When we were still living in MI the thought of ever being able to park your car and not touch it for a few weeks would only enter your mind if A. it was dead and couldn't move if you wanted to.. B. You were going out of town and wouldn't be around to drive it.. or C. you were one of the very few who lived in a small town and could walk to work every day because you live a block from where you work. Public transportation did exist, but it wasn't really much of an option for most people. The bus system around where we lived was so limited that it made it nearly impossible to ride even if you wanted to. For example, we lived right off of a fairly busy road and pretty close to all the stores we needed. I worked only a few miles down the road. It was a pretty simple and straight shot to work, took me about 15 min to get there in the morning with the light traffic on the highway. When my company offered to pay for bus passes to try and get more people to start taking public transportation, I thought sure, I'll give it a try. I soon found out why no one took public transportation. The closest bus stop was about 2-3 miles down the road. So I had to drive over there to catch the bus.. no problem. Then after getting on the bus, I rode up to what is about the half way point and we'd sit there because that was where most people had to switch buses. I thankfully didn't have to transfer, but we still had to wait for what felt like forever. We'd then finally continue on our way going a much longer way to get to work and then I'd finally arrive to the closest bus stop which happened to be on the other side of our site. So then it would take me another 10 min to walk to my office. All in all, it would take me 45 min or longer just to get to work! And it took even longer on the way home! So ok, if I wanted to save in gas and not pollute the air with another car on the road, I'd deal with the time difference. What I couldn't deal with is the fact that if I wanted to go from work to school, I had to transfer busses. If I wanted to go almost anywhere else you had to transfer busses, which just took even longer! And of course the schedules never matched up. Anyways, my point is, while living in MI it was the norm to drive yourself everywhere. People didn't take the bus. It was also norm to on average drive 30-45 min to get to work or to the mall or where every it was that you were going. People drove everywhere!
After moving to Pittsburgh we soon learned that a LOT of people take public transportation. Public transportation here, while not the best it could be, is a million times better than it is in MI. Not only do we have the bus system, but we have the trolley system. We were lucky enough to find a place near the trolley and from the moment we moved here we started saving on our gas. Our first place here, although it was within a decent walking distance to a trolley stop, we didn't walk to it because of time. It was quicker to take the car over to the lot. Our new place though, is only a block from the T. There is no option of driving to the trolley stop because there is no where to park... besides it'd take you the same amount of time if not more to walk to the car, get in, turn it on and drive up the street as it would to just walk up the street in the first place. Being so close to the trolley is what we looked for when looking for a new apartment. We were very lucky to be able to find it. We knew all along that it meant we'd not really use the car much during the week since we'd be using the T to get to and from work and normally we don't go anywhere on weekdays anyways. But as we get out and adventure more and try to save more and more on gas we've been finding out how easy it is to get to almost anywhere we want to go with the trolley and a bus. Because the trolley is so limited to where it goes, we do often have to hop on a bus after getting downtown on the trolley, but that isn't a big deal. You can get anywhere once your down town, and to get downtown only takes about 15 minutes on the trolley (quicker than driving if you count the time it takes to find parking!) The month of August we've worked on a new goal. We're only half way through Aug but so far we are completely on track. That goal is to only fill up the gas tank once. We filled up at the beginning of Aug, and today is Aug 15 .. half way through the month and we have just over a half a tank left. I'd say we're doing pretty good.
This past weekend was one of the first times we really made an effort to leave the car parked and figure out how to use public transportation. Normally we'd just hop in our car and ride over to the movie theater of our choice, but instead we hoped on the trolley to get to the movie theater. It did take us longer than it probably would have had we driven, but we got in plenty of exercise and the weather was beautiful so it turned into a fun afternoon adventure. Everyone is always in such a hurry they don't bother to slow down and enjoy things... I could make a whole other post about that, but I'll save that for some other time. It was nice to be able to slow down, and not rush around. It made for a great Sunday afternoon.

Stay tuned for my adventure to Kohl's... and a sneak peak to our new bathroom!