I’ve been car-free before. My first two years at Mills College, in Oakland, California, I didn’t have a car.  I was already used to taking buses, so I fearlessly used buses and BART almost immediately upon arrival, sometimes dragging friends along with me. I was surprised that many of my new friends had never used public transportation.

A friend from Maine said, only half-jokingly, that she was afraid to take the bus. But I managed to convince her and a few other friends that we could get to the Great America amusement park, in Santa Clara, entirely via public transportation. A bus, BART, and two more buses later, we had done it, and without spending all day on the bus!

Another friend and I managed to attend the Rocky Horror Picture Show in Berkeley every Saturday night, using the college shuttle to get there and the bus to get back.  However, the bus we needed to get back stopped running at some point during the night, and didn’t start again until after 4:00 a.m.  So we would walk down to the local 24-hour IHOP after the show. There, we ate pancakes and drank coffee until we were ill from lack of sleep and over-caffeination, and then caught the first bus home. On Sundays, we slept until the college food service’s late afternoon dinner.

I also accepted rides from friends and family, borrowed a friend’s motor scooter, and occasionally took a cab to the airport or train station. I didn’t bike. One time, I borrowed a friend’s bike and attempted to go to Taco Bell. There were no bike lanes, and the streets were crowded with cars. One tire turned out to be low, but I didn’t have any way to fill it. I didn’t try biking again, and didn’t even consider buying my own bike.

Even though I was mostly getting around when and where I needed to, there were times when I chafed at my perceived lack of independence. I couldn’t just pick up and go whenever and wherever I wanted to. I was dependent on bus and shuttle schedules or on other people. Nighttime travel was especially challenging, since many buses didn’t run at night, and I also had safety concerns (or at least I’d been told I should be concerned).

A car was THE way to be independent. So I finally bought a car the summer after my sophomore year (and promptly went into debt buying gas).

I still struggle with this. If I don’t use the car, I can’t go wherever I want, whenever I want, as quickly as I want to. That’s a fact. It’s also a fact that most people just lived with before automobiles became ubiquitous. So it’s not impossible to live with this fact. I just need a little motivation.

Won’t you help me out with that? I’m looking for a few people to commit to one car-free day. And I’ll match each of your car-free days. Even if a hundred people sign up. :-) But I’m just one little-known blogger of many bloggers, so my goal is to get at least SEVEN people to commit to one car-free day.

Please go to my previous post to sign up.

Photo by THE Holy Hand Grenade on Flickr, used via Creative Commons.

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