{"id":39,"date":"2008-07-31T03:08:26","date_gmt":"2008-07-31T10:08:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.houseofcranks.com\/journal\/?p=39"},"modified":"2008-07-31T03:08:26","modified_gmt":"2008-07-31T10:08:26","slug":"happy-car-free-anniversary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.houseofcranks.com\/journal\/2008\/07\/happy-car-free-anniversary\/","title":{"rendered":"Happy car-free anniversary!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday was the second anniversary of our <a href=\"http:\/\/www.elsewhere.org\/journal\/archives\/2006\/08\/01\/car-free-sooner-than-expected\/\">somewhat unscheduled<\/a> switch to a car-free lifestyle. Which is to say, we haven&#8217;t owned a working car in two years.<\/p>\n<p>All things considered, I think we&#8217;ve done pretty well. We haven&#8217;t really used a car much at all since ZipCar and FlexCar merged. We&#8217;ve occasionally borrowed my folks&#8217; car for some hardware store errands, but we&#8217;ve mostly stuck with the bike and bus of late. And I don&#8217;t think it&#8217;s been much of a hardship. We do have to plan things more carefully, in general, and it&#8217;s a pain when there&#8217;s a show out in West Seattle I&#8217;d like to go to, but not really enough to want to spring for a cab back. But overall, I&#8217;m not regretting not having a car at all.<\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;ve chosen where we live well, which helps a lot. There are grocery stores and farmers&#8217; markets within easy bike\/bus distance, as well as shopping malls and restaurants and libraries and most other places we&#8217;d want to go. With any luck, I&#8217;ll get another job within a few miles, otherwise that might be hard. When we bought this house, I expected that I&#8217;d be working at the UW more or less forever. And I&#8217;m still hoping that&#8217;s the case; it&#8217;s just less certain.<\/p>\n<p>So, go us! As gas prices rise, that decision is looking better and better.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday was the second anniversary of our somewhat unscheduled switch to a car-free lifestyle. Which is to say, we haven&#8217;t owned a working car in two years. All things considered, I think we&#8217;ve done pretty well. We haven&#8217;t really used a car much at all since ZipCar and FlexCar merged. We&#8217;ve occasionally borrowed my folks&#8217; &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.houseofcranks.com\/journal\/2008\/07\/happy-car-free-anniversary\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Happy car-free anniversary!<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[1],"tags":[24,23],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5wUSd-D","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.houseofcranks.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.houseofcranks.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.houseofcranks.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.houseofcranks.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.houseofcranks.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.houseofcranks.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.houseofcranks.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.houseofcranks.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.houseofcranks.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}