The other day Bill McKibben posted an essay on his blog titled Inertia is a problem too in which he says:

But there’s another force at work alongside Interest [Big Oil, etc.,], and that’s Inertia, defined as the force that has kept you from, say, ever cleaning the coil on the bottom of your fridge, even though doing so would cut your electric usage considerably.

We’re going to have to summon the will to make some changes.

In my personal experience, overcoming inertia generally takes some kind of push. For instance, I bike commuted to work for several years but only from late spring to first snowfall. Then the bike would get put away and I would consign myself to a public transit commute until the end of April came around again. I always said that I’d commute through winter one of these days but never did. Until the pandemic pushed me to it. I have now biked through two Minnesota winters, and even when, or if, the pandemic is officially over, I plan to keep biking through the winter. 

The pandemic was a big enough force to overcome my inertia.

About five years ago James and I traded in our ailing Honda Civic hybrid for a used 2014 Honda Fit with very low mileage. Before we bought it, we tried to figure out if there was a way we could go car-free. And given where James worked, the bus routes and schedules, etc, etc., we determined it was not feasible. So we bought the car saying it would be our last.

Of course, we thought that we’d have the car for 10 years or so, and we went on our merry way, Me biking to work, James driving, sometimes biking in the summer, running errands, making quick stops here and there. Our mileage was low, only around 4,000 – 5,000 miles a year, but it was so easy to just hop in the car and go pick up bananas or chicken feed, or some spur of the moment desire.

But our inertia met its end a couple weeks ago.

James was driving to work and had a little fender bender in which the trailer hitch of a Jeep went through the hood of our car. It was a low-speed, no one was hurt, the Jeep had no damage, but our car was another matter. The damage was significant enough that we weren’t sure if the car would be repaired or totaled. But the repair people determined it could be fixed and the insurance said the estimated cost was a lot less than the value of the car. All this took about two weeks to figure out.

During those two weeks we have been without a car. And James, at a different job than when we bought the car, has been happily commuting to work on his e-bike, even in the freezing rain and sloppy snow. That he has been enjoying his bike commute has made our discussion about the car easier.

Before the car was deemed repairable, we said, whelp, this was our last car. Now what? I went into research and planning overdrive and presented James with our options. And then we found out the car would be repaired. But with part shortages, it could be fixed in a few weeks or a few months. Do we plan for short-term car-lessness or do we go ahead and take the car-free plunge and sell the car after it is repaired? 

We have opted to embark on a completely car-free life. While there is much still up in the air, it is all rather exciting. First thing, we joined HourCar, a local carshare program. Between the monthly membership fee ($12) and assuming we use the car twice a month for, say grocery shopping, the annual cost is less than what we pay in a year for our car insurance. But of course, we can use the car as often as we need to; we just don’t need to use it as often as we thought we did when we had a car of our own.

We had our first HourCar experience today! It was super easy. We reserved the car yesterday. Took the bus and a very short light rail ride to the station where the car pick up/drop off is located, and off we went to the grocery store. We dropped the groceries off at our house, then took the car back to the station where we had picked it up. And it was such a nice day, instead of standing around waiting for the train and then waiting for the bus on the Sunday schedule (it had taken us about 40 minutes to get there by bus and train), we walked home. It turns out to be only a 30-minute fast walk. How awesome is that? Really pleased with how easy it was, and how well it all worked out.

We won’t be relying on HourCar for all our errands though because that defeats the point of not having a car. I am super excited to be getting an e-cargo bike! I have been secretly longing for a cargo bike for a couple of years but had no real reason to have one. Now I do! James is laughing at me and accused me of wanting to go car-free just so I could get a new bike. 

I do not have a bike yet though. I have been researching bikes and what shops carry what brands. We both have the day off tomorrow and I am hoping the weather is decent enough for us to ride over to one of the shops that has two of the brands I am really interested in: Tern and Yuba. So excited to give them test rides!

I am really happy that we have overcome the inertia of car ownership and are taking this leap. Sure, there will be inconveniences at times, but cars are inconvenient too; we are just told that they are necessary, so we accept the inconveniences. I will, of course, provide updates on the bike shopping and choice and use and how going car-free is working out.

Adventures await!

Reading

• How I Became a Tree by Sumana Roy. I am almost done with the book and loving it so very much.
• Finding the Mother Tree by Suzanne Simard. There seems to be a tree theme happening. I was expecting a popular science book but it is turning out to be written more like a science mystery story wrapped in memoir. Enjoying it very much.
• The Tombs of Atuan Ursula Le Guin. Book two in the Earthsea series. I have read it before, long ago and it turns out I have very little recollection of it.
• 60 Seconds on Earth with Pattie Gonia. I love Pattie Gonia so much. If you don’t know them, they are an outdoorsy drag queen extraordinaire.
• The Necessity of Joy in Permaculture by Clifford Dean Scholz. I came across this article after my post about joy last week. In it Scholz writes, “we won’t be able to design healthy systems unless we really show up, and we cannot really show up unless we find our joy, more fully inhabit our forms and thus better connect with the living world around us.”

Listening

• Termination Shock by Neal Stephenson. The audiobook that never ends. Though there wasn’t much listening this week, only about half an hour, which barely puts a dent in the number of hours left.
• Green Dreamer Podcast: Brad Evans: Reclaiming community and the power of silence. Evans is a political philosopher and critical theorist who specializes in the problem of violence. This was a really interesting discussion that expands the definition of what counts as violence and touches on whether humans are fundamentally violent (spoiler: we are not). If you don’t want to listen, the link to the podcast also has the transcription.
• The War on Cars Podcast: Pain at the Pump. The hosts talk with Slate’s Henry Grabar about the global oil market and domestic and foreign policy.

Watching

• Death on the Nile. Gal Gadot does not have much range as an actress so it’s good that most other people in the film do, and manage to carry her along. Kenneth Branagh as Poirot is absolutely fantastic. This makes two Agatha Christie films for him now, and I hope he makes another sometime.