Sunday, April 13, 2008

A frustrating adventure

I took a GoGet car on an excursion today, but the whole thing was a bit of a bust. I had wanted to go to Kiama, a town on the South Coast that I have heard good things about, but I didn't really know the distances involved. It turns out to be quite far, and the damned car has a per kilometer charge that was starting to freak me out. So I turned around just short of Wollongong and drove back through the Royal National Forest, which I have also heard good things about. It was beautiful, and there are great and dramatic cliffs down to the ocean, but it was getting late and I didn't really know where to go or what to do.

I left too late, and the south part of Sydney that one goes through to get to the south coast is pretty dreary, so too much of the daylight was spent in horrible suburban strip mall/light industrial sort of landscape, and then, I hate to say it, the dramatic cliffscapes are getting sort of normal--I need some specialness to make it worth it and there just wasn't enough of that.

I blame it all on the car. I am thinking about getting rid of my membership--I'm just not sure it is worth it. I get into such a grumpy fug when I spend time in a car! Getting around by public transport and walking has its own challenges, but at least you are out interacting with the world. In a car, everything just goes by.

And I get so frustrated with the Australian tendency to rely entirely on marginal pricing. I was a member of a similar car share in DC, and I paid something like $70 a month for the first 8 hours of driving, with a $9 per hour charge afterwards (at the very end of my time, they introduced a per mile charge, but only after some initial included mileage). Here, I pay a $15 membership fee, then $6.60 (I think) per hour plus $0.35 per kilometer. Now, I spend less per month here, so it isn't that it is too expensive, but there is no travel included in the sunk cost. I liked the scheme in DC because it encouraged me to drive 8 hours a month--enough to do something fun or out of the usual on top of my heavy grocery shopping run. Here, every single kilometer gets weighed against whether it is really worth it--not a great mind set for exploring a new city! It makes me too risk averse.

It is the same with phones here, and maybe some other pricing. It makes me miss the US's ability to make you feel good about spending too much money!

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