Moving without a car

I have never owned a car and for the most part this has never been a problem. In Portland I had friends with cars, a great bike infrastructure, and a sound public transit system. I biked everywhere but when I got pink eye my roommate drove me to the doctors office, when I needed to look pristine for a job interview on a rainy day I took the bus, and when I needed to move my worldly possessions from N to NE Portland after the house I was living in was sold and slated for destruction I borrowed my grandfather's truck.

I moved to Austin with my bike and a suitcase, steeling myself to sleep on the floor. The past couple of months have really driven the point home that life without a car while liberating, is not exactly always easy. The things I took for granted in Portland (mainly access to the cars of my friends)became obvious.

Jonny and I have been lucky. A week in we scored mattresses from the front yard of a house not but six blocks away. It was 100 degrees and we certainly cursed our way home but it was a manageable distance to carry. Every week since that has pretty much presented its own craigslist or garage sale treasure. We've carried home a desk, a dresser, and a chair (and I have had the sore muscles to prove it). A reluctant truck-driving, garage sale bystander brought us home our couch. The chair I am currently sitting in was biked home on our housemate Spike's cruiser Joan.


While our luck has been great, our slow setting up of house is not an example what I would call an optimal model for a car free lifestyle. We've made concessions because we can stand a month or more of sitting on a floor, piling our clothes in a corner, and doing our writing at coffee shops. I suspect that most people would not make such concessions and I'd like to live in a city where choosing not to would not necessarily mean obtaining a car.

Going car free is in many ways a privileged decision. I am able bodied, childless, and live within a reasonable distance of a grocery store. Our project is aware of these very real barriers and we encourage others to think about them as well. Our intention is to attack one barrier, transporting large objects, in once city, Austin, and in doing so to hopefully provide a very visible example of people thinking outside of a moving van. I like to think a crew of people passing by on bikes, boxes, couches, and beds in tow might expand someone's conception of what it means to be moving about in this city.