The Burgeoning Need for A Drivers Licence

Ok, so both Chris and I are over 35 (and that is all I am saying about that subject) and neither of us drive.

I'd guess that 80% - 90% of the time this is no big deal. Most of our life is 45 minutes from our front door by foot, a large measure of that even closer (groceries, pharmacy, restaurants, bars etc), but then there are the extremely aluring/useful places that are just out of reach or that sell things that really don't fit onto a bus or Metro.

Into this catagory fits IKEA, MEC, Home Dept and a couple of other places. All of these can be reached in under an hour by public transit, 45 minutes being our record to MEC, but you certainly can't do them all in one day, can't buy anything too big when there and you always have to think about the coming back. Bus drivers/Metro ticket booth guys will humor you when you bring some lumber onto public transit, but 10 foot pieces of 2 X 4 really isn't go. Simmilarly, renting a canoe or kayak at MEC is kind of impossible without a car.

IKEA is another good example. Very often we don't want anything big, we just want some cool, cheap magazine boxes, or something to put my mountains of CDs into. I seems silly to ride the bus or an hour to spend 80$ at IKEA and then turn around. So we put it off, and the CD mountain grows, and then we go to buy something big and forget the little stuff.

So last night we decided we were going, that we were taking cabs, and we were going to like it dammit. Our rationalization was/is that since no one babysits we never go to the movies (NEVER EVER) so all the money we have saved on the tickets, pop, popcorn and gigantic bags of M&Ms could easily be spent on taxi fare.

It was at the point that I was paying the second driver in front of our door (about $25 each way) that I was struck again by the fact that at this point the only reason I don't drive is that I am pure lazy.

I need to look into a driving school.