one less car

it's taken me a while to get used to the whole "car free" thing. since i was 16 i've almost always had use of a car or owned/leased a car, until i moved to australia. my last year in canada i tried to use my car as little as possible but i absolutely needed it to get to work-- it was 30km away and it was split shift so i was there 7-9 am then back 2:30-6pm (i checked the bus schedule and i would have had to take 2-3 buses and it would take 90-120 minutes instead of 30 by car, i didn't own a bike either but i think biking in freezing moring temp.s and rain would have put me off doing it anyway). inbetween i had to study for a correspondence course i was doing. my poor car put on 120km a day just going to and from work.
i was glad to let it go when i came to australia. once i realized i was staying here permanently i thought more about getting a car but zac has always been completely against it so i would have to save up on my own for the car. in the past several weeks though i've realized how much a car actually weighs people down even though most people buy it for freedom/convience. if we had a car, we wouldn't have been able to spend 5 weeks travelling to canada/alaska last year. if we had a car we would be really struggling while i was out of work for almost 2 months (and even now i'm only working casual, part time shifts) but instead we were able to go away for 4 1/2 days and not worry about money while we were away, eat out when we want to, go to gigs and movies and i booked tickets yesterday for us to go to brisbaine in july to visit friends there (and get away from melbourne's winter for a bit).
bikes are great for getting around-- its WAY cheaper than going by car, MUCH better for the environment, and its a lot faster when you're going through peak hour traffic (i love riding past cars lined up at lights for several blocks back--or more--with other bikes). we can always hire a car if we want to get away somewhere we can't get by public transport for a weekend (plus zac's mom is great at lending us her car once in a while to get away) and there's car shares like flo and goget that i've been looking into and waiting for a "pod" or cars to be located a bit closer to us
***anyone in the east brunswick area of melbourne looking for a car share, register your intrest with one or both of these cuz if they get enough intrest in this area they'll place a pod in the neighbourhood.
melbourne is a great city to be carfree in too. the weather isn't too bad (you just have to get good raingear for the winter months), its not to hilly, there's a good number of roads with bike lanes (although there's still room for lots of improvement there) and there's some good paths to ride on along creeks and rivers too.