Don't Drive

Being car-free makes late afternoon beer runs tough. Sure, we can walk the half-mile to the 7-11, but we wouldn’t be getting the best deal possible on our champagne—and nobody likes overpriced suds at the end of a hard day.

Erin and I chose instead to mount our trusty steeds and make the trip over to Costco—not the easiest place to shop without a car. But give us a few bungees and a bike rack and beer’s never tasted as sweet.

Gather round, young ones, and hear the lessons of They who Have No Car.

When we got rid of the car, we also got rid of our car insurance. A logical move. But we’re renting a car next week to go to Las Vegas, and we’ll need to have basic insurance to drive it. If we buy insurance from the rental agency, we’ll pay $20 a day. When we were insuring a car, we paid $320 a year.

So if we rent a car for more than two weeks a year (likely, since we’ve given up flying), it’s more cost-effective to get car insurance than to buy it only when we’re renting a car. It seems counter-intuitive, but that’s the way it works. So when you’re ready to part with your automobile, think twice before canceling the car insurance. Consider how many days you plan to rent a car in a year, and weigh the costs carefully.

Hi folks! It’s been a while, and you probably think we’ve gone back to our car-lovin’ ways and that we’re too ashamed to post on our blog anymore.

Nope! We donated our car to Recycle Utah at the beginning of January, and that’s that! Sure, on those 10 degree January nights, we missed the car, but it’s been great not to have temptation sitting in the driveway every time we leave the house. It was emotional to watch them tow Finn (our Saab) away, and I get a little sentimental about it, but overall, the 100% car-free life has been great. We’ve gotten really good at layering our clothing, and we’ve also acclimated to frigid weather. So much so, in fact, that 30 degrees now feels warm. I think I’ll be in shorts when the mercury hits 45.

Mid-winter may seem like a strange time to give up the car, but it actually gives us a lot of reassurance: if we can go car-free in the dead of winter, we can handle anything. I recommend it to everyone!

We had a great day yesterday without our car. It all started with a flat tire: We’d hopped on our bikes to go to the Patagonia outlet, (40% off sale! Yay!) but after two blocks, I realized my front tire was losing air. So we turned around and walked back to the house. On the way, Trey spotted a bill lying on the ground. A $20 bill. Walking pays!

We fixed the flat, then rode all around Sugarhouse, buying some great long underwear from Patagonia and grabbing a nice bowl of chili from Fiddlers’ Elbow. (Thanks, whoever dropped that 20, for paying for our dinner!) We put on our new long underwear in the restrooms, to guard ourselves from the chilly night air, then we biked over to a bar a couple miles away and had drinks. Long underwear is the secret to making night biking fun when the temperature’s below 35 degrees.

It was just a great night, and moseying on our bikes (and warm) made it just that much better.

As I told our friend Stephanie today “when I say carpool, I mean you come and pick us up.” Yes, this can be construed as mooching, but Stephanie called specifically to offer a ride to our mutual destination, so I don’t think it’s too parasitic.

Carpooling rocks because it saves us from venturing into the cold, cold night. And even better, sometimes the driver needs to stop at the grocery store; when you’re a regular guest in the vehicle, sometimes this can seem like a pain, but when you’re a car-free guest in the vehicle, you see it as a free bonus!

I was just looking at our Dimewise reports and noticed that we haven’t spent a dime on gas since September 25th. That rocks! To be fair, we were out of town for two weeks in October, but compared to the $50/month we used to spend on gas, this is still a huge improvement.

Yay!

Trey and I would like to track our car usage here in the blog’s sidebar for you, but we’re having a hard time figuring out how to report the information. It’s not as easy as you might think. For example, we drove our car about four miles in the last week (Trey sent me on a late-night mercy mission for decongestant). If you tally that four miles against the 100+ miles most people drive in a week, it sounds pretty good. But four miles is nuthin’ on bike, and I could’ve biked for the decongestant very easily. By hopping in the car, I succumbed to the allure of convenience.

Now let’s say Trey and I drove 40 miles round trip to go visit my grandmother. It’d be ten times as many miles on the odometer, but I think those 40 miles are more justified than the four I drove this week. Using other modes of transportation to get to my grandma’s house would take a very long time: a bus, then a train, then riding our bikes from the train station to grandmother’s house. It’d probably take an hour and a half, one way, making a visit to my grandma a big luxury. That’s when driving a car makes sense, to me.

