Progress Report: February

So far, the winter without a car has been going remarkably well.  Part of that probably has to do with the snow drought that we've had since the start of January.  We were supposed to get a big storm this week, but it completely fizzled.  This has meant that it's been easy to keep grocery shopping by bicycle (and trailer) which I adore.  And Tracy's been able to commute to work by bicycle nearly every day so far this winter.  In the past, I always avoided riding in the wintertime at all, even when the roads were dry and clear.  But now it seems absolutely normal.

The cold of winter seems to have much less impact on my ability to get around by bike than I expected. It's pretty easy to bundle up.  It's only the wind that can be a bit of a pain, and that hasn't been a huge factor so far.

I just don't find myself thinking, "Oh, if only we had the car," very often, if at all. Even when I have meetings at night, I don't mind riding my bike, even on cold nights, especially since most are within 1-2 miles of home.  Many errands are just as fast to perform by bike as by car.  And I still love getting the exercise, though if I end up walking 4-5 miles a day (my normal day) and also add another few miles of bike riding (6 miles, if I got to MIT and back), I'm pretty tired by the time the evening rolls around.

Soon, I hope to get around to tallying up how much we've spent on transportation since we've been rid of the car and see how much we've saved (if at all).  Our bike expenses have dwindled lately, now that we're mostly geared up, and we've rented Zipcars a bit less than I'd expected.  So I think we're saving some money, as well as gaining many other benefits besides.

Zipcar for the holidays

Visiting family over the holidays is very important for us, and has proven to be one of the main difficulties of not having a car.  Originally, when planning our car-free adventure/life, we'd calculated spending a certain amount on car rentals for trips to Connecticut to visit family--usually we can rent a car for $30-$40/day from the airport over a weekend.  However, as we discovered at Thanksgiving, car rental companies will triple their daily rate over holiday weekends.  So our little three day trip at Thanksgiving cost more than $350 just for rental, plus we had to pay for gas.  It was worth it, but more than we'd expected (by a lot).

Over Christmas, we made another three-day trip to CT, but this time we used Zipcar.  It turns out that you can rent a Zipcar for a maximum of four days.  The daily rate does not change over the holidays.  We rented a Honda Element for $89/day, which is a little less than what we'd have paid from Thrifty or the other big car rental agencies, but all the taxes and gas were included, so we came out about $100 ahead.  And I didn't have to schlep myself over the the airport and back.  Over Thanksgiving, it took me 90 minutes just to pick up the car.  With Zipcar, I just needed to walk 5-10 minutes from home.

There are some cheaper car rental places around, very small companies, but the online reviews of them are pretty scary.  If anyone in the Boston area knows of reputable ones, I'd be interested in hearing about them.  For now, though, it looks like Zipcar will help us out over the holidays.