On foot.

We've been having to re-learn this week how to cope with being carless. Not careless, carless. The car's in the shop until at least Wednesday, which will make it a week and a half of coping without a car.

Oh, there have been other carless times in our lives, to be sure. I spent from age 17 to age 24 without a car, and managed pretty well (of course, I lived in a major metropolitan area just steps from the Metro and the bus, and with an airport and a train station easily accessible by public transport, and my job only a half-hour's walk or so from my apartment; and I had a bicycle and was fit enough to use it). And for the first four years of our daughter's life, we had no car. Baby Margaret became a very fit little thing, because once she could walk I pretty much refused to carry her, and the stroller created more problems than it solved, all things considered.

I actually got an article published during that time, the we-have-a-baby-but-no-car time, about arranging your life to cope without a car. As I recall, the article made a few cogent points: you need to plan very carefully, have backup plans, get enough sleep, eat properly (walking when carrying lots of groceries or a child who is legitimately at the end of her stamina is hard work), and not be afraid to accept the generosity of your friends and neighbors in times of transportation need. All this advice, I'm pleased to say, is borne out by this current visit back to simpler (that is, more impoverished) times.

Luckily, it's only a visit. We do get by with only one car, but we really rely on it to manage three hectic schedules, as a general rule. It takes 20 minutes to get to Houston's job by car; over an hour by public transport, if you make all the connections just right. If there's no bus route to the exact place you need to go, it can take over two hours just to go 10 miles. Sure, this way has less environmental impact, but there's a reason people love to drive.

Now, here's a radical thought: when I lived in DC, I almost never felt the lack of a car to the degree I'm feeling it now (of course, it's been raining for a solid week here in Wollongong, which it seldom does in DC, so that may have something to do with it). Anyway, the reason I could cope for the most part fairly easily was because the public-transit system (for all they complain about it) really is very, very good. Wollongong's is utter crap. Utter crap. And bloody expensive with it. It can cost me a bus fare of about $5 to get into the main part of Wollongong from where we live, and if I want to transfer to another bus, another full fare. Yes. That's right. No transfers. There is one train line, and it runs north-south. If I want to go west of the train line (there's not much east of it except lots of salty water), yes, another full bus fare. The buses, if you're lucky and time it exactly right, can sometimes be only 20 or 30 minutes apart. Most of the time they're an hour. Sometimes more. And they don't run late at night.

I want our car back. And the rain is not stopping. An umbrella is cheaper than a car, but it's not a substitute.