Car Free No Longer

Today should have been my three year anniversary of living car free. I say "should have been" because 2011 has been a challenging year for me so far and has brought about a lot of change outside of my control, especially when it comes to my career. I was laid off in January and after a two month search, finally found a new job. I'll get into the details of my lay off, job search, and what I did during my time off in a separate post. This post will focus on my car situation. The new job is not easily accessible by public transportation. When I say "not easily" I mean walking to the bus stop, taking bus #1 to the subway, taking the subway for a number of stops, then taking bus #2 to the job site. All told the commute is three hours round trip. That just won't cut it for me. I need to spend time with my family. So I sucked it up and bought a used car last week. I can drive to the new job in approximately 45 minutes; a little longer in the evenings on my way home. Driving to and from work will shave at least an hour off my commute and I can come and go on my schedule, not public transportation's (always late) schedule.

I bought a car I've wanted since it was new, a 2000 orange Mazda Miata. I named her "Orangina". It's in keeping with the spirit and tradition of having orange roadsters and if I must drive, I want something fun to do it in. It has a manual transmission, which I haven't had in a long time and missed. It's in great shape, has below average miles for an 11 year old car, doesn't leak anything, is fun to drive and the original Bose stereo sounds awesome! All it needs is a new set of tires, a new radio antenna (original one is broken off) and some floor mats. Oh, and new center caps. For some reason the original silver grey OEM caps that matched the wheels have been replaced with ugly tan caps.

meet Orangina - my new ride to work

While I'm saddened to no longer be car free, at the same time I'm excited to have a car I've had my eye on. In the short term I've shortened my commute to my new job and we'll be back to being a two car family. Long term, we plan on having another kid and moving to Austin, TX in 2012. I don't know if that will necessitate the need to have two cars, but only time will tell.

meet Tawny, my original orange roadster