For the past few months, Carolyn and I have toyed around with the possibility of owning only one car. Austin is a progressive "green" city and there has been a big push to increase public transportation as well as bike accessibility throughout downtown. Since getting into bike commuting it seemed like having only one car might be a huge possibility. Also, since Carolyn works close to UT, I can usually carpool with her in the mornings.

The benefits of owning less cars seem pretty obvious. Not only are you producing less greenhouse gases, but you also save money. I estimate that in the last 10 months, I've saved about $700 on gas and car maintenance by taking public transportation. On top of that, if I really didn't have the car, I could have saved another $800 by cancelling my car insurance.

Now, though I relied on public transportation, the truth is that I did have a car in the garage whenever I needed it. And so my "no car" experiment wasn't really valid because I still drove around occasionally. However, this week was the first week that I truly did not have access to a car... on what happened to be the hottest week of year.

Two days ago I had to do some lab work on my computer at home so I decided to bike to school around noon. By then, the temperature was already in the upper 90. It was somewhat alright, so at 6pm I figured I could make it home also on the bike.

At that point it was already 102 degrees.

Though riding home is mostly downhill (and fun), I made it half way (3 miles) before I started to feel really fatigued. I forced myself the rest of the way home and was really burning up. I jumped in the cold shower and tried to cool down. While that worked, once I got out of the shower I started to sweat again. (My body has a hard time cooling down... ask anyone who has ever watched me eat a hot spicy bowl of kimchi chigae).

Yesterday I also didn't have a car but I wanted to go to the mall in the morning to pick up something for Carolyn. Not having a car meant that I had to wait for the bus. Granted the bus takes only 15 minutes to get to the mall, but it only comes every 30 minutes and is usually late. Not only that, I had to time my return trip to correspond with the bus schedule as well. In a car, I can get to the mall in 5 minutes. So a trip to the mall that should only have taken 30 minutes total, ended up becoming an almost hour and a half ordeal.

On the way from the mall, I had forgotten something at home so I stopped at home, which meant I would have to take a later bus to get to school. By then it was around 11:30 so I figured I could just eat lunch and do more work at home then get on a bus to go to school. I ended up not being ready till around 1pm, at which time I thought the bus was supposed to arrive at 1:10. It was actually 1:35. By 1:20 I was so uncomfortable in the 100+ degree weather that I just decided to work from home the rest of the day, which I did.

So the conclusion? Public transportation and biking are great ways to get around Austin, but it's tough to rely on them as your primary means of transportation. Especially in the summer when its so hot, it's hard to be outside for more than a few minutes. Once Fall hits though, I'm gonna be out on the bike a lot more often.