My Month without a Car

Summary

My time without a car taught me a few things:

• Life without a car presented unforeseen challenges, and benefits.
• I emotionally overbuy on most things, including my last few cars. Having time to think about getting a new car allowed me to seriously think about this aspect of my personality and to address it. The result: I bought a car that was more practical for our lifestyle.
• I do enjoy riding my bike when it’s practical to do so. After my rock climbing fall in 2015, I wasn’t sure that I would be comfortable riding again, but it turns out that I am.
• Living close enough to work to commute is a luxury to me at this point in my life, and I want to continue to enjoy it. However, I want to make sure that I don’t overdo it by riding too often and spoiling the fun.

Background

While working for Ford, I was able to get a truly awesome deal on a lease for a Ford F-150 Supercrew with LOADS of options:

but, alas, the lease came to an end in late February. Rather than getting another new car immediately, I decided to try another course of action.

Recently, my wife and I moved to Oak Park, CA, just three miles away from where I work, making bicycle commuting a reasonable option. I had recently built an electric bicycle for this specific purpose. At the time, I did not plan on it being my only means of transportation. However, I had an idea as the lease on my truck ended: Why not try one month without a vehicle? We still had my wife’s vehicle in case of emergencies, so I wasn’t worried about being in dire straits if a sudden illness or other issue emerged. Also, I thought that a one-month commitment was short enough that I could do it with only moderate difficult, while at the same time the time was long enough to do some analysis. Some questions I was particularly interested in were:

• How much money could I save if I didn’t have to pay for gas, a car payment, or auto insurance?
• How much maintenance does a bicycle require when it is ridden most days?
• How many miles could I expect to get out of a single charge?
• Would I eat out less frequently? An additional cost-savings measure.
• How would not having a car make me feel?
• What would be the environmental impact? How much pollution would be avoided?
• …

In this post, I will discuss my one-month with no car with the above questions in mind. I present my thoughts week-by-week.

The Month

Week One

The first week was actually pretty easy. I turned my truck in on a Wednesday and then my wife and I flew to Portland for a long weekend the next day. While there, we stayed downtown and walked everywhere. Whenever we ventured farther, the friend that we were visiting would drive. We were able to take the Max to and from the airport, so after a few days, having no car seemed a breeze.

After returning to work the following Monday, I rode my bike three days, back-to-back. During this time, I stopped for coffee on the way to work all three times. This was typical to my usual routine. Where I realized a difference was after work. Not having a car in the evening prevented me from being able to conveniently get takeout food. As a result, I only ate out one of these nights, whereas I would usually have gotten takeout at lease twice during the car-era.

Maintaining the bike was no big thing this week; no flats or other major issues.

Week Two

The week started out well. Up until Saturday, I was running well. Saturday, however, presented some difficulty; see the pic:

This pic was taken after I had popped not one, but two tubes. The first tube popped while I was riding home in the rain, while the second one went after putting the tire under weight. The second tube was most challenging because it made me late to an appointment. Thankfully, my wife was able to give me a ride, and I took a Lyft home. What frustrated me most about the situation was the feeling of helplessness that it presented. Not having a car made for some minor, but still real, feelings of helplessness. I have had a car since I was 16 without a gap of more than a few days, and I had come to count on the freedom to hop in a car and go where wherever I wanted whenever I wanted to. Having this freedom taken away abruptly was a little discomfiting, and I believe this feeling hit me hardest during this week.

As far as costs go: again, I saw the previous week’s decrease in eating takeout for dinner continued, and some mornings I would make my own coffee and take breakfast from home. What I was not expecting, but in retrospect should have been, was the cost of having replacement parts on hand. I realized that I needed spare tires, tubes, and a C02 inflation valve and compressed air cylinders to handle roadside flats. Even with the major discounting on Amazon, these parts set me back around $100. I know that this cost was necessary, and that I wouldn’t consume all of the parts for quite sometime, hopefully, but that cost still rankled me a bit.

On the plus side, I came to understand how to maintain my bike better. I worked through how to adjust the brakes, rear derailleur, and other settings and the bike ran great afterwards.

Week Three

By this point, I was tiring of the bicycle routine. Even though the bike did a lot of the work, the steering and pedaling-up-hills really started to wear upon me. My shoulders were sore, my back ached, and I was getting cramps in my legs. Some of this was due to poor conditioning, some of it to weather ups-and-downs. In any event, I would say that this week was a struggle to get through.

There were no major maintenance issues. I just made sure to test the tire pressure each morning, as well as doing basic brake and alignment checks.

By the end of the week, I had grown tolerant of the minor aches, and the daily routine was becoming easy. I also found the exercise, though minor, pretty fun. Being outside, riding through the fresh air, and being engaged in something while traveling to-and-from work were all great aspects that I hadn’t thought much about at first. By this point, any pie-in-the-sky ideas about conservation and limiting fuel consumption were being overshadowed by the more mundane aspects discussed in the previous sentence.

There were no major financial wins or losses this week. I still got my morning coffee en route to the office, but I was eating at home more for dinner. I’d say this was a net break-even.

Final Week

I started aggressively looking for a car early in the week. During the weeks previous, I was only passively looking via my bank’s car-buying service. While using this, I found a Honda Fit that looked perfect for my needs; enough size for our dog and great fuel economy. I was pretty sure that, if the wheels didn’t fall off during a test drive, I would most likely purchase this particular vehicle at the end of the week. To avoid coming up short on my commitment to the full month without a car, I made sure that I didn’t look at the vehicle until the end of the week.

I rode my bike every day this week, except Friday, with no issues at all. On Friday, my wife dropped me off at work and, after, I went to the dealership with the Honda and purchased it. I enjoyed my time riding the bike exclusively, but the lack of mobility beyond just 3 or so miles was debilitating.