Living Car Free - Non-simple living...

Yesterday a co-worker finally got it off her chest "You need to get a car in order to live a more simple life.". I quizzed her about just her car expenses- about $1000.00 per month. I pointed out that just the car expenses would pay for rent on a small apartment within a block of work and she could walk to work and to a grocery store. Probably adding $1000.00 per month to her current shelter expenses she could have a big place within a few blocks of work. She would have none of it, she still thought life without a car would be too complicated. She now drives an hour into the city to get to work. I'm relating this to show that there must be a huge population of people like her who don't understand why some car-free people talk about "simple living". This sub-forum even has a sticky thread about living simply, but car dependent people see car-free lifestyle as impossibly complicated.

On the other hand- yesterday a stranger approached me and revealed that she had ridden a bike for the first time since childhood and had fun. She seemed like about 50 years old. I chatted with her. She has a friend with an extra bike and the friend is going to mentor her on bike transportation. So in spite of my previous post some people are changing their habits.

Yesterday a co-worker finally got it off her chest "You need to get a car in order to live a more simple life.". I quizzed her about just her car expenses- about $1000.00 per month. I pointed out that just the car expenses would pay for rent on a small apartment within a block of work and she could walk to work and to a grocery store. Probably adding $1000.00 per month to her current shelter expenses she could have a big place within a few blocks of work. She would have none of it, she still thought life without a car would be too complicated. She now drives an hour into the city to get to work. I'm relating this to show that there must be a huge population of people like her who don't understand why some car-free people talk about "simple living". This sub-forum even has a sticky thread about living simply, but car dependent people see car-free lifestyle as impossibly complicated.

I don't get it completely. What kind of car does she have that costs her $1000.00 a month?

I don't get it completely. What kind of car does she have that costs her $1000.00 a month?

In 2000 I sold cars for a few months. Unfortunately for me the economy hit a slump at the end of the year and I ended up earning less than minimum wage and quit.

Any car or SUV costing $35,000.00 and financed over just five years costs about $700.00 per month for the payment. Add insurance and everything else and the price of an expensive car will cost $1000.00 or more per month.

By the way, at that time my old car had died and I began riding a motorcycle and loved it. I didn't see the logic in owning a car for my situation.

How many people take on jobs farther from home so they can afford the car to get there. Remember when I was young and friends would complain that they needed cars to get work. My first few jobs were around the block from my house. Started college about 2 miles from home and still either walked or biked. Worst thing I did was to get caught up in the auto circle .

...and I began riding a motorcycle and loved it. I didn't see the logic in owning a car for my situation.

Wait, what?
A motorcycle?
In the car free forum?
Moderators! Moderators!
http://i102.photobucket.com/albums/m87/superestaticdude/whistle.jpg

I'm never buying a car I can't pay for in full. My most recent car, which my family helped me buy, cost 2k. I spend about 60 a month on gas. I hope to keep it running at least until I'm through with school, at which point I may look for a newer and more efficient ride. Spending 1k a month on a car is not my idea of a good time.

Yesterday a co-worker finally got it off her chest "You need to get a car in order to live a more simple life.". I quizzed her about just her car expenses- about $1000.00 per month. I pointed out that just the car expenses would pay for rent on a small apartment within a block of work and she could walk to work and to a grocery store. Probably adding $1000.00 per month to her current shelter expenses she could have a big place within a few blocks of work. She would have none of it, she still thought life without a car would be too complicated. She now drives an hour into the city to get to work. I'm relating this to show that there must be a huge population of people like her who don't understand why some car-free people talk about "simple living". This sub-forum even has a sticky thread about living simply, but car dependent people see car-free lifestyle as impossibly complicated.

perhaps you two are starting from a different definition of "simple"?

perhaps you two are starting from a different definition of "simple"?

To run with that thought, what's the balance between living simply and being self sufficient?

Worst thing I did was to get caught up in the auto circle .

Same here. I was into cycling before I got my driver's license, and if I could change one thing about my past it would be to never have given that up. I lost my health, both physical and mental, and many thousands of dollars, all thanks to cars.

To run with that thought, what's the balance between living simply and being self sufficient?

Ok... an amoeba lives simply. Bill Gates is self sufficient. What do you mean...balance?

