[T]he economics of my decision made sense: Gasoline was roaring toward $3 a gallon, the useless monorail tax was still in place, and I only drove maybe 150 miles a month. When you factored in insurance (a rip-off even with my clean driving record), gasoline, and such, I was paying almost $1 a mile to have a car that was essentially used to run errands outside the city's main core and to visit friends who lived in Lake City and Bellevue and elsewhere away from my usual Capitol Hill haunts. And if I went out and bought a decent used car, I'd be looking at maybe $100 to $200 a month in car payments.

So I decided to rely on a mix of Metro buses and cabs and walking. I wanted to see how my work and social life would hold up. Besides, the Seattle liberal paradigm is that we should all be like Bus Chick — a really cute former Microsoftie who takes Metro everywhere and saves the Earth and honors the Kyoto Accords and tells President Bush and Chevron to stuff it.

I am here to tell you at the liberal paradigm is, in this respect, an abysmal failure. Or at least it was for me.

I have many years of bicycling (commuting by bike, even) under my belt and after all those years, plus years of running three miles day (plus years of hockey and weight-lifting), my knees are toast. Nothing will get you off a bike faster that hearing your knees click and pop while you are riding and having them lock up on you from time to time.

My social life went down the tubes. If a friend of mine lived outside of Capitol Hill, downtown, Belltown, the ID, or Pioneer Square, I was screwed. I have a lot of friends who don't live in those places, and suddenly I wasn't being invited to pop over to a friend's house for impromptu barbeques and parties. That sucked. And if I needed to run an errand to, say, Best Buy at Northgate, it would take an hour-plus in each direction to get there — and with Metro's schedules, don't try that in the evening. Besides, you cannot carry more than a couple of shopping bags on Metro.

Not having a car got in the way of work, as well. I am the kind of reporter who prefers to meet people in person, if possible, and I suddenly had to resort to doing a lot of phone interviews unless I did a lot of planning for taking transit — and giving up half an afternoon for a half-hour interview. There were also public meetings I wasn't able to attend, either, all of a sudden — unless they happened to be downtown or somewhere close by.

Cabs weren't much of a solution. Anytime you pop into a cab in this city, it seems to cost about $15 by the time you tip the driver — and that's just around the central core of the city. That didn't make much economic sense.

After two weeks of being back in the driver's seat, I am happy to report that I am visiting friends I haven't seen in ages, getting shopping done that I'd put off, and popping around the outer reaches of Seattle to do interviews in person. Even better: I can shoot down to White Center and the Rainier Valley to get really good Mexican food anytime the mood strikes. I can swing down to the ID to get great Chinese food without having to make an entire evening out of the trip. My social life is no longer restricted to near-Capitol Hill environs. That's great — and likely also an improvement for Capitol Hill's social whirl as well.

I point all this out because, like it or not, I am tied to cars. The Ron Sims/Greg Nickels/urban planning wonk wet dream of getting Seattleites out of their cars and onto the buses is unworkable, in my opinion. At least in 2006.