Not a Car in the World
by MikeThis is a good article about a guy who would not succumb to the peer pressure of driving a car.
In the rich mosaic of North American society, I stand rather forlornly on my own as a member of an oft-forgotten minority group: I am an adult male who can’t drive.
Catapulted into the overcrowded car culture of Vancouver, British Columbia, from the U.K. last January, I quickly found myself labeled as a maverick and an outcast. People looked at me as if I were mad, misinformed, incapable, or just plain wacky. They told me that the honeymoon couldn’t last — that I wouldn’t survive, that the long walks to the supermarket would drive me crazy, the bus timetables would break my resolve, the isolation would eat away at me bit by bit. That one day I would reach rather haplessly for the phone book with the loaded intention of making that once-in-a-lifetime, all-important call: the driver’s education program.
In the grand old tradition of blundering British eccentricity, I scoffed, determined to prove them wrong. I decided to carve out my newfound Canadian identity rather defiantly on my own — with a bicycle. I bought a cheap mountain bike from a shop in Vancouver and set about dodging the local traffic with a tenacity matched only by my desire to dodge driving lessons.
Keep Reading.