Riding a bike is a simpler existence than owning a car. It's smaller, doesn't require gasoline, and its maintenance costs are less. However it did require a plant in China to produce it (relying on others). If you build it yourself no need for the plant in China (self reliance). However to build your own frame you need tools, and a place to build it (more stuff to own).

I quit driving my truck when $80 didn't fill the tank all the way. At that time I was filling the tank about once a week... So figure around $400 a month just for gas... then add in insurance and maintenance... I was paying at least $600 a month for my transportation. No payment, but I made up for that in gas use and maintenance costs!

Riding a bike is a simpler existence than owning a car. It's smaller, doesn't require gasoline, and its maintenance costs are less. However it did require a plant in China to produce it (relying on others). If you build it yourself no need for the plant in China (self reliance). However to build your own frame you need tools, and a place to build it (more stuff to own).
Taking this one step further, I could give up the bike altogether, move to the back country and live in a hut I've built myself, eating whatever I've picked, caught, trapped or hunted. But I'll need to buy the nails I use to build the house. And I'll need some tools to get started. (In a survival situation, it's possible to make the tools, but that's a difficult task.)

I prefer a different approach. If I can avoid consumer debt and live well within my means, I'm doing fine. That's why I'm living without a lot of electronic toys and gadgets. (I'm typing this message on a seven-year-old computer which sometimes shows its age but performs nicely for most of my needs.)

It's not clear to me the OP won his debate.

For my own particular circumstances, it is decisively simpler to drive to work than to bicycle commute. I'm not saying it's better, but for simplicity driving wins out hands down.

If I had about 1 million dollars sitting around then I could see how owning a car would actually make my life simpler...

To run with that thought, what's the balance between living simply and being self sufficient?

Well, it's darn near impossible to really be self sufficient. We are all connected.

I shake my head when I hear people saying they have "invested" in a car. A car, in almost all instances, is not an investment; it is an expense. An investment will gain in value but once a car leaves the dealer's lot, it has lost a huge amount of its value.

When the price of a new car is equal to between six months' and one year's wages, the debt load is going to be significant. It's money that cannot be saved or spent on anything else. And once the car is paid off, it's time to replace it.

Living car free will save a lot of money. Living car-light and driving low-cost cars will also provide a substantial savings.

(There is one exception when a car can become an investment. If a mechanically minded car enthusiast buys an old vehicle cheaply and then restores it or builds it into a street rod, it becomes more valuable. However, most of the people I know who have chosen to go this route have also spent huge amounts of money on their project cars.)

In 2000 I sold cars for a few months. Unfortunately for me the economy hit a slump at the end of the year and I ended up earning less than minimum wage and quit.

Any car or SUV costing $35,000.00 and financed over just five years costs about $700.00 per month for the payment. Add insurance and everything else and the price of an expensive car will cost $1000.00 or more per month.

By the way, at that time my old car had died and I began riding a motorcycle and loved it. I didn't see the logic in owning a car for my situation.

I have had SUVs and Trucks and a boat or two but I always had one rule. Don't buy what you can't afford. A SUV has never cost me more the $250.00 a month in payments. Most often I have a pretty large down payment or most often by used and pay cash. And the same goes for a car. And if I pay them off I keep them till the wheels fall off. With any luck I have bought my last car.

The only complicated part of cycling I find is planning. There are very few things you can put off till the last minute. If you have an appointment you have to give yourself more time. If you are going to go shopping you need to pick up the trailer or add paniers. Motor vehicles allow you to do more spur of the moment things. To some ease equals simplicity as does just jumping in and turning the key at the last minute.

Wait, what?
A motorcycle?
In the car free forum?
Moderators! Moderators!
http://i102.photobucket.com/albums/m87/superestaticdude/whistle.jpg

I loved my motorcycle... in a platonic way.

It's not clear to me the OP won his debate.

For my own particular circumstances, it is decisively simpler to drive to work than to bicycle commute. I'm not saying it's better, but for simplicity driving wins out hands down.

There's a difference between simple and easy. Think Thoreau. Driving, if you're lucky, is easy, but rarely simple. Bicycling, in my opinion, is both easy and simple.

And, honestly, if you don't have the wit to get from point A to point B without using a car, I feel sorry for you.

It depends on what kind of life you want to live and how small of a world you want to live in. Being car light gives you the best of both worlds. Bike everywhere where it is practical, drive when it makes more sense. My girlfriend drives everywhere, I bike everywhere, sometimes we drive together. The total mileage on that car is well below 15k a year and costs about $500 a year to maintain. If we want to take off for a trip to the next city over, we can and it doesn't have to be on the bus or train's schedule. This kind of flexibility sometimes makes life more enjoyable with more variety.

