We recently blogged our announcement that we’ve decided to keep our Crossfire roadster because we love it more than it’s apparently worth. We also blogged last month about the Mercedes debacle and our replacing it with a Nissan (which is still running, reliably, without having to pour thousands of dollars into, I’m happy to report). But even as we profess how nice it is to live lean, and even as much as we’re looking forward to living a relatively “car-less” life in Europe for 6 months, here we are holding onto two automobiles that we won’t touch for half a year. What’s up with that?
Can Americans actually function without owning a car or two?
We seem to be the prime example of the answer, No. The practical answer to that question is that it depends entirely on where you live. Here in Alpharetta, on the north side of Atlanta, we can walk to public transit and get almost anywhere in the metro area, though it might take a few hours. For that matter, we could make it to the Atlanta airport in ninety minutes or so and from there go anywhere in the world. If we lived downtown–or downtown in just about any major US city–the options would be even better. But where we lived before (rural Harrison county on the coast in Mississippi) I couldn’t imagine living without a car: it was 8 miles to the nearest grocery store of substance.
The hardcore vagabonder could rightfully argue that we’re not going into this full-hearted. And they would be right: we still think of the coming 6 months as a test, one from which we may return thinking “that was enough” or from which we may return with the intention of selling everything. Until we’re certain, we want to keep the option of taking the convertible on a roadtip to Florida.
