Carless -Day Thirty -Connected
Carless -Day Twenty Nine -Patience
Because this feels like a competition, we speed compulsively as if we’ll lose something if we don’t. We’re so focused upon the future we zoom right past the present, showing up late for our own funerals.
Subtract one car from this calculus and a startlingly different world emerges.
Slip over here for more ...Carless -Day Twenty Eight -Mastery
The necessity of seeking help from masters probably qualifies as the very greatest benefit of my mechanical klutziness.
Slip over here for more ...Carless -Day Twenty Seven -Fishin' See?
I passed right by the bike shop just around the corner because they specialize in futuristic electric bikes. They’d seen my antique before and given the kind of advice that convinced me that they didn’t have a clue about mid-century classic wheels. They’d had their chance, so I kept walking until I came to the classic bike shop and found the sign saying they’d be open again on Thursday. Dang!
I try to be careful now, but I seem to be programmed to be car-full, instead.
Slip over here for more ...Carless -Day Twenty Six -Gridlock
I swear they could (and might) just re-run a tape of yesterday’s traffic, and the reporting would be mostly correct.
Slip over here for more ...Carless -Day Twenty Five -Side Effects
My new bearings arrived, brand new fifty year-old parts. Now comes the greater challenge: reassembly.
Slip over here for more ...Carless -Day Twenty Four -Judgement Day
The driver spoke a broken, mumbling dialect I could barely understand. I think he was trying to get the engine to settle down before he tried to move the vehicle, but it was coughing and bucking. When he engaged the transmission, the engine died. After motioning another car around this beached whale, I suggested that he should coast the car to the curb because it didn’t seem like it was going to be going anywhere. It was busted.
Slip over here for more ...Carless- Day Twenty Three -Skidoo
Carless- Day Twenty Two -Sweat Equity
The busses are walk-in refrigerators, the Metro trains, moving coolers. The streets swarm here in the dog days with people chasing their own tails, trying to generate their own breezes.
Slip over here for more ...Carless- Day Twenty One -Chessmate
Cars can go straight to anywhere, mostly via arterials. Busses and trains have fixed but circuitous routines. Bikers and walkers skirt the edges of bus and car territory. Getting from here to there by car entails little strategy, just take the shortest, straight-line route. The same trip by bus requires some serious plotting and planning.
Slip over here for more ...Carless- Day Twenty -Cardigan Desire
I figure that if I set my mind to it, I could do without most of my stuff. I suppose that I could go bookless or meatless or guitarless, perhaps even heartless for a while. Affluence stunts the imagination. Ready access to great variety sates nothing but want, and unsatisfied want might be the one necessary element for living a complete life.
Slip over here for more ...Carless- Day Nineteen -Waning Invisibility
Carless- Day Eighteen - Crank Length
I adjusted the seat to compensate for my longer legs, making sure to find that sweet spot between over and under extension; and I think I found that spot. Still, when I started pedaling, something felt wrong. The circumference of the pedal circle seemed too short, restricted. I’d ridden bikes like this before and found them dispensing charlie horse cramps, achy knees, and sore hip joints. The only solution I’ve ever found to this difficulty has been to not ride those bikes.
Slip over here for more ...Carless- Day Seventeen -Good Neighbor
”Hey,” he continued, “if you need a lift anywhere for a beer run or to look at a place, please don’t hesitate to ask. I’m just hanging around here.”
Slip over here for more ...Carless- Day Sixteen -Father of Convention
For most men of my age, though, this marketing ploy stuck. I’d no more ride a “girl’s” bike than wear her skirt, and this little stigma strikes me as simply silly.
Slip over here for more ...Carless- Day Fifteen -Troll Shoulders
Carless- Day Fourteen -Alley Cat
Between the first and second place, though, I discovered a neighborhood with alleys. I felt transported back to my childhood, when I mostly travelled by alleyway. The town I grew up in featured extensive networks of secret passages and little-known shortcuts, and I knew every danged one of ‘em. It was as if the thoughtful city planners had created a shadow street grid, perfect for a ten year old’s needs. Slip over here for more ...
Carless- Day Thirteen -Musings Mysterious
I’ve owned four cars. I’d hoped each would be my last. I drove ‘em until they were essentially undrive-able, abandoning them only after they’d abandoned me. I replaced each reluctantly, not wholly convinced that I really needed to replace any of them. I have experienced carless times before.
