I've been in Montreal now a year.. it's been more peaceful than tumultuous.. despite the logistics of being away from my support base of life long friends.
I've done amply well at making new friends :-) and have been building my own little niche here, It's my second summer now in Mtl.
Anyhow.. I live downtown as some of you may already know, well in somewhat of an enclave of downtown called Westmount, but it's entirely urban none the less. With an urban lifestyle comes certain issues the biggest being parking! when we moved here from Toronto we had a Minivan in all it's glory, we soon learned parking a car around here is a joke at best.
Got rid of it around October, my husband Dan commuted to work all winter on his reliable solid Raleigh Inferno that he had bought in the early 90's. I work a 10 minute walk from my home.. so my commute was on foot 90% of the time and when the weather was typical Montreal winter .. I took the bus.
I did some calculations we have put 6,000.00 dollars back in our pockets by getting rid of the car! It now seems insane to me that it was ever ok to spend that much in the first place on 3 tons of metal. I think people fall into the trap of thinking they NEED the car.. they make excuses about why "they" could not be without a car, ect ect.
Our lifestyle sans automobile has meshed well with being the parents of 4 kids who happily take transit with us or happily travel in bike trailers with us. It's been entirely copacetic. I have a good chuckle sometimes because some of our family members express concern that we have no car....I don't think they understand that having a car is a "choice" for us.. not a circumstance. We feel healthier happier and it's lovely to not be forking over hundreds of dollars each month. I have learned people severely limit themselves sometimes on ideal alone... I used to be one of those people :-)
No comments:
Post a Comment