March Update

It's been about six weeks since my last update. Since that time, not a lot has changed, but what has is pretty significant. We did in fact buy our first house, closing on February 23rd and moving during the last week of that month. Shortly after moving, my car died and went to car heaven, so we've been living the (Real? Imagined? Temporary? Permanent? Cast-upon?) Millennial dream of going "car-lite" and dropping from two cars to one.

Moving from one side of town to the other essentially inverted our family commute situation. We used to live 3/4 of a mile from my work, now we live 1/2 a mile from hers. After almost three years of having a minimal time difference between walking/biking vs. driving for the commute, it's been interesting getting back behind the wheel for 20 minutes a day. I can absolutely say that it is more pleasant and enjoyable to walk than to drive, however I think this preference has a lot more to do with the distance than the mode. I haven't worked up the gumption to try my new commute on foot yet to test the "enjoyability" of it- primarily because Google tells me it would take an hour- one way- which means that driving is 6x faster than walking, not to mention the convenience and weather protection elements. My gut is that when I'm intentionally adding 100 minutes to my daily routine (and subtracting 100 minutes from time with my wife, time reading, blogging, working on our new home, etc.) it probably wouldn't be as enjoyable.

Basically, it's important to remember that transportation mode choices- and the pleasure derived from them- are impacted by things beyond the pros and cons of that particular mode.

P.S. We love being homeowners. More on that later.