because I put a priority on local, organic food and on organic learning. I have yet to post at all about the learning portion. Within the last year or so, I have jumped into the river of what is commonly called unschooling. Its even more strange than that - we are trying our best at radical unschooling. I love to control things and so this is hard for me. It means letting go of bedtimes, arbitrary parental rules, food limitations, expectations of learning particular things at particular times, and parents taking priority over their kids. Radical unschooling also means giving freedom to everyone in my home no matter what age, learning about anything and everything - by choice - in a variety of ways, helping my kids and husband with what is important to them (not me!), trusting that my kids are doing the best they can right now, and living with the today at the forefront of my mind. Radical unschooling means that I do things for my kids that I would not want for myself. I do them because they want them and I am in a position to help them.

Need an example? I recently helped my son purchase a used go-kart. My personal opinion is that these types of vehicles eat gasoline, create dirty air, tear up the yard, and shouldn't be driven on neighborhood roads. Son (who is 9 almost 10) really wanted to drive something that goes faster than him on his road bike (and he races his road bike). He explored dirt bikes, electric bikes, go-karts, and at one point asked my to get him a $15,000 boat off Craig's List. He spent a lot of time watching youtube videos, checking out company web sites, and otherwise learning about non-automobile moving vehicles. After the wonderful folks at UnschoolingBasics helped me view this situation differently, I offered in a different way to walk down to our neighbor and see if we can check out their go-kart or to the other neighbor to ask to ride along on his power boat. Wouldn't you know it, but the neighbor with the go-kart was interested in selling his 10 year old go-kart for $250. Much different than the $1500 he spent on it 10 years ago and much more doable for our family finances. You guessed it! As of 7/23 we now own the go-kart.

The go-kart was used and well loved by the 3 boys who drove it (they drive cars now). So of course, after the first day of driving it almost all day. the chain started to come off. Well, Son wanted to shorted the chain (he does his own bicycle maintenance). We asked another neighbor who works on engines if that was the right way to fix the problem. Nope - just loosen the bolts and slide the engine up till the chain isn't loose anymore. Oh, but you might want to fix this wheel. What wheel? So now the poor go-kart needs new bearings for its drive wheel. So we take off the wheel, hub, and bearings and ride our bikes up to a lawn repair shop (its 7/25 now). They measure, check catalog, measure more, check catalog again, and finally pick the part to try. When we get back from our trip to PA, we get the bearings and joyfully come home to put everything back together. Alas, the bearings are not the right size. The inner hole is too small and they do not fit on the axle. But it is now after close of business on 7/29 so we have to wait more. I get out dh's calipers, take the measurements myself (well actually ds - we do unschool afterall), and call the shop next morning. It takes all day to find the right part. Turns out that parts aren't always the same as the measurements they are sold as. We are hoping that today the part will come in and it will be the right one. I could either have a very happy boy or a boy who doesn't know what to do with himself for the weekend. I'll let you know!