Buying more car than you can afford or driving excessively for no good reason is something else entirely. I believe it's called "stupidity" and has nothing to do with simple/non-simple living.

It depends on what kind of life you want to live and how small of a world you want to live in. Being car light gives you the best of both worlds. Bike everywhere where it is practical, drive when it makes more sense. My girlfriend drives everywhere, I bike everywhere, sometimes we drive together. The total mileage on that car is well below 15k a year and costs about $500 a year to maintain. If we want to take off for a trip to the next city over, we can and it doesn't have to be on the bus or train's schedule. This kind of flexibility sometimes makes life more enjoyable with more variety.

Buying more car than you can afford or driving excessively for no good reason is something else entirely. I believe it's called "stupidity" and has nothing to do with simple/non-simple living.

There is no way that driving 15k miles a away only cost you $500 a year to maintain. Oil changes alone would take up a good chuck of that, let alone tires, belts, cleaning, parking fees, smog, ect infinity.

I do agree with you on the rest of the post though. Driving sometimes, for some people, makes sense. However, it is so little for most people that owning a personal use vehicle doesnt make sense. Renting a car or car sharing seems far better.

There is no way that driving 15k miles a away only cost you $500 a year to maintain. Oil changes alone would take up a good chuck of that, let alone tires, belts, cleaning, parking fees, smog, ect infinity.


Actually you can get it that low, I did. My first "car" was an old chevy truck. One $20 ase of oil was enough for 3 oil changes and three $1.99 oil filters. I changed the oil probably twice a year then. Bought used tires, etc. Changed the fan belt once when I bougt it and kept the old one as a spare in case it ever did break. I used to have a maintenance cost spreadsheet and finally spent the first $1000 on it after like 6 years. I was running close to 15k miles a year at the time. Oil changes can go to around 6k easily, but even changing oil at 3k its still not that expensive.

There's a difference between simple and easy. Think Thoreau. Driving, if you're lucky, is easy, but rarely simple. Bicycling, in my opinion, is both easy and simple.

And, honestly, if you don't have the wit to get from point A to point B without using a car, I feel sorry for you.

It didn't seem like a debate to me we were just talking about things.

Thinking of Thoreau... sometimes it seems like we've taken the simple life in the woods idea, and morphed it into our urban car-free life. Like a Peano curve, our private car-free revolution co-exists with car dependency. In the normal Euclidean distance metric we can literally reach out and touch car dependency from our simple life. The first conversation I described, illustrates an apparently a different, "sociological"distance metric. With respect to some car-dependent people, we car-free are still living out at Walden, miles from the village.

There is no way that driving 15k miles a away only cost you $500 a year to maintain. Oil changes alone would take up a good chuck of that, let alone tires, belts, cleaning, parking fees, smog, ect infinity.

I do agree with you on the rest of the post though. Driving sometimes, for some people, makes sense. However, it is so little for most people that owning a personal use vehicle doesnt make sense. Renting a car or car sharing seems far better.
No wonder you think a person has to be a millionaire to "simply" handle the costs of operating/maintaining a motor vehicle! Good for you if you don't have any use for a motor vehicle, prefer riding your bike, or are able to adapt to a lifestyle that fits within the limitations of your transportation choice, swell. I suggest you talk to people besides your single college buddies and other simple people with no family responsibilities, maybe even people with children and family transportation requirements. I also recommend that you do a little research on the actual costs of adequately maintaining a recent vintage, well made reliable compact car before making inflated guesses about automobile maintenance expenses.


An oil change at the local Quickie Lube costs about $20 and takes less than 30 minutes total and neither my wife nor I get our hands dirty. 2 changes/year costs $40. Total maintenance costs over 6 years besides oil changes for my 2003 Nissan Sentra with 65,000 miles has been about $1150 made up of $350 for tire replacement at 55,000 miles and about $800 for a 60,000 major "routine" servicing which included changing all the fluids, belts and hoses. No parking fees, no smog or inspection fees. Haven't had to replace a single part or repair anything so far. I anticipate in the next few years I may have to spend several hundred for normal replacement of muffler, battery and a brake servicing.
No tune ups, no time spent futzing with it; my wife just turns the key and goes across town, to the next town or we go on a cross country trip to visit family on the Coasts and to vacation, makes no difference, very simple. We aren't paupers or skin flints so don't have conniptions about money well spent on making our life simpler.

