EcoBliss: Joyful Car-Free Living

My Bike, Genevieve, at a park near our home.

Listening to right now: Revista do Samba

Today's Happiness Formula: Another "yes" in my inbox to a request for an interview; I am overwhelmed by people's positive responses to this idea.

The bicycle is the most civilized conveyance known to man.
Other forms of transport grow daily more nightmarish.
Only the bicycle remains pure in heart.
--Iris Murdoch, 1965

"Where to start?" I always ask myself when I'm thinking about telling someone about our car free lifestyle and what it means to us.

At the beginning.

When we still had a Paris-quality patisserie in this town, whose walls were sunshine yellow and whose owners always smiled and whose pastries, well, they could almost make you believe you had died and this was definitely heaven.

I had a partially eaten chocolate croissant on the table. Partially eaten, that is how used to this heaven I was. A cup of perfectly not-over-roasted coffee at the right hand corner of my journal.

In which I was scribbling, furiously. I was writing a list suggested by Julia Cameron's Right to Write.

And that was when an impossible sentence spilled from my pen: We could get rid of our car.

We could get rid of our car, it whispered, and you could have more time to write and she could have more time to paint and...

I looked up to see if the world had stopped spinning.

And this seems like hyperbole, but in this culture, really, is it?

For my partner, the thought of not having a car was instantly do-able. For me, I was much more attached to being able to get around quickly.

And I was a bit lazy. Admit it, that is part of the issue. Cars are so easy.

And we don't live in Boston or Chicago or any such place. I have lived in Chicago; I have experienced real public transportation.

The public transportation in a small city like ours can be...startling.

In order to get myself to do it, to make the leap, I made a deal with myself: this was a one year experiment. You can do anything for one year. Right?

We handed in our car at the end of July in 2001.

We have (barely) looked back. Yes, every spring, after a winter of partaking of very poor buses that only run every 45 minutes, every spring, I get the urge, I lust after a car.

Just a small one, I say, as my mouth waters like the post-diet, starved-for-chocolate, about-to-fall-off-the-wagon woman we have all been at one time or another.

Every year, this wandering eye lasts shorter and shorter amounts of time. The first few years, I could go a month or two comparing and contrasting all the possibilities. This spring, about a month ago, my lust was down to a few days.

Because our life is good.

Really good.

Without a car. With the occasional rental.

This choice was made for all the right reasons -- quality of life reasons -- and those override lust every time.

How do we do it? What does the day to day look like?

Tomorrow, we'll get into the nitty gritty.

For now, just try to imagine it. And if you can, imagine it with a chocolate croissant at your side, yellow walls promising summer around you, and make some lists -- lists about how you could slow down, spend less, and savor more.