When we moved here, I knew that we would not be getting a car for a while. Cars are expensive and well we have rent to pay here and a mortgage Back 'Ome... and a house to set up, etc, etc. That costs a LOT of money. People here seem to think we are on easy street but we've had to buy all sorts of dumb things. Want some envelopes to send the bill payments in? Oh yeah, we don't have any! Want some scrap paper to write some stuff down on that you are working out? Ooops, none of that either. Wrapping paper for a present? Umm, yeah. It is on the other side of the world. All these dumb small things make a big difference. Then there are the big things, like chairs, beds and other furniture that is really very handy to have. When you add it all up, it costs a bomb. Plus we stil have to pay for the everyday groceries, bills, rent, etc.
So we bought bikes when we got here. Bikes have been our main form of transportation for four months now. Once or twice a month we hire a car and go places. If we only hire a car once a month it is obviously cheaper but we don't get to see so many places. The bikes have been great but we can't go very far on them. A 20 mile ride and we are stuffed.
DH doesn't like cars. They are a means to an end for him, a dirty, filty, CO2 blarting means to an end. But me? My car is part of my identity. To move here I sold my car (To a friend who loves him too). I loved my car. I had had him for nearly 10 years (so I guess it was coming time for us to part). He and I did so many fun things together. We thundered (ok, whined and zipped) across the Nullarbor Plain. We zipped and flogged around twisty mountain roads. We crept over places that only four wheel drives should've been able to go (thank you small overhangs at either end!). He took me (and DH) to so many lovely places. We did 170,000km together (over 100,000 miles). About 130,000km of that was with DH (and DH had rubbed a shiny spot on the dashboard with his knee, so now you know, Gibbering). Every single place you've seen on Yarnivorous blog up to when we came here is a place I saw thanks to my car (even if it was just he got me to the airport so's I could fly elsewhere). I miss my car.
Moving here meant leaving my cats, my friends, my family, my house, my garden and pretty much everything that was familiar to me behind (except obviously DH). It meant leaving my car behind and that cut just as deep as the rest of the dislocations. How many distortions to one's reality can one take at one time?
No wonder we wandered around here in a blur for the first couple of weeks. No wonder I hold the few things we brought from home with deep familiarity.
We will be moving to San Jose after Christmas assuming the visas work out ok. We will be moving to a place where cars are a cult - they are pretty bad around here (just ask the three boys down the road with their Subarus with drainpipe exhausts, the guys who like to go out late at night with their suby on full throttle - so charming them letting the whole neighbourhood know that they have gone out or are coming home, just ask the guys who insist on driving around in these enormous trucks, not that they are carrying anything bar themselves in them). We still won't have a car. There will be less need for a car there as public transport is plentiful and *much* faster than driving on the, ahem, freeways (DH used the Caltrain and the cars on the freeway by it were pretty much at a standstill whilst the Caltrain was full speed ahead). We'll have the bikes too. But sometimes, sometimes I just want to get in the car and drive. I've been doing that for 20 years. Just get in the car and Go Someplace Else. I want to be able to look at My Car and examine any little dings some klutz has put in his panels, and wash him and drive him and get him serviced and have him spirit me away to magical places. We can still hire cars or use the car share programs in SJ and SF but it isn't quite the same, y'know? They are not *my* car, just my borrowed baby for the weekend. I regret that. I want my own baby. And not the sort that squawks and wails and pees and poos and seemingly never endingly wants me to be a milch cow, no I want a baby that rolls on four wheels and flings himself around corners at my bidding.
I want a car.
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