Going Carless

Who needs a car anyway? My neighborhood is ranked as "very walkable" with a walkability score of 75. Meaning most of the errands that I should need to run can be accomplished on foot. There shouldn't be much reason for needing a car.

So when my lease expired, I turned in my Jetta and started my journey as a person without a car.

Why? You might ask yourself. Several reasons:

• I don't feel like I really need a car. I don't do that much driving and most of the driving I do can be serviced by other options. 
• Cars are expensive, especially if you don't use it often. Who needs that expense? I have better things to spend my money on. Well that is the theory anyway. 
• Maybe i can reduce my carbon footprint this way. 

There are other reasons, you may be able to think of, but those are the main ones for me.

How? You also might be asking. I plan to try to use these replacements, in this order.:

• Walk
• Bike
• Bus
• Carshare
• Car2Go
• Lyft
• Sidecar
• Motorcycle

I'm certainly not without options here. These are basically in order of cost, then how long it would take me. This is kind of an ideal preference, but lately it has been more like this: 

• Motorcycle
• Carshare
• Lyft
• Sidecar
• Car2Go
• Bus

It has been a week or so, a week of no rain (easier to ride) and not a lot going on, maybe my opinion will change as time goes on? I'll try to keep this blog updated regarding my progress.

Mean people suck, car edition!

This is the exact kind of situation that made me begin making archival copies of my music ASAP, sometimes before I even listened to it. Someone lifted my book of music cd's from my car the other day, and I just noticed last night.

Lucky for me (how ironic) I made backups of them all, so I can replace them at the cost of burning new ones, however they won't have the great art, and they won't bet the CD's i've spent thousands of dollars collecting.

At least they didn't break my window to get at it, they very professionally disabled my alarm and opened the door took my CD's then put everything back the way it was. I noticed one time when I got into my car that the car last week that the hood was popped, I thought that was strange so I opened it up and took a look, everything looked fine, but everything was not fine. A few days later I noticed that I couldn't find my book of CD's that I keep in my car to replenish my visor CD holder thingy. It had been jacked.

It could have been a lot worse, but it could have been a lot better too. Now I know that nothing in my car is safe, good to know, if I have anything that I don't want thieved either take it with me when I leave my car, or put it in the trunk with all the locks activated.

This thevery coupled with the addition of a smoking area directly outside our door really makes my apartment a LOT less appealing of a place to live.

Sashimi Tabernacle Choir

Not doubt this guy is from Texas.

What is it about our (Americans) drive to put things on our cars? If there is something outrageous/mildly annoying and we plaster it all over a car the annoyance increases 10 fold.

When I was in college there was a Chemistry professor that used to say about chemical reactions in his classroom: "If a little does a little, a lot does a lot more."
That is certainly the case with Larry the lobster.