I have the same relationship with cars that I have with power tools. I’ve never really felt competent to operate either. Slip over here for more ...
Carless- Day Twelve -Dweeb On Wheels
When we decided to go carless, Amy asked if I needed a new bike as we waited at the bike shop while her twelve speed got a check-up. I admit that I was attracted to a fine, new ten speed, and almost saw myself sinuous and slick, a ‘real’ urban biker, but I demurred. “Nope,” I replied, “the one I’ve got seems to be working fine.”
Slip over here for more ...Carless- Day Eleven -The Missing Tooth
Now, the haunt seems over. It’s been about a week since I caught myself thinking that I’d just hop in the car.
Slip over here for more ...Carless- Day Ten -Lost and Found
Carless turns out to be one of those something’s missing dilemmas. In this class of conundrum, the important lessons emerge. I couldn’t usefully learn this stuff without personally experiencing it. This ain’t a thought experiment, but an existential one.
Slip over here for more ...Carless- Day Nine -Zip 'e De Do Car
So begins the confirmation ZipCar sent when I reserved my first one. No, the experience wasn’t even a little bit like a first date. Neither nervous nor particularly excited, I learned that I should have reserved a car more than an hour in advance, though the technology certainly enables me to reserve a car almost the moment I need one. Almost, because there’s always the possibility that there are no cars available at that precise moment, which is what I found. I imagined that I’d just saunter over to the neighborhood lot and hop into a zippy car. Instead, I fast walked four blocks to hop a Saturday bus which dropped me nearish to an alternate Zipcar lot, where I secured my wheels
Slip over here for more ...Carless- Day Eight -Not Hovering
Carless- Day Seven -Good For
I’m adopting the strategy I employed when we found this place. A car’s no advantage when scoping out neighborhoods. I need to walk around to see what a neighborhood’s like; driving-by can’t tell me nearly as much as can the people I meet on the street.
Slip over here for more ...Carless- Day Six -Wits End
I might not have chosen this satisfaction had the old car been handy. I wouldn’t have complained about a fresh loaf of bread. I might have ‘needed’ something from the hardware store. But the slight inconvenience of needing to plan the outing was plenty enough barrier to prevent me from such distractions. I chose to face my own demons in the relative discomfort of my keyboard, instead. Slip over here for more ...
Carless-Day Five -OutSmart
Carless-Day Four -Fare Trade
“Can you run up to my office and find a writing tablet for me?” she asked, winding a computer cable.
“Where are they hidden?”
“Just under the printer.”
I slipped upstairs, found one, then hopped back down to hand it to her.
“Thanks.”
I’m very sensitive to time when leaving on a trip. Amy’s event horizon works differently. She’s ready when she’s ready. This morning she would leave about five minutes before she’d ordered the taxi to arrive; unusual punctuality, probably a fluke. I schlepped her bag down the front walk, handing it to the cabbie. Amy and I smooched and hugged, then she disappeared into the cab and the cab evaporated into the hazy morning.
Slip over here for more ...Carless-Day Three -Shifting Gears
We rode bikes instead of hoofing it to the farmers’ market yesterday morning. I asked and Amy said she was game, so I pulled out from the back corner of the garage her 1976 Schwinn Varsity twelve speed, pumped up the tires, and brushed away the accumulated cobwebs and cat fur.
Amy doesn’t ride her bike much. And, as we started out, she struggled to shift gears. My bike has only one gear, so I was a half block ahead of her before I noticed she was fretting. She closed the gap, though, and we continued up through the complicated intersection, where she pulled off onto the sidewalk, clearly frustrated. Gears still not meshing properly. She gamely remounted and we coasted into downtown, to the small bike shop there. Slip over here for more ...
Carless-Day Two -Recalibrating
I've been reflecting on this ... liberating carless experience. I'm noticing my brain working differently. Amy has noticed hers shifting, too. With a car, we seem to take space and time for granted, as if we were the masters of both simply because we have a few hundred pounds of metal swathed around us. We imagine that we could get anywhere, anytime; we head out deluded with an easy as-if, which rarely turns out as imagined. We are, however, not the master of traffic flows and parking contingencies. We’re really just another encumbrance in an over-full cascade of them. What makes our errand so special? Slip over here for more ...
Carless-Day One -Taking Credit
The *real* reason has more to do with financial than environmental security. Slip over here for more ...
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