Like a Peano curve, our private car-free revolution co-exists with car dependency. In the normal Euclidean distance metric we can literally reach out and touch car dependency from our simple life. The first conversation I described, illustrates an apparently a different, "sociological"distance metric...
I'm thinking more like two non-intersecting Peano curves filling the same physical space. We can have occasional conversations, but really, they know nothing of our world. (And maybe the reverse is true as well.)

Reminds me of Isaac Asimov's Foundation trilogy, where he placed the mysterious Second Foundation at the opposite end of the galaxy from the first. It was able to hide from the First Foundation in plain sight because no one realized Selden was speaking in a sociological sense, not a physical one.

Bicycling hasn't made my life simpler, on the contrary, it has added more complexity to it verus driving. I now have to watch the weather reports regularly to determine what bike and/or gear to bring with me, plan my trips more carefully, what type of loads that I can/or will be carrying, what routes to take when hauling heavy loads, and what loads to pickup first in order to minimize the number of miles carrying a load at it's heaviest.

What I like about bicycling is that I have something more tangible for my money, the bad part about bicycling is that it's getting increasingly harder to find a place to store my ever increasing bicycle fleet versus storing fuel, insurance, loan, and maintenance receipts. :D

And, honestly, if you don't have the wit to get from point A to point B without using a car, I feel sorry for you.

I do have "the wit", and also the decency, not to publish insults without knowing the first thing about the other person's situation and circumstances.

Bicycling hasn't made my life simpler, on the contrary, it has added more complexity to it verus driving. I now have to watch the weather reports regularly to determine what bike and/or gear to bring with me, plan my trips more carefully, what type of loads that I can/or will be carrying, what routes to take when hauling heavy loads, and what loads to pickup first in order to minimize the number of miles carrying a load at it's heaviest.
:D

Right. You could add to that having to transport children, no secure bike parking, need for second set of business attire at work, late night travel through high crime areas, age and physical capacity of rider, far greater time needed for commuting that could be spent on other things including bike riding on nicer roads (in my case 3 extra hours a day) . . . I could go on.

We wouldn't be here is we were not enthusiastic about cycling, but that does not by long shot make it the smartest, cheapest, simplest or anythingelse-est mode of transportation under the circumstances many people live under.

Yesterday a co-worker finally got it off her chest "You need to get a car in order to live a more simple life.". I quizzed her about just her car expenses- about $1000.00 per month. I pointed out that just the car expenses would pay for rent on a small apartment within a block of work and she could walk to work and to a grocery store. Probably adding $1000.00 per month to her current shelter expenses she could have a big place within a few blocks of work. She would have none of it, she still thought life without a car would be too complicated. She now drives an hour into the city to get to work. I'm relating this to show that there must be a huge population of people like her who don't understand why some car-free people talk about "simple living". This sub-forum even has a sticky thread about living simply, but car dependent people see car-free lifestyle as impossibly complicated.

No. There is just a sub-species of the fair sex that from age 16 to 40 lack the common sense/practicality gene. No matter how you break a situation down for them in a context they understand they will choose to take the most complex, hardheaded and most stubborn approach. :notamused:

Bicycling hasn't made my life simpler, on the contrary, it has added more complexity to it verus driving. I now have to watch the weather reports regularly to determine what bike and/or gear to bring with me, plan my trips more carefully, what type of loads that I can/or will be carrying, what routes to take when hauling heavy loads, and what loads to pickup first in order to minimize the number of miles carrying a load at it's heaviest.

What I like about bicycling is that I have something more tangible for my money, the bad part about bicycling is that it's getting increasingly harder to find a place to store my ever increasing bicycle fleet versus storing fuel, insurance, loan, and maintenance receipts. :D

The key to living without a car is, as you mention, planning. It does seem kind of complex when you think about all the ways you have to plan your trips, but once I was used to it it didn't seem like nearly as much hassle as car-related complications. For instance, deciding which clothes to wear on a day when it may rain doesn't stress my nerves as much as having to take a car through inspection, wait in line, hope it passes emmissions, take the form to the county clerk, wait in line again, and pay $100 to renew my tags. Then on the way home what if someone rear-ends me? That's a whole new set of incredibly annoying and time consuming complications that are nothing but a headache. Naturally those things don't bother some people as much as they do me, and that's fine. But for me (and most here, probably) any additional complexity transportational cycling adds to life are more than made up for by the benefits. Something can be complex but not be a headache, and as a result it may seem "simple".

