filed in Daily Life
How Do We Move Forward?
Before my junior year at college, I spent a leisurely summer driving across the country with three girlfriends and a dog, in a beat up Ford van. I first laid eyes on San Francisco during that trip and knew immediately that I’d found home. 10 years later, I packed up and moved West. My parents hated that I’d be living 3000 miles away and never really got used to it. But it was a powerful sea change (Pacific vs. Atlantic) and one of the best decisions I’ve made.
Tell us something you’ve done that has surprised your family. Enter our contest. Deadline’s Friday.
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Vacationing solo, which was rather surprising to a collectivistic family. Single and satisfied with the solitude.
I don’t know if they were super surprised, given that I’d been talking about *really* getting out of the country for some time (excluding Canada), but my family did seem somewhat surprised when I took a job that regularly sent me to Asia several years ago. I think they were even more surprised when I *LOVED* it. I SUCK at languages, so I guess they thought I’d feel lost and out of place in places where I couldn’t speak the language. To this day, I can only speak about a dozen words each of a half dozen Asian languages (I have tried, but anything beyond pleasantries and necessities just isn’t sticking…fortunately saying “hello” and “thank you” in the native language with a big smile will get you far), but I still love it, and my family always wants to know about my adventures.
But I think the most astounding thing to my family was when I sold my car about a year ago. Again, I had been talking about it for a while, but the cosmos aligned and my registration was due and I was going out of the country for a while, so I drove my car out to a dealership, sold it, and started my life as a person unencumbered by personal automobile ownership. They’re, again, most surprised by how much I love it, but I do think they’re a little irritated that I make any excuse possible not to be the driver when I come to visit them in their car-dependent suburban hell. I still drive like an *ahem* when I do drive, thanks to 5 years of big-city car ownership.
Oh, yes…I’m leaving early tomorrow for bike to work day. A few months after I sold my car I started biking again (thank you Capital Bikeshare), which is also pretty unusual since I hadn’t biked since I had a bad accident as a teen.
Good for the environment. Good for your health. It sounds like a win-win.
Honestly, I rarely used the car as it was. In the year before I sold it, I drove substantially under 2000 miles. Not worth the registration fees, maintenance, and insurance. For something like 1/3 of that expense, I could rent a Zipcar every single weekend for an hour or two. As it stands, I only need a Zipcar every 2-4 weeks, so I’m saving even more.
The biking thing started as a solution to the *one* activity that I would either need to hitch a ride to or walk a long distance to. I loved it so much that I do it almost every day now. It makes me feel young again, and gives me a little piece of the freedom of driving back (I can go further, faster, and to more places than I could walking or taking transit).