Life

[jack]

car

I got my car back safe and all spruced up. The garage helpfully delivered it to my door and put the key through the letterbox -- I hadn't realised they could do that, the last time I had to have my car repaired I had to get a bus and taxi out to the little village where the car was and it was quite stressful getting there.

The key had a little paper tag with my surname on correctly spelled, with little circles for the 'i's :)

I do want to transition to not having a car (some combination of 'not usually driving' and 'renting a car when it's actually useful' with zipcar for short journeys if needed) but I decided right now in the middle of house-buying and other stress was the bad time to decide. There's some small amount of things I need to work out (best way of renting a car to visit liv without 5 hour train journey, figuring out if zipcar is usable, getting a back-up bike, etc) which are not too complicated, and I think will be all ok, but I didn't want to have to do all at once in the middle of housebuying.

beer

I've been to the beer festival every day this week. My alcohol tolerance has massively reduced, I'm drinking halves and still going easy, and feeling about right.

Each year, I run into more lovely people I've almost lost touch with -- friends from trinity, friends from maths, people from work, etc.

I need to do a proper beer tasting, I drink beer regularly, but I'm still muddled on which sorts of beer I like best.

Work

Work is going fairly well. The project is slowly ramping up, with many more short deadlines, which are satisfying, because you have a clear metric for success, but also has a feel of many-plates-up-in-the-air.

Comments

For when things have calmed down

[rmc28]

enterprise.co.uk suit me well for weekend lets and occasional week-long lets. In particular the Histon branch are happy for me to leave my bike with them over the weekend, so I can bike out, pick up car, leave bike with them, return car a few days later, cycle home. Practical who are on the Milton business park also were fine with leaving bikes for the duration of the let.

Zipcar (if you have a local parking space) fills the short local journeys slot that a weekend rental seems overkill for. Things I have done recently: supermarket run, taking C for an outpatient appointment in the wilds of Fen Ditton during the school day (saving a lot of time over going by bus or cycle, and allowing us more private conversation too), 24-hour rental to go to a wedding and do errands the next day.

Re: For when things have calmed down

[jack]

Thank you, that's really helpful.

I would really like to try zipcar. I'm glad to know people I know are using it successfully. Last time I looked, the number of cars had increased quite a bit, but there wasn't one very near my new house -- do you happen to know if they still seem to be expanding (I would be able to offer a driveway if necessary)? I much prefer a model where I cycle to work, but rent a car for two hours if I actually need, but a lot of the benefit is removed if I have to cycle to it first.

I feel a little silly, because it's possible I should have done this investigation two weeks ago and if it was successful, maybe should not have repaired the car, but I had one evening to decide and I wasn't sure I could make the decision correctly quickly enough.

PS: Oops, didn't see the comment title. Thank you, that actually reassured me a lot that it would be easy to do this when I want to but I don't need to do it RIGHT NOW in order to do it eventually :)

Re: For when things have calmed down

[lavendersparkle]

I belonged to zipcar for a year but I never found that it was cost effective. Zipcar is much more expensive per hour than normal car rental places and very rarely have a situation where I need a car for one or two hours. I can usually use public transport or cycle or taxis for those situations.

The only reason I joined was because I wanted to drive to a party on a Saturday night in December. I don't drive on Shabbat, so I would have had to pick the car up early on Friday afternoon and return it Monday morning if I'd rented from a normal rental company.

Re: For when things have calmed down

[naath]

I think their model is explicitly "when you need a car for just an hour" or "when you need a car and regular rental places aren't open" and not "when you need a car for the whole weekend".

Personally I never find myself needing a car for just an hour; although maybe if I had one available I would? I guess joining ZipCar "just in case" and then discovering you don't need it is better than *not* and then ending up paying a massive tax fare because you suddenly needed a car on no notice at midnight or something.

Re: For when things have calmed down

[lavendersparkle]

The problem is that zipcar has a membership fee of £49 a year, so it's not worth joining unless you think you are likely to use it.

I could rent a car in Cambridge for less than £22 a day and a zipcar is £7 an hour, so I'd have to want to use a car for less than 3 hours quite frequently to justify the membership fee. Or it would have to be much more convenient than hiring for a day from a car hire place. A lot of the circumstances in which I might be useful to have a car for an hour or two are situations when I could use a taxi and fares would be less than £14.

I don't think that the zipcar model works for most people when you start crunching the numbers, particularly as they are only based in areas that are densely populated and well served by public transport so short car journeys are less necessary.

Re: For when things have calmed down

[mathcathy]

Be careful to read the small print before using zipcar. I signed up because I got 3 years free but I've never used it because the £1000 excess that I was responsible for even if the issue was vandalism during my slot seemed too much. I'd rather use a hire company with less risk.

[syllopsium]

This may rather be a sucking eggs reply, but I trust you've figured out by now that going halves is always the way to go at a beer festival, as in addition to letting you try more beer, the 'halves' tend to be quite generous in a lot of places!