It's shaky ground to try to make an argument that bicycling is simpler than driving, or vice versa. It completely depends on one's individual circumstances. There are times for me when bicycling is simpler, and there are times when driving is simpler. Neither is perfect, and I don't have to abandon one for the other.

I'm thinking more like two non-intersecting Peano curves filling the same physical space. We can have occasional conversations, but really, they know nothing of our world. (And maybe the reverse is true as well.)

Yes of course, the idea that Thoreau's pond can be stretched and distorted so that it fills the entire country with every person lives a short distance from the shoreline but not necessarily cognizant of the fact that Henry and the pond is right there. We don't have to escape to the woods to eschew crass acquisitiveness but people who don't know what we're about think we're making life difficult for ourselves.

As far as one lifestyle being more simple than another, sometimes when I look around at the world it seems that people like to decorate their lives through complex things or relationships. After we acquire a degree of comfort we don't stop striving we keep adding layers of activity or things until it gets out of hand. If the co-worker in my first post sold her car and house and moved a few blocks from work, she could still complexify her life by getting involved in community theater or politics or gardening or whatever and just eat up the time she used to spend fighting traffic. We humans seem to do things like that we can't help ourselves.

Sometimes it is hard to move closer to work, even though you save commuting $ the cost of houses goes way up. I was looking at that for a long time, as the decent jobs moved north of the outerbelt my commute from my 60k home inside the city started getting to be 20 miles. problem was nearly all the houses in the area of the jobs were 200k and higher. It also took 14 months for my house to finally sell but when it did I found a smaller house that just dropped the price from 179k to 169k and was less than a mile from work (and shopping and parks and everything else) so even though it was slightly above that we were willing to pay (was sitting the limit at 150k) we jumped on it because we did loose a lot of commuting costs so the price difference between the 150k houes a 5 miles away and a 170k house close by was about even with the cost to commute those 5 miles. But not evenyone can get the perfect spot like that.

If the co-worker in my first post sold her car and house and moved a few blocks from work, she could still complexify her life by getting involved in community theater or politics or gardening or whatever and just eat up the time she used to spend fighting traffic. We humans seem to do things like that we can't help ourselves.

I may be misunderstanding your meaning, but you make it sound like these are negative things (well, maybe politics).

Maybe the co-worker is already involved in things like this at her present location, has comforts and friends or family there, and would not want to sacrafice that just to have a short commute.

Life should be rich. It's laudable to decrease the clutter, literal or metaphorical, in areas that do not add to life, but I don't accept "simple" as an ultimate Good in and of itself. If you mean to suggest that one should not participate in performance arts, have appropriate and harmless hobbies, or work to better their community (putting policits in a charitable light) because that is inconsistent with some kind of objective of leading a simplified life, I'm not with you at all.

Some people think it is very difficult to walk with a bag of groceries to their neighbor's party down the street. I'm not surprised when someone thinks it is difficult to do a several mile commute for an errand or to get to work.

I always get a lot of questions about when I show up someplace (especially for groceries) on bicycle. I just try to take some time out of my day to be as helpful as possible, hoping to convince them to take the next step.

Like a Peano curve...
In the normal Euclidean distance metric... illustrates an apparently a different, "sociological"distance metric.
Translation please?



we car-free are still living out at Walden, miles from the village.

Have you seen Walden Pond lately? ;)

Belmont to Walden Pond Bike Route (http://www.bikely.com/maps/bike-path/Belmont-to-Walden-Pond)

I may be misunderstanding your meaning, but you make it sound like these are negative things (well, maybe politics).

Maybe the co-worker is already involved in things like this at her present location, has comforts and friends or family there, and would not want to sacrafice that just to have a short commute.

