Seriously: my mother believed that when gasoline went over $1.00 a gallon, we would have so-o-o-shal-ism! No kidding: she actually said that, back in the day when about 30 cents a gallon was a lot. Today? Its $5 a gallon! Up by $1.35 over the past month.
The poor woman would faint dead away if she could see this stuff today!
Well…y’know what? My dear son did me a favor by kiping that car of mine! That’s 87 berjillion bucks a tankful that I’m NOT paying. And y’know further what? I’m not having any problem getting around to all the places I need or want to go.
For one thing, my house is right in the middle of urban everything: three major grocery stores, a hair stylist, a Bookman’s, a veterinarian, a dermatologist…on and on and endlessly on. To my amazement, I’m discovering that I don’t need a car to get to about 90% of the places I’d normally go.
To gild that golden lily, a guy who lives kitty-corner across the street from the funny farm drives for Uber! For a tiny fraction of what it costs to own a car, he’ll drive me wherever I please.
So: that’s a pleasant surprise.
Makes me feel almost like I’m back in London.
We never owned a car there, or rented one long-term. If we wanted to go someplace in the city, we just hailed a cab. And if we were up to some elaborate sight-seeing, we’d rent a car for a day or for a weekend.
Truth to tell, I would never have imagined you could get by with that in a bourgeois American city like Phoenix. But by dayum! Here we are! No car, and no problem!
Seriously: weeks have merged into a months, and to my amazement I’ve found no need to own a car over that time.
Uber forms a major part of that: if I need to go to an appointment or whatnot, the guy across the street drives me there. My son still has his car, too; if he isn’t otherwise occupied (he usually is), he could drive me from point A to point B.So far, we haven’t had much need for that, though.
It’s convenient to own your own chariot, of course. But really: no more convenient than renting one. How convenient is it, anyway, to have to schlep the car to a maintenance garage every few weeks? And with a rental, someone else owns the thing, pays the registration & taxes on it, and covers the upkeep.