INTRO
Ladies and gentlemen,
I am embarking on a new adventure in my life: I sold my car and will be living car-free in Salt Lake City utilizing only public transportation and my bicycle. Allow me to introduce you to Salt Lake's newest commuter: me.
I've decided that I will continuously track my experiences in this new lifestyle throughout it's duration on both SaltCycle and on my own blog listed above.
Note that I am not against owning a car if you need one. Right now I just don't seem to need one:)
Let any of my following entries be encouragement to anybody embarking on a similar endeavor. I'm also interested in getting feedback from other city-savvy cyclists especially if the feedback includes advice on commuting in the winter. Let it roll!
Since the actual beginging of my blogging was in November, I will every few days post one of my old posts here so anyone interested can catch up slowly. Eventually they will catch up with the current date... but until then no worries. The first article is below.
-CB
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DAY 01 OF THE NO CAR- 11/26/2007 current mileage: 0000
I am flying back to Utah from Michigan where I dropped my little Subaru station wagon off. My dad bought it from me but I'm not 100% sure why. All I can say is that I'm sure glad that he did because I had a feeling that it wouldn't pass any of Salt Lake City's safety inspections being a car from Michigan and having tons of rot and rust in the undercarriage. I thought it'd be a safer idea to sell it in Michigan and, when I mentioned it to the family, my dad stepped up and bought it. Perfect. Anyway my boyfriend and I drove it the 25 or so hours to Michigan and spent Thanksgiving there. He left to go back at the beginning of the weekend and I'm returning today. I would have had to arrange for a ride from the airport anyway so that's nothing new. It's strange to think about the fact that I won't have a car. I wonder what will be easier and what will be more difficult when it comes to "getting around". Already I can think about a few situations that might be harder for me now that I don't have a car.
It will be much more difficult to bring my guitar and music stuff to church when I need to play. I might have to build a little pulley cart for behind my bike to do that or just carpool. We'll see. The only thing I'm a little bit anxious about is the fact that I am not leaving myself a lot of room to be lazy in life. I'm not quite sure why that makes me nervous but I have an idea that those feelings might just be the result of living in the USA and being saturated with the media and lifestyles that I have been around for 22 years of my life. My mom put it perfectly: "but how will you get around?".
So many of the State's population lives in places like some suburbs and what-not where it would be terribly difficult to live a more simple lifestyle free of cars, etc. I grew up in that type of environment and, although I rarely drove my car in college, had a car "for emergencies" throughout college. I have always thought about a car as a "safe fallback" for those "just incase" situations. The funny thing is that, if I did get hurt and needed quick transportation "just incase", chances are I won't be in any condition to drive anyway!
My boyfriend T laughed when I asked him to pick me up from the airport. He quickly replied "Well I'll bring you your bicycle". I definitely know that one of the outcomes of this new lifestyle will be a greater appreciation for how easy cars sometimes make life. All the while, however, it seems like it was becoming more of a burden than a blessing for me to own one so I made my decision... No car!
We'll see how it goes. I'm resetting my odometer as soon as I get home and am going to start keeping track of my daily mileage. More to come!
-CB
