Nearly two years ago my ancient and ludicrously expensive old car finally bit the dust.  To fix it would cost more than I had spent on it in the first place.  And as we had recently moved to Cambridge (AKA bicycle city), we decided to go car-less for a while.  I wrote this post about it.

Things have a habit of changing a lot in two years and the last two have been no exception.  I no longer work where I worked when I wrote that post.  In fact, as the loyal reader will know, it has been over a year since I quit the part-time day job and sublet a studio and therapy room for my business.

But it is still a 6-mile round trip.

This last year has been a learning curve.  The work I do now is a lot more physical.  After five hours of massaging people getting on a bike and cycling 3 miles isn’t a lot of fun (think sore shoulders, really really sore shoulders).

And then there’s the towels.

Every client needs one large towel and three small towels minimum.

Countless paper couch rolls.

Couch covers.

You try carrying all that on a bike.

I spent a lot on taxis.

When we came back from Australia in May we decided we had the choice to either move nearer to the centre of town and my clinic, or get a car.

Moving into town would cost another few hundred a month in rent for a smaller house with hardly any garden.

So car it was.

There were many debates about what sort of car to get.  Ultimately I wanted something that had minimal environmental impact, boot space for towels and wasn’t going to break down on me/cost me a damn fortune in repairs.

And for the first time in my life I am now the proud co-owner of a brand-new-straight-off-the-production-line-only-9-miles-on-the-clock car.  A brand new Smart Car called Lily.

So environmentally friendly is she that she doesn’t have to pay tax.  She is like a tardis inside (you can actually fit the massage couch in or two cats in baskets) AND she got me all the way to Durham and back on less than a tank of petrol. Add to that you can park her anywhere, the 3-year warranty of having a brand new car and the fact that I still cycle to work sans-towels twice a week, she’s the perfect compromise between not killing myself and getting some exercise!

(this post is brought to you by a big thank you to Himself, without whom there would be no car to write about….)

Missed part one? Read it here!

The Guided Busway, the great innovation for Cambridgeshire’s public transport sysstem. Buses that run on specially built tracks to beat the traffic and on special biofuels to beat pollution. Brilliant. They did it in Adelaide. Apparently we cannot manage it here.

(note abandoned bicycle on busway)

The latest news is that there will be up to a further five years of delays (it’s been going for about five hundred years already). It has costs gajillions of pounds. The whole county is up in arms.

Me? I’m not that bothered because the busway has a cyclepath the whole way along it and makes my travels around Cambridge so much safer. Much rather be cycling along here than along the road.

Although it is probably the most expsensive cyclepath in the world….

I don’t post this purely for international readers to have a good laugh at the lunacy that is British bureaucracy (although that is one reason – seriously if this had been built anywhere else in the world it would have been finished years ago), but rather as an everyday lesson in looking on the bright side.

Life serves lemons and curve balls left right and centre.  It throws us off balance.  Our innate human natures, our Egos (capital E), make us want to sit down and have a big old moan, a big old cry, a big old shout about it.  And that’s OK.  Just don’t shout for too long because if you do you might miss the glorious alternative that is right in front of you.

Because who wants to sit on a stinky old bus when you could be cycling along next to this?

Those of you who follow me on Facebook and Twitter will already know that yesterday something very sad happened.  My beloved bicycle was stolen.  It’s an occupational havoc of living in Cambridge unfortunately (one year when I was a teenager I lost three I think) but still, that was a damn good bike, and I hadn’t got around to insuring it.  Of course I have no other means of transportation so I had to get myself another.  It’s nowhere near as good, but it’s still cute!

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I’m currently working on my Blogroll, which grows ever longer.  If I’ve missed you off and you’d like to be on there then let me know:)

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Finally I’m guest posting over at The LadyBloggers Society again today.