Today marks the end of a good run, an era if you will, in our household.
In a matter of hours my wife Elizabeth and I will go from a one-car family back to a two-car family. We gave it a good run, two adults with full-time jobs (for the most part, never mind that little loss-of-job deal due to employer bankruptcy back in 2012) and only one car.
Who knew we would have lasted as long as we did?
I don’t exactly remember how long we thought it would last when I sold my car, for cash and not really looking for anything else, back in September 2011. I remember thinking it might be a bit of a challenge to get back and forth to soccer practice on the south side of Lexington when I worked on the north side of town and commuted to work via my Specialized Sirrus (pictured above). That all worked out though, as long as I was able to pedal fast enough back to our downtown apartment, situated perfectly between work and the fields, and pick up the car to get to practice for warm-ups.
I don’t remember if we thought we’d give it a try for a while and then get something else. We did wind up getting something else, but not before we sold one car and for a brief time were a zero-car family.
I don’t remember if I thought using a bicycle as my primary form of transportation would actually help my running, but it did. Nothing was better than the 8-mile (4 miles each way) commute in Lexington and the 2-mile (1 each way) one here for ST Publishing and The Saratoga Special here in Saratoga Springs to and from the racetrack isn’t too bad either.
I don’t remember if we thought we were helping the environment by cutting down our gas consumption and reducing our emissions, or if we thought about saving a little dough (on gas, insurance, repairs, all that good stuff) in the process, but we did.
People would ask all the time how hard it was being a one-car family.
“How do you do it?” they’d ask.
When the answer started with, “well, I work in an office in our house,” puzzled, blank stares often became more understanding looks.
I don’t really know how we did it this long to be honest, although truth told it sometimes involves a lot of planning and patience. I’m just thankful we could do it and did do it, even if we don’t remember exactly how.