How do we depict that in a sidebar? I don’t know. We’ll sit on it. If you have any ideas, let us know.

One early lesson of the car-free life: buying in bulk just got a lot harder. Can you imagine hauling a 24-pack of paper towels home from Costco on your bike? Unless you live next door to Costco, frequent bulk buying is an unattractive proposition. (And really, who’d want a warehouse club for a neighbor? Talk about unattractive.)

Even when I’m shopping at the neighborhood grocery, without a car, I don’t want to buy big items. Forty-pound bags of dog food, for example, are awkward and require walking home with a bag almost as big as my dog slung over my shoulder. Or paying a buck fifty for the bus. And the other day, I bought a 1-gallon glass jug of apple juice, only to fully realize how much lighter plastics are than glass. I swear, the thing weighs ten pounds. Sling one of those monsters from your index finger for half a mile, and you’ll understand why plastics have changed the face of the modern world!

And even if I’m not buying large or heavy items, I still can’t buy a lot. There’s only so much my panniers will hold, or, if I’m walking, I can only carry 5 or 6 bags. This means I can’t buy a week’s worth of food in one grocery trip; in the last week, I’ve made at least four trips to the store—maybe more.

But, as with everything, car-free grocery shopping is easier if I put a little forethought into it. If I’m at the store for one item—say, Benadryl—I’ll still fill my bags to their capacity. Are we almost out of yogurt? I’ll stock up, even if there’s still a few cartons in the fridge. How about dish soap? If I have the room, I fill it. Even if we don’t need anything, I buy one or two cans of tomatoes, or some frozen ravioli, to stock the pantry. Gotta make the most out of every time I saddle up the ol’ bike!

As I’ve piecemeal-stocked the pantry, I’ve also been stocking our freezer with frozen leftovers. Even if it’s just two servings of root vegetable hash, I know it’ll be a lifesaver in those times when we’re too busy or tired to get on our bikes or stroll to a nearby restaurant.

As I write, I realize these strategies sound like the advice of a penny-pinching, coupon-clipping housewife. But it has nothing to do with saving money, my friends—it’s pure laziness. When it’s snowing and the roads are icy, I know I won’t want to leave the house. Stocking the pantry and filling my bags to capacity whenever I go shopping will help me achieve that goal.

And if all else fails, there’s always pizza delivery.

(As for Costco, 24-packs of paper towels, and 40-pound bags of dog food: it’s our plan to borrow a car or share a trip with a car-owning friend when we need to stock up on bulky necessities. And if we’re desperate, well, we’ll just buy in smaller quantities at the grocery store. Because, like I said, this ain’t about saving money, friends. We can splurge on a two-pack of Bounty every now and then.)

Welcome to our car-free blog, where we’ll share with you the joys and frustrations of the pedestrian life. A little background: we’re married, we both work from home, and we live in an apartment near – but not in – downtown Salt Lake City. We have an early-80s Saab named Finn, and we’ve toddled around town with him for years. Finn’s days on the road are, sadly, numbered. We’ve poured a lot of money into his sweet Swedish innards, and the last time we took him to the mechanic, (with a busted slave cylinder in the clutch), we decided that this time, we wouldn’t operate.

Thus begins our life as a car-free family. Finn’s still sitting in the driveway – because he still runs somewhat reliably – but we know the end is near for him. Instead of driving, we’re riding our bikes, walking, and riding public transportation to accomplish all our daily tasks. We’re in the ideal situation to kick the car habit: we live pretty close to all the big necessities (three grocery stores within a mile), neither of us commutes, and we do have a car for those tight situations—although who knows how long he’ll last? Don’t tell Finn: he’s a glorified security blanket these days, mostly for my mother.

We’ve been car-lite for a few months, and already I can predict some of the issues we’ll have. There’s already been one notorious rainstorm and two caught-off-guard cyclists this winter, and I’m sure we’ll have many a good (drenched) laugh for you in the coming months. But as I was fond of repeating while planning our wedding, adversity makes for good memories. And come on: it’s just life without a car, not eking out existence in a drought-ridden dictatorship. This is adversity-lite, man. Come along for the ride.