Life should be rich. It's laudable to decrease the clutter, literal or metaphorical, in areas that do not add to life, but I don't accept "simple" as an ultimate Good in and of itself. If you mean to suggest that one should not participate in performance arts, have appropriate and harmless hobbies, or work to better their community (putting policits in a charitable light) because that is inconsistent with some kind of objective of leading a simplified life, I'm not with you at all.
I wasn't trying to judge anyone. Actually my coworker is working two jobs to try to make the car payments and the mortgage. Some of the posts on this thread made me think that when I imagine that I live "simply" I might be fooling myself. What do I do with my extra time and money? I fill it up with taking classes, visiting friends, reading, is that any more simple than my coworker filling up her time with fighting traffic and working a second job to pay for the fancy car? Plus if the cover of a recent Newsweek with a picture of Uncle Same ordering people to spend is any guide, her extra debt and spending is patriotic and laudable.

Some of the posts on this thread made me think that when I imagine that I live "simply" I might be fooling myself. What do I do with my extra time and money? I fill it up with taking classes, visiting friends, reading, is that any more simple than my coworker filling up her time with fighting traffic and working a second job to pay for the fancy car?

Now you're getting it.

Plus if the cover of a recent Newsweek with a picture of Uncle Sam ordering people to spend is any guide, her extra debt and spending is patriotic and laudable.

Bicycling magazine then should get a medal of honor.

Right. You could add to that having to transport children, no secure bike parking, need for second set of business attire at work, late night travel through high crime areas, age and physical capacity of rider, far greater time needed for commuting that could be spent on other things including bike riding on nicer roads (in my case 3 extra hours a day) . . . I could go on.

We wouldn't be here is we were not enthusiastic about cycling, but that does not by long shot make it the smartest, cheapest, simplest or anythingelse-est mode of transportation under the circumstances many people live under.

I believe the posters who suggest that a prime reason to select a home is to assure that it is within bicycling distance of their current place of work are:

Single or have a SO who works at the same location and assume that both will work at that same location forever
Assume they will be healthy enough to ride a bike for their working lifetime, year round
Have no school age children, so quality of public schools is never considered;
Have never been required to permanently change job locations;
Always work from the same job location and have no requirement to travel any serious distance at all.


Or are satisfied living in rental facilities with relatively short leases.

If those characteristics don't fit them, I'd be surprised.

What if we get hypothetical for a moment? Let’s say you own your car. Mine is a 92 4 banger that gets 27 on the highway and 22 in town. My gas bill is typically $30 to $50 a month. When I go on vacation it can get higher but that is what happens on vacations. Let’s also say I own my home, paid for years ago. Is it simpler to just get in and drive somewhere because I decide I am out of propane or wait till I have the time to ride one of my bikes? If I am working would it be simpler to use the car to take a promotion or pass on the promotion even if I have a family to support? The promotion amounts to something in the neighborhood of 7 to 10k a year. These are concepts that just may have been beyond Henry David. The economy has changed a lot in the years between Walden Pond and today.

Translation please?



Have you seen Walden Pond lately? ;)

Belmont to Walden Pond Bike Route (http://www.bikely.com/maps/bike-path/Belmont-to-Walden-Pond)

Doesn't everyone know about Giuseppe Peano ? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space-filling_curve



In mathematical analysis, a space-filling curve is a curve whose range contains the entire 2-dimensional unit square (or the 3-dimensional unit cube). Because Giuseppe Peano (1858–1932) was the first to discover one, space-filling curves in the 2-dimensional plane are commonly called Peano curves.


I believe the SUV I encountered this morning was trying to describe one of the Peanu curves... as it blew by me in the same lane.

The key to living without a car is, as you mention, planning. It does seem kind of complex when you think about all the ways you have to plan your trips, but once I was used to it it didn't seem like nearly as much hassle as car-related complications. For instance, deciding which clothes to wear on a day when it may rain doesn't stress my nerves as much as having to take a car through inspection, wait in line, hope it passes emmissions, take the form to the county clerk, wait in line again, and pay $100 to renew my tags. Then on the way home what if someone rear-ends me? That's a whole new set of incredibly annoying and time consuming complications that are nothing but a headache. Naturally those things don't bother some people as much as they do me, and that's fine. But for me (and most here, probably) any additional complexity transportational cycling adds to life are more than made up for by the benefits. Something can be complex but not be a headache, and as a result it may seem "simple".


