In my last post, I relayed that I had a need for short distance transportation. When my college age daughter had daily transportation needs due to her college program, I did what most loving, caring parents would do and said “take my car…I’ll figure it out on my end”. Yeah, the things we do for our kids - ha! For a while, I did a combination of walking, biking or getting rides as needed. Frankly, it got old pretty quickly. While I don’t mind a nice walk here and there, my daily commute to the METRA train in the morning is not my idea of a good time of day for leisurely exercise. I stay up pretty late, and my mornings are pretty rushed. And I’m lazy (in the morning, anyway). I get cleaned up and out the door quickly every morning. The last thing I needed was to add 20 minutes or more to my morning commute, let alone getting on the train hot and sweaty on a warm day. This was not my idea of a great start to my day. In addition, I like to cook, and often hit Jewel, Whole Foods or Mariano’s on the way home. Some of that became a non-starter without a convenient means of short distance transportation.
As a guy living in the tech world for my entire career, I put my project management hat on, and approached solving my problem in a structured (some might say anal, but I digress) way. I admit that I flirted with the idea of buying or leasing another vehicle. But when I added up the costs of acquisition, depreciation, insurance, gasoline and maintenance costs, it just didn’t feel like the right thing to so. Actually, it made no sense to do this, for a vehicle that I would barely use. When I really examined my needs from a requirements perspective, 95% of my use for the car boiled down to short distance transportation of a mile or two in each direction. My destinations include to and from the METRA train station, a visit to the grocery store, ACE hardware, the Elmhurst library, a local park and similar errands around town. And I was feeling less great about driving a 4000 lb. car for each one of these short trips. There had to be a better way. It was then that I aggressively focused on the idea that a scooter would be a good option to look into as a solution to my short distance transportation problem. I know I’m not going to pick up a load of lumber from Home Depot on a scooter, but I have alternatives for those few times when they come up.
In my next post, I will cover the steps that I took to further analyze my needs on my journey to select an appropriate scooter to meet my short distance transportation needs.
- Scott Christensen
