First of all, I'll just link to this thread:
http://www.bikeforums.net/living-car...lace-live.html

Secondly, Rowan and I have lived in a place where we had to drive to ride. We were in the back of beyond, and the only way out was passable by mtn bike ... which might have been fine, except that we wanted to do road rides. So we had to load everything up and drive at least 3 km to a road. It was a pain, and we were so happy to move into town and be able to ride from home.

Where we are now is a little bit that way again because we're halfway up a steep hill. We do end up driving to ride most weekends and trying to muster up motivation to ride from home after work when we're tired.