I hate cars, but they do stuff.

My life has been foiled again by my lack of car ownership.

Actually, I lied. My life is great. I've been car-free for a few years now, after I ditched Grandma's old Buick Regal.

I'm willing to admit that my hatred of cars could stem from this particular car. It got me where I needed to go, and it held up fairly well for several eight-hour excursions between home and school. However, the thing was a boat. A tank. A beast. That, and it broke down a bunch. The alternator, for example, when I was driving home from work one night. Simultaneously, the coolant hoses sprung a leak, so my lights grew progressively dimmer as the fog rolling out from under the hood grew progressively thicker.

Then there was the time when the coolant hose came detached from the engine. I am in no way a knowledgable person when it comes to automobiles, but I understand that the engine is a very important, technical, and heavy part of the car. This particular problem meant that the engine had to be taken out temporarily in order to fix the hose. I got the thing towed to a very nice mechanic who gave me a massive discount -- he only charged me $400. Also, he gave me a free pen.

Despite the free pen, I became pretty much disenchanted with cars. I have a life, you know, Car. I'm not made of money, and I don't enjoy the mechanic's. That guy was very nice (free pen!), but he was out in some very sketchy part of town that I think only exists when you need it to exist. Like the room of necessity in Harry Potter. Only crappy.

Now... I know. I know what you're going to say. Oh, but, see, if you buy a nice car, and take care of it, and don't bother with your Grandma's hand-me-downs, and buy it only nice gas, and pet the dashboard and fold your hands toward the warmness of your heart and chant "Ohm" three times, you'd be fine.

Not to be flippant, but yeah flippin' right.

I refuse to be convinced that a car will not be expensive, or deadly, or require lots of maintenance (translation: time and even more money), or whatever. Try as you might, I won't budge on this. The way I see it, you can own a car, go wherever you like, and spend a lot of time and money on the thing. Or you can not own a car, go almost wherever you like, and spend not so much money. Either way, you will be inconvenienced, so you just choose a preferred method of inconvenience. I prefer to miss out on some things rather than own a big fossil-eating time-stealing polluting death machine.

But that's just me.

(I don't care if you own a car. I just care about me owning a car. You do what you gotta do. I ain't judgin'. Unless you drive a Hummer. In which case, I am.)

Anyway, back to my life. Turns out I have this opportunity to go to Harper's Ferry on Monday for work, just to ride around and... see an actual national park during my internship with the National Park Service. (Though the medians and random block-sized parks in DC technically belong to the Park Service, and therefore technically count as units of the National Park System.)

Basically, I can't go because I don't own a car. There's even a train station there, but there are no trains that run during times that allow any reasonable person to make a day trip from America's capitol. Despite the fact that there is a pretty sweet commuter train service apart from Amtrak that runs several times a day... they never run at the times one would need them to run. I could rent a car, but I'm not 25 yet, so they charge me extra for that. It's just enough to push the price beyond my cheapskate purchasing power.

Now, if I belonged to Zipcar, I could probably swing it. Zipcar is pretty cool. It's not car-rental, it's car-sharing. This means that you become a member, pay some up-front fees, and then you can rent for just a few bucks every hour. Apparently the gas is free, the insurance is already taken care of, you just call and tell them what you want, when you want it. Then you use a magical little Zipcard and the car opens for you, and only you. It's honestly a very snazzy thing, and I hope to Jeebus that it opens up in more cities. It's great for people who feel like owning a car is a big scam don't want the responsibilities that come with car ownership.

But guess what, I'm dumb and I'm not a member. Also, I move soon, so no Zipcar for me.

And no Harper's Ferry. I mean, there are ways I could make this work. If I really really really really really wanted to go, I could bite the bullet and pay $70 to go out there. It's not impossible, it just forces me to consider if I really really really really really want to do something. Which is probably not a terrible thing.

I graduated from college a year ago, and I've been hitching rides on the Student Conservation Association. I'm just about to complete my second internship with them. It's been a great way to see different parts of America, try different jobs in conservation, and meet different people. A little bonus, for me, is that the SCA provides housing and such wherever you go, and they let you know if you're about to apply to an internship that doesn't do well for carless folks.

As I said, I'm about to be turned loose on the world again (eep). By a mixture of fortitude, prayer, and helpful parents, I've managed to avoid car ownership. Part of me wonders how long it will last, and the other part is expounding constantly on the evils of automobiles. I'm led to believe that one of these personas may be perceived as more "mature" than the other. (Guess which one it is!)

The possibilities for my post-internship life are just about endless, and thinking about them all makes my head spin. Some of the possibilities involve me owning a car. I don't like these possibilities very much. I'm looking at it like I'm looking at a marriage proposal: should I really be making a commitment to something I hate so very very much? Or am I already considering divorce as an option for later on down the road? It could work out. It could. I could be a very nice person with a nice job and a nice place and not moving anywhere because of the job I need to pay for the car expenses.

But I'd hate it.