Car

Last weekend, I got together with Boris, Dustin and Dori, and headed up north of Whistler towards Birkinhead Lake. It was a last minute trip, decided upon while we were all under the influence, but we all decided we could use a break from the city.

So on Saturday morning, at the crack of dawn, we all piled into my car and set out on the quest for fish (which would later become the quest for nachos). Surprisingly, everyone’s camping gear fit into the back of my hatcbback, but I think next year I’m definitely going to get a roof rack for it.

I picked up my car last January, mainly because the other one I was driving was a complete hunk of garbage and the defrost didn’t work at all. I’ve always liked the Mazda Hatchbacks, so the Mazda 3 Sport was the first car I looked at before making my decision. Since I was already spending $22,000, I figured I’d drop another $2,000 and put in all the extra features for it, since the “fully loaded” models tend to hold their resale vale a bit better.

After having my car for a year and a half though, the one thing I’ve noticed is how little I really drive it. If I’m lucky, I drive it once every two weeks, and mainly just to go to Future Shop or something. For the rest of it, I generally walk whenever I can. While I’m happy to have a car when I need it (especially for the road trip I just took), it’s pretty hard to make use of it in the city, especially with all the crazy construction going on everywhere these days. Whenever I do try to do a cross-city adventure, I usually end up stuck in some construction zone for 20 minutes or so, which completely destroys the ability to have too much fun.

I know lots of people that don’t even have cars these days — they simply join car co-ops where everyone shares a few cars, which is a pretty cool idea. I like my car, and it’s fun, but if I were to make the decision again, I’m not sure if I’d buy it given what I know about big city life these days.