I moved to the San Francisco Bay Area from Miami in 2000. Having grown up steeped in car culture, I was very happy to be moving to a place with adequate public transit. I bought a bike when I first moved out, and rode it every day for a few miles from my apartment in Berkeley to the transit station downtown. After three months, I moved to one of the outer districts in SF proper and stopped riding almost altogether since I essentially had door-to-door public transit coverage from my apartment to my workplace downtown. Fast forward about seven years, and I find myself looking at the prospect of working 10 miles away. I haul my cheapo bike out of storage, and in preparation for my upcoming commute, I starting riding it for a couple of months to get back in shape.
I started out light once I accepted the offer at the 10-mile-away gig, initially riding to a train station for multimodal trips, and eventually doing the commute all the way. Nowadays, I do about three out of five days a week on bike, with the remaining days riding public transit. I've picked up a better (used) bike since I've started, but nothing fancy--just something I feel good riding. All the while, I've managed to not own a car since I've moved out here. We do use a car share service at our household (Zipcar), but we find ourselves making fewer and fewer reservations since my wife bought a bike for our grocery hauls.
Never really thought of it as "car free living" since moving out here; more like simply feeling thankful for not having to drive every day, given what I remember from the first 20-odd years of my life. But every time I go back to Miami to visit family and friends, I find myself wondering what it would be like to be try and do the auto-free thing there. I've seen a couple of folks of BF who make it happen, and they have my respect. I don't think I'd be able to swing it if I still lived down there!