Day 119 - Missing my car

I'm starting to miss having a car. The past several nights & mornings have been pretty cold (25-35°F), and the days haven't been much warmer. Compared to Oklahoma, that's not so cold. The temperature at my land a couple mornings ago was 10°F (-12°C)! But there's a big difference. I don't have a car here.

28 degrees isn't bad at all for walking from a parking lot to a building. But it's a bit cold for having to walk miles every day. Today I spent about 2 1/2 hours walking to and from various places (church 20 minutes away, town centre 30 minutes away, nearest food 10 minutes away, etc.). It was close to miserable after a while.

I think that's another good reason why so many more Americans (especially students) have cars compared to people here. The weather in America is much more extreme. Even though it can get fairly cold here, it's not unreasonably cold. I'll never forget walking from the car to class in Oklahoma the day it was 12° with a -20° (-29°C) wind chill. Many parts of America can get even worse than that. You just can't live an English lifestyle with that kind of weather. A place like Oklahoma is too hot and too cold for walking everywhere or waiting at train stations and bus stops.

Of course, not everywhere in America is so bad. As I'm writing this, it's 72°F (22°C) back in San Jose. Not fair! I don't think it's been that warm here since August.

posted by Matt @ 9:35 PM