transportation

On this wintry day when everyone's writing about how many accidents they saw and how long it took them to get to work it got me thinking..

What was life like before transportation as we know it today?

People lived locally. They walked where they needed to go. Maybe they used horses. They grew their own vegetables, raised their own animals to eat. They traded with neighbors who raised the other things that they needed. They enjoyed time together as a family because their kids weren't each involved in 7 sports/arts activities. They knew each other, well. They trusted each other because they knew that they needed to depend on each other.

They didn't have cars to drive them to the other side of the metro area just because they wanted to go to the one restaurant over there and well, why not? They didn't drive extra far to go to the gas station with $.05 less. (In the end, are you really saving money if you drove 5 miles out of your way? Probably not. I've never understood that.) They didn't spend time with 5 different people in one day and pack their schedule so incredibly full that they didn't have time to really find out how ONE friend is doing.

I wish I could go back. I wish I HAD to shop at the grocery store down the street from me. I wish I had no option but to get to know my neighbors and depend on them for more than the very occasional favor of helping me shovel out my car and push it out of my parking spot on the street.

I'm brainstorming an experiment for myself. I don't know how practical it is though.

Could I go ONE WEEK without using my car? If so, could I go ONE MONTH?

Even right this minute I'm thinking of excuses why I couldn't. I have commitments in other cities that would be really hard to get to using public transportation. This coming from the girl who DOES NOT understand the transportation here, but is fully confident about using the subway in NYC, the metro in DC,  etc. Hmm. Something to work on.

Off to WALK to buy a gallon of milk and a shovel for my room mate to get her car out. I'll be thinking a lot as I walk.