This week, my mom has left her car at my house while she is in Europe. So far I have drove it on two occasions.

The first was when I dropped her off at the airport. Afterwards I drove to Captiol Hill which was really annoying. I got lost in South Park and took a while finding a parking spot on Capitol Hill. The rest of the day I biked everywhere and preferred this much better. I zipped pass all of these cars leaving Qwest Field after the Sounders Game. The next day me and some friends went skiing up at Snoqualmie Pass.

Afterwards I drove back home to Tacoma. Driving down I-5 I was just thinking how unproductive driving was as I would’ve been reading or working on my computer on the bus. If it weren’t for having to haul my skis I would’ve done this trip with the bus and bike.

The next occasion was today. I drove my bike to Old Town Bicycle. It was a close one as I only had 15 minutes until the store closes. However, I figured that I would’ve easily made it on time on the bike since I got stuck behind other cars and at signals whereas I could’ve queue jumped and taken faster backroads on the bike. It turned out that the bike didn’t need drastic repairs, so I put it back in the car.

However, next I headed up to Safeway. They have these killer deals of buy 10 receive an extra $5 off. And they are on my staple foods – chili, healthy cereal and oatmeal. I bought a total of $60 of groceries and saw that I saved over $40 by buying so much stuff. This got me thinking though that this adventure could have been done on a bike if I had a bicycle trailer.

After these two driving experiences I’m still partial to biking and transit. Some carsharing program may entice me in the future for times when I want to drive really far to go hiking or skiing for example. However, a bicycle trailer and pannier bags are also starting to sound like a good idea for trips less than 10 miles where I don’t have to haul too much stuff. 4 years ago