Car-free test month

Welcome to Day 2 of my car-free challenge--my month-long test to see what my life looks like without owning a car.

Why? Some recent back of the envelope calculations revealed that I'd save $6500/yr (!!!) if I didn't own a car (a lot of that from car payments). Reduce that by bus/ferry costs, bike maintenance, and car rental (say, for two two-week road trips, who doesn't love a road trip?), and net savings are still $4900. Holy petrochemicals batman! I'm as eco-hip as the town I live in (nauseatingly so sometimes), but the potential savings blew my mind.

I could use that $$ to save for a house down payment, to accelerate getting out of cc debt (yep, I've made some questionable choices in the past), to travel, to donate to charities--or to not work for more than a month...!!! Eye opening, to say the least. And I consider myself a frugal chick as it is, but I've apparently been blind to (or simply accepting of) this giant cash suck for some time.

And I love having a car, or rather, what having a car facilitates. It gets me easily to Seattle for city culture, friends, and business (I hopped in the car one day, last minute, to hear Eduardo Galeano at the downtown Seattle library, and he was pure magic). It gets me to trailheads spur of the moment (wake up to a nice day? time for an all-day solo hike in the Olympics). And it gets me all the convenience of errand running, laundry doing, etc. that's familiar to every car owner.

The question: Can I do the things I love (out of town friends/culture, hiking) and live where I love (PT), all without owning a car? I already work at home, and I'm single/no kids, able to bike, so I don't have a lot of hindrances. I'm really curious what this'll look like.

So, here are my rules for the month: I have to keep all of my Seattle trips that're already on my calendar (though I already see how I'd arrange things differently if I didn't have a car), I have to do laundry (no fair piling it up till July...), and I have to go hiking twice. I also have to keep up with a full work schedule, approx 50 hours/week because of several book deadlines. And most important: I have to like it!

Seems simple, right? And, at this point, I'm going to ignore that I unconsciously garaged my bike last year...as soon as the rains and dark came on.

We shall see...