It's not so bad....

Today was a crazy day, perhaps, it illustrates that we can live car free in many ways if we choose our community well. This morning I had to run a series of errands starting with the following, I'll do it Internet Maps Style

2.5 miles/ 15 min to library to return DVD to avoid late fee before library opened.
0.5 miles/ 5 min to breakfast
0.5 miles / 5 min to library to pick up reserve from library and DVDs for long weekend
3.0 miles / 15 min back home

**** Craigslist, called to find out about a car in Mountain View. Agreed to ride over to look at car.

2.0 miles / 15 min to private party

**** 15 minutes later, find out car has been sold in the 45 minutes it took me time to do a carfax and the ride over. I do not want to go into this. Got a text message about lunch. Called back and agreed to meet in downtown Mountain View. 10 minute bike ride.

1.5 miles / 10 min to lunch

**** Lunch

3.5 miles / 20 min back home

**** Craigslist, call used car dealer

2.0 miles / 15 min to user car dealer

**** test drive a few cars, embarass myself with manual stick driving skills. need more practice.

2.0 miles / 15 min back home

total miles: 19 today. Is that right. I probably lost at most a hour over the course of the day vs. driving. Traffic lights are a pain for everyone.

Conclusion, in city traffic you don't save much time, but you do expend a lot less personal energy, but it must have been weird seeing a person come up on a bike to test drive a car.

Conclusion 2: I'm coming close to capitulating not so much that I can't live without a car, but I can't live a life in the world we live in here and now. At first it took a lot of energy to get on the bike, but as I've become able more use to the process, it's become easier to transition between bike and road. I've figured out which bag works wonders and the Timbuk2 has been AWESOME. You can go car free, it's completely doable but at a cost that you live a separate world from everyone else. But like the world of Batman Begins, there's the world above and the world below, it just happens that there's the road of the highway and everything else.