I pretended I didn't own my truck this entire month. I wanted to test how I would feel being carless while living in a rural spot. Would I feel trapped? Deprived? Would I run out of stuff? Would I feel like a mooch?
Pretending I didn't own a truck turned out remarkably easy to do, because Robyn wandered off with it. I couldn't have caved in and gone for a spin if I'd wanted to.
Long story short, this month was cake. The first half of March was snowy and cool, with high's in the 40's Fahrenheit, lows in the 20’s . For a solid week the roads were too treacherous to safely ride my motorcycle.
A key was to have enough food laid in so a week or two of bad weather wouldn't have me gnawing on old shoes. Easy enough with a little forethought. I try to keep enough calories on hand so I can go at least a month without a resupply if I really need to. Veggies are the obvious weak link in the chain, which is one reason I want to get on with a veggie garden soon. Gardening and nomadicism is a nut I'm still not sure how to crack.
Forgoing the truck compelled me to think ahead and have a solid supply of food on hand at all times. It's easy to think "oh, if I need more food I'll just hop in the car and pop over to the grocery store". Sure, until a winter storm brings trees down across the road, or your car breaks, or OPEC pulls a fast one and there are gas lines again, or any other number of reasons that might make that trip not possible or not desirable.
I've known that having a month's supply of food is a good idea for years. It took this experiment for me to actually build up a month's supply of food, and keep it stocked. Going carless made me more resilient.
On balance I felt better this month, more at ease, with respect to my transportation options. My life felt simpler and less exposed to risk. A vehicle is a huge pile of moving parts, any of which can fail at any moment. I like not relying on all those parts to function for my life to function smoothly. I'd rather construct a lifestyle that doesn't have such a fragile dependency built in to it.
A carless life is less convenient, sure, but I'll take resilience over convenience any day. Without a car occupying mental space I feel one step closer to The Good Life, not further.
This challenge didn’t feel like a challenge at all. I barely noticed I was doing anything different. Robyn still has my truck, so this "challenge" is going to extend at least through all of April. Whenever she's done with it I intend to use it to move Serenity one last time and then sell it. From there on out if I need four wheels, I can rent or borrow them.