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.

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!