After 10 months without a car, I finally caved and re-entered the automotive community. Here are some things I learned over the last 10 months.
I read a LOT more when I take the train everywhere. If I had a car, I probably wouldn’t have made it through all those pirate books.
I never get sick of walking.
I’m not really into biking. Despite my best efforts, I just don’t enjoy it all that much.
iGo is a great idea, but I barely ever used it. When I did, it took me 20 minutes to figure out how to turn the stinking Prius on.
Without a car, I saw less of my friends who live along the blue line (or along no line.)
Buses aren’t as bad as I thought. They can get you where you want to go.
The freedom of having a car is no joke. I’m totally going to Home Depot today.
I can’t think of anything I enjoy less than the process of buying a car.
Oh man, I just went on You Tube to see if they had a clip of John Prine singing “Automobile” and found this great clip of him on Soundstage. It kills me that they fade it out at the end.
You want more overloaded minivan stories? Here’s one from college — actually right before college. I went on one of those wilderness orientation programs lots of schools offer to incoming freshman. I have a vague memory that one of the trails or peaks was named after Mickey Dolenz, but that’s about all I remember.
After the trip, two minivans were supposed to pick us up and take us down the mountain, but only one came. We decided all 11 of us (and our backpacks) would just cram into the car. After all, it was only a half-hour drive.
There were three of us in the passenger seat. I was positioned in such a way that my head was actually leaning on the windshield. As we twisted and turned down the mountain road, a voice from the bottom of our passenger-seat pile said, “I don’t like this,” and managed to jimmy-rig the seatbelt around (at least parts) of all of us.
Seconds later we made a particularly sharp cuve and the next thing I knew the car was plowed into a tree. There we shouts of, “Is everyone okay,” amidst the smoke. Remarkably, everyone was. It turns out there was so much weight in the car, one of the rear tires actually fell off of the wheel.
I remember three things from after the accident:
As the last person stumbled out of the van, we heard a poof. The airbag finally went off.
As I stood in a daze in front of the car, someone pointed at the windshield and said, “Evan, did your head do that?” The windshield had shattered right where my head was. I didn’t have a scratch on me. I have a strong head.
A woman ran out of the only nearby house. “Everyone crashes into that tree,” she said. Then she invited us in and served us lemonade.
On the way home from Michigan the minivan in front of our car had a tire blowout at 70 mph. It scared the crap out of me. I pulled over to make sure they were all okay and offer a ride into town. As I approached the still-smoking wheel, a large woman in a bright yellow dress stepped out of the car, followed by a large man in a yellow suit. One by one, large, yellow-clad folk stepped out of the door until they were all standing around the shredded remains of their tire. It turns out they were a gospel choir on their way to a show. As the choir director retrieved the jack and spare tire, the bassist surveyed the damage.
BASSIST: We just had too much weight in this car.
They thanked me profusely for stopping — “There are still nice people in this world.” — and said they’d be fine getting into town. That little doughnut spare tire has my sympathy.
I’m a bad driver. My problem is that I’m easily distracted and prone to the occasional space out. It’s probably a good thing I don’t have a car right now.
Unfortunately my spacing-outing is not limited to driving. I’m also a bad train rider. I was riding what I thought was the Brown Line when the doors closed at Belmont and I heard the following announcement:
ANNOUNCER: This is a Purple Line express to Howard. Next stop, Howard.
My ensuing spastic dance was both embarrassing and fruitless. The doors were closed and closed they would stay as the train rumbled 7 miles north to Evanston.
My old Saturn finally bit it, and it did so in dramatic fashion. I wasn’t there for the accident, but when I went to clean out the car I was impressed by the wallop it took. State Farm decided that the cost of the repairs far exceeded the worth of a 12-year-old economy wagon and gave me a check. Two notes here: 1. everyone involved in the accident is fine. 2. I’m not a big recommender, but if you’re looking for an insurance company, I have had really good experiences with State Farm. It’s like they’re a neighbor who’s really there for you. A good neighbor, even.
So now I’m carless. At some point I’ll probably get another car (any recommendations? I like small station wagons) but in the meantime I’m just gonna hoof it… and take public transportation… and get rides from people.
It’s been going okay for the most part. There haven’t been too many times I’ve wished I had a car, but today is one of them. I already took a bus and a train to get to work. After work I’ll hop on the Halsted bus down to UIC for our Engineers Without Borders Regional Workshop. After that I need to get to Evanston somehow to meet up with a friend who’s in from out of town. Finally, I need to get back home to Lincoln Square. Yabba Dabba Doo!
I never know what to do when I’m asked, “How’s it going?” Like many, I usually offer a cursory, “fine” in response, regardless of how “it” is actually going. Sometimes the inaccuracy of that response is a little too obvious. I recently ran into my neighbors in the stairwell of our building.
Neighbor: How’s it going? Me: Fine Neighbor (Noticing that I’m holding a parking ticket): You got a ticket? That sucks. Me: Yeah Neighbor (Noticing that I’m also holding jumper cables): And jumper cables? Me: Well, maybe “fine” wasn’t the best response.
My neighbors were nice enough to give my brother’s car a jump — the car I borrowed just long enough to break and get two parking tickets.
