Bike Life: One Month Without A Car

Starting today -- and proceeding for the next 23 days -- I will be embarking on a little experiment: living in downtown Indianapolis without a car. As some of you know, my wife is enrolled at IU Medical School and she has just begun her third year. Third year is defined by "rotations" in which students are exposed to the many different medical fields, typically for about 4 weeks per rotation. My wife's first rotation is "family medicine" which happens to be one of the few rotations where "they" can randomly decide to ship you around the state. In her case, she's going to see what life in southern Indiana is like, stationed at Deaconess Hospital in Evansville.

The kicker here is that we share a single car. Sharing is made possible by the fact that I work on IUPUI campus so we're able to commute to campus together (or walk during nice weather). Unfortunately, with her stationed in Evansville, that one car has to go with her. That leaves just a few options for me: buy another car (NO), rent a car for a month, or try to make a go of life without a car. I'm frugal, I live less than half a mile from where I work, and I like a challenge, so I chose to buy a bike and go completely car-less.

So, for the next couple weeks I'll be using the "Bike Life" topic area to keep you appraised of how things are going. You can expect to see updates about where I've biked, how shopping at a grocery store works when you've only got a bike to bring things home, what it's like trying to ride on city streets, etc. This should be quite an adventure -- if nothing else, I should be in much better shape at the end! Wish me luck!