Cars by the hour
I’ve been a car-owner since I was 17 years old. With my first driver’s license at hand, I had access to my brother’s hand me down car — a Ford Escort. It was a stick-shift so my oldest brother had to teach me how to drive it. I remember on one windy and sunny day, we practiced in a parking lot next to the freeway, and soon after I got into first gear for the first time, he forced me to drive onto the freeway. The conversation went something like this:
My brother: “Go, do it, just do it,” arms outstretched pointing to the stretch of freeway.
Me: “No, I can’t, I can’t…L” sniffle, sniffle, fingers clenching the steering wheel, beads of sweat at my temples.
My brother: “You better go, or I’m not going to teach you anymore.” Look of anger on his face.
Me: Sniff “But, I can’t!!”
It went on like this for probably another 20 minutes, until I got the courage to drive on the on-ramp into the stretch of freeway ahead. To be clear, we lived in a small town and the strip of freeway we were about to drive on hardly saw more than five or six cars at a time.
Now, five cars and many years later, I am for once NOT a car owner. Yes, I took brief periods of time away from driving when I lived abroad, but now that I’m living in New York City, I don’t see myself owning a car unless I move back to California. So, I decided to sign-up for Zipcar and Mint, the rent as you go alternatives to car ownership. The prospect of being able to drive a Mini Cooper one weekend and a Smart car the next makes me giddy.
