In a fit of early twenty-something melodrama, I once drove around the country with a friend. I ended up covering 10,000 miles in 2 1/2 months. During that time, I saw expanses of beautiful country, bunches of friendly people and zillions of cars. I saw housing tracts in New York indistinguishable from housing tracts from North Dakota, all with neat rows of garage doors ready to swallow the technological monster of the car. I saw prairie land demolished for bigger freeways never quite big enough to eliminate traffic. And I saw a nation of harried, unhealthy people boxed into stuffy metal cages scurrying from one drive-in “convenience” to the next, never taking the time to appreciate the world they live in.

When I came back to California, I decided to try to live without a car. It?s been 2 1/2 years now, and most weeks I don?t drive at all. This is not too impressive for living in the Sacramento Valley. We have Light Rail and an impressive array of bus lines, plus spacious bike lanes I am ever grateful for. But I live 2 1/2 hours away, 45 minutes from the nearest town, and three miles down a dirt road. I catch the light rail to the Bus I-80 stop, transfer to a Placer County bus that drops me in Auburn, ride a bus from there to Nevada City, then hop on another bus up to my dirt road. Or I take an Amtrak bus to Grass Valley and find a ride the rest of the way. It takes me about four hours total, and I use the time studying and observing my public transportation mates.

“Why in the world does she put herself through this?” is probably what you are thinking right now. I love it. I have never been happier. To put it simply, I detest what the car industry does to us. Instead of alleviating stress and making our lives easier, we are bound to 3,500 pounds of metal. We must pay for, wash, feed, change and house our addiction, spending our precious time with an inanimate object while our children are subjected to television. We circle around campus looking for the right spot to park our turtle shell, so that we can get to class on time even if walking, biking or taking the bus is quicker. We feel terrible if our car is messy, apologizing for what we see as a direct symbol of who we are as people, and those who have older models disparagingly excuse them, making clear they will get their new status symbol soon.

We employ thousands of underpaid laborers around the world to work with toxic chemicals just to support the production of a car. Our dependence on cars leads us to terrorize other nations. Our oil hungry cars demand that we fight wars, build pipelines, destroy cultures and tear down forests so that they can transport us to work.

If gas prices included external costs of gasoline, such as clean up of oil spills, corporate welfare to oil and car companies, and the massive military network dedicated to maintaining access to oil, each gallon would cost between $5.60 to $15.14, according to the International Center for Technological Assessment. This doesn?t account for the fact that asthma is the single biggest reason that children are absent from school. And according to a study from the University of Groningen, exhaust is a leading cause of asthma. California?s Scientific Review Panel estimates that 16,010 Californians will develop lung cancer over a lifetime of diesel exhaust exposure. Diesel, which is barely regulated, has been proven to cause lung cancer. We don?t let people smoke around others, yet we insist on trucks killing us in the same manner.

Ditch the car, walk home and e-mail Samantha Hinrichs at [email protected].

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