Encouraging Mister Toad
Mar. 19th, 2004 02:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
radegundMy comment on ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
glitzfrau's latest entry spun out of control.
Driving's a funny kettle of fish altogether. I started learning when I was 17, without any political agenda, simply because I was excited by the idea (and yes, I am acutely aware of how lucky I am that it was this easy). My parents yielded to my blandishments to insure me on their car; I paid for the lessons. (It turns out that their malleability stemmed partly from a hope that I'd drive my siblings to school. Tchah.) I found I enjoyed driving quite a lot. Car ads notwithstanding, it certainly heralded unprecedented freedom for me, as I'd never been allowed to have a bicycle, my father being a hypercautious nut.
In college I was the default Designated Driver in my circle of friends. Long treks through suburbia at 4:00 a.m. with a car full of drunken and variously amorous passengers - ah, happy memories. I adhered firmly to the theory that chauffeur duty served to balance the unspeakable privilege of having access to a car. My friends raised no objections. I also saved a big wodge of cash on booze. Probably paid for my lessons, now that I think of it :-)
When I moved out in 1999 I lived for 18 months without a car and didn't miss it much. Work was on a bus route, door to door. Town was fifteen minutes' walk away. Large-scale grocery shopping was a pain, and so was visiting my friends in Co. Leitrim. Then in summer 2000,niallm came into a bit of money and decided it would be a good idea to learn how to drive. So we bought our car (stalkers, it's a 1996 Nissan Almera).
It's convenient. The house move would have been a much more gruelling ordeal without it (we'd either have had to line up fleets of willing friends or shell out to hire a vehicle, neither of which would have been much fun given everything else on our plates at the time). The sort of shopping one has to do when one buys a house was also made infinitely easier: laundry racks and compost bins and buckets of paint and sanders and saws and ladders and lampshades and mirrors and all the sundry paraphernalia of home maintenance and beautification aren't easily transported by bus.
We've settled into a routine now, the car and its owners. I use it between three and five times a week: once on Wednesdays to drive to choir practice (an utter indulgence, since it's fifteen minutes' walk, but not having to walk makes the hurdle of getting out the door that bit easier); once on Thursdays to go grocery shopping (and here is where it really comes into its own: it allows us to buy non-perishables in bulk, and it saves the time and strain of carless shopping); once on Sundays to drive to other choir practice (again, an indulgence, but I really wouldn't go if I had to walk); and perhaps once or twice more, for instance to visit parents or bring stuff to the recycling centre. Niall uses it when he's working somewhere he can't cycle to, or when he needs to bring heavy equipment with him. We take it on Irish holidays. Overall, we put about 5,000 miles less than the national average on the clock each year.
It's not ecological. But then, neither is heating our house or using nice thin sanitary towels with plastic layers or wearing nylon tights or eating out-of-season produce. Or chewing gum, for that matter, which I haven't done since someone told me how long it takes to degrade (decades, if I remember rightly). One compromises, to the extent that one can live with oneself.
I aspire to being an early adopter of the electric car, as soon as one becomes affordable. (Yes, there's an element of gadget-worship in there.) When the time comes to replace the incumbent I'll seriously investigate buying a car that can be adapted to run on vegetable oil (don't laugh: I'm told it's perfectly feasible). In the meantime, though, we're not doing too badly.
glitzfrau's latest entry spun out of control.Driving's a funny kettle of fish altogether. I started learning when I was 17, without any political agenda, simply because I was excited by the idea (and yes, I am acutely aware of how lucky I am that it was this easy). My parents yielded to my blandishments to insure me on their car; I paid for the lessons. (It turns out that their malleability stemmed partly from a hope that I'd drive my siblings to school. Tchah.) I found I enjoyed driving quite a lot. Car ads notwithstanding, it certainly heralded unprecedented freedom for me, as I'd never been allowed to have a bicycle, my father being a hypercautious nut.
In college I was the default Designated Driver in my circle of friends. Long treks through suburbia at 4:00 a.m. with a car full of drunken and variously amorous passengers - ah, happy memories. I adhered firmly to the theory that chauffeur duty served to balance the unspeakable privilege of having access to a car. My friends raised no objections. I also saved a big wodge of cash on booze. Probably paid for my lessons, now that I think of it :-)
When I moved out in 1999 I lived for 18 months without a car and didn't miss it much. Work was on a bus route, door to door. Town was fifteen minutes' walk away. Large-scale grocery shopping was a pain, and so was visiting my friends in Co. Leitrim. Then in summer 2000,
niallm came into a bit of money and decided it would be a good idea to learn how to drive. So we bought our car (stalkers, it's a 1996 Nissan Almera).It's convenient. The house move would have been a much more gruelling ordeal without it (we'd either have had to line up fleets of willing friends or shell out to hire a vehicle, neither of which would have been much fun given everything else on our plates at the time). The sort of shopping one has to do when one buys a house was also made infinitely easier: laundry racks and compost bins and buckets of paint and sanders and saws and ladders and lampshades and mirrors and all the sundry paraphernalia of home maintenance and beautification aren't easily transported by bus.
We've settled into a routine now, the car and its owners. I use it between three and five times a week: once on Wednesdays to drive to choir practice (an utter indulgence, since it's fifteen minutes' walk, but not having to walk makes the hurdle of getting out the door that bit easier); once on Thursdays to go grocery shopping (and here is where it really comes into its own: it allows us to buy non-perishables in bulk, and it saves the time and strain of carless shopping); once on Sundays to drive to other choir practice (again, an indulgence, but I really wouldn't go if I had to walk); and perhaps once or twice more, for instance to visit parents or bring stuff to the recycling centre. Niall uses it when he's working somewhere he can't cycle to, or when he needs to bring heavy equipment with him. We take it on Irish holidays. Overall, we put about 5,000 miles less than the national average on the clock each year.
It's not ecological. But then, neither is heating our house or using nice thin sanitary towels with plastic layers or wearing nylon tights or eating out-of-season produce. Or chewing gum, for that matter, which I haven't done since someone told me how long it takes to degrade (decades, if I remember rightly). One compromises, to the extent that one can live with oneself.
I aspire to being an early adopter of the electric car, as soon as one becomes affordable. (Yes, there's an element of gadget-worship in there.) When the time comes to replace the incumbent I'll seriously investigate buying a car that can be adapted to run on vegetable oil (don't laugh: I'm told it's perfectly feasible). In the meantime, though, we're not doing too badly.
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(no subject)
Date: 2004-03-19 09:45 am (UTC)Not good. When you run the total energy and consumables budget out for taking trips to the recycling center, it turns out that you lose the net benefit if you make a specific trip to and from the center just to drop stuff off: you only beat breakeven if you add the recycling journey as a sidetrip to a car excursion you were going to make anyway. I'l try dig out the exact reference to support this ASAP.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-03-19 09:46 am (UTC)I knew they were around here somewhere...
Date: 2004-03-19 12:42 pm (UTC)http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3355927.stm
http://www.sussex.ac.uk/Units/gec/pubs/briefing/brief-11.htm