I think that riding a bike is simple for cyclist and driving is simple for drivers. A car driver who has never used a bike for transportation would find riding to work or the grocery a very complex task. You mean i have to DRESS for the WEATHER! On the other hand if you took a randome guy from some village who has never driven or been driven in a car and told him to go to work and get grociers not know any traffic, parking, or anyother driver related stuff, that would not be simple. However, here in the states, everyone knows those things. Its conditioning. We are just asking that some people recondition themselves or at least look into it, to understand that there is more than one way to do things. Ask someone who has been car-free for a long time like roody, driving seems like a chore to him, no matter what the distance. I agree.

A few years ago, an elderly woman in my community was honoured for outstanding community service. If someone she knew was shut in and needed food or supplies, she'd go out and pick up whatever was needed. She didn't have a car. Often, she'd walk to and from the grocery store or if the load was too big, she'd take a taxi. People around here thought she was making a huge effort but she treated those errands as if they were a normal part of her day.

I think that riding a bike is simple for cyclist and driving is simple for drivers. A car driver who has never used a bike for transportation would find riding to work or the grocery a very complex task. You mean i have to DRESS for the WEATHER! On the other hand if you took a randome guy from some village who has never driven or been driven in a car and told him to go to work and get grociers not know any traffic, parking, or anyother driver related stuff, that would not be simple. However, here in the states, everyone knows those things. Its conditioning. We are just asking that some people recondition themselves or at least look into it, to understand that there is more than one way to do things. Ask someone who has been car-free for a long time like roody, driving seems like a chore to him, no matter what the distance. I agree.

Yes, I think you're right. I very rarely drive, but when I do (usually a company truck) I find the experience a strange combination of stressful and boring. The high speeds and wild drivers all around me is stressful, while the fact that I'm just sitting there not moving my body makes me feel drowsy. It's a really bad combination for driving. :lol: But it doesn't seem to affect others I know in this way at all because they're used to it. They don't understand why I hate driving so much because they've never done anything else. And I used to be like them. I thought I enjoyed driving, even though when doing so I was constantly irritated at other drivers and uncomfortable in a bunch of other ways. But until I tried something else I didn't notice those things very much.

And now I barely even think about dressing for the weather or planning out a simple trip to avoid traffic, because I'm so used to those things that they're routine. And when I started cycling to work I thought about them but they didn't bother me, I assume because I was enthusiastic about the whole thing. But I can see how they could be very irritating issues to someone who, for some reason of another, were forced to give up his/her car.

Yes, I think you're right. I very rarely drive, but when I do (usually a company truck) I find the experience a strange combination of stressful and boring. The high speeds and wild drivers all around me is stressful, while the fact that I'm just sitting there not moving my body makes me feel drowsy. It's a really bad combination for driving. :lol: But it doesn't seem to affect others I know in this way at all because they're used to it. They don't understand why I hate driving so much because they've never done anything else. And I used to be like them. I thought I enjoyed driving, even though when doing so I was constantly irritated at other drivers and uncomfortable in a bunch of other ways. But until I tried something else I didn't notice those things very much.

And now I barely even think about dressing for the weather or planning out a simple trip to avoid traffic, because I'm so used to those things that they're routine. And when I started cycling to work I thought about them but they didn't bother me, I assume because I was enthusiastic about the whole thing. But I can see how they could be very irritating issues to someone who, for some reason of another, were forced to give up his/her car.

Now I think we are getting somewhere. It is degrees of comfort and simplicity. I have yet to find a way to embrace bad weather and cycling. I don't even have bad weather compared to some of you but still I find it troublesome on the occasion that I have to go out in the rain, cold or extreme heat. The temptation on such days is just far too great to take the car and use the heater or air conditioning on such days. Yet there are those of you that seem to think nothing of going out and living a normal life without a car in such conditions.

Now I think we are getting somewhere. It is degrees of comfort and simplicity. I have yet to find a way to embrace bad weather and cycling.

That's a good point. Bad weather does not particularly bother me, though I do try to watch the weather and avoid the worst. But as a child, I commuted to school by bicycle and wore my raincoat when it rained. As a young man, I was car-free so I had no choice. I got used to it.

What if we get hypothetical for a moment? Let’s say you own your car. Mine is a 92 4 banger that gets 27 on the highway and 22 in town. My gas bill is typically $30 to $50 a month..

Translation, please?? "4 banger" ???

For another analogy, maybe this would work: Some people can be real experts at playing chess - and their brain can process 10 moves in advance, and thinks of chess being a "simple" game. For someone new to playing, or who doesn't like the game, or just doesn't "get it", chess can seem really really complicated. It's just a matter of perspective.