Zip

Chicago has excellent public transportation, from the El to the Metra and city buses. Unfortunately, I am able to use very little of it. The borough of Chicago in which I live is not super accessible. The school has shuttles and buses that take students to heavily frequented places, but the buses stop running at 6 and the shuttles just circulate around campus. This makes running errands tricky. Plus, sometimes I want to buy a lot of stuff (yes, food) or heavy stuff (like food in bulk), which makes even taking the bus kind of annoying.

So, I decided to look into ZipCar, a car-sharing service where you pay a small annual fee and then rent a car for $7 an hour for the cheapest car. I figured if it allowed me the freedom to do some serious errands, or if I could get some friends to get in on it with me, it would be worth it. There are a number of ZipCar parking lots all around campus, including one just two blocks from the law school. I applied for my membership, got my Zipcard in the mail, and then reserved my car. On the website you can see which car you're reserving. This particular Zip-trip was solo and just going to be to the grocery store so I rented a svelt Smart Car.

After class I headed down to the parking lot. I was a little nervous because I hadn't driven in almost a year (thank you, excellent Korean public transportation), it was not my car, and it was a Smart Car, which the website noted was a little bit different from a normal car. I found the parking lot, swiped my card on the windshield card-swipey thing and the door magically opened. The site said that the keys would be chained to the dashboard somewhere. I found them, started it up, and drove along. The car was not super smooth (and neither was my driving) but we made it to the store OK and I parked. Since I'm not used to such a tiny car, I parked really close to the edge of the parking spot*.

I did my shopping and went to put the bags in the "trunk." They just barely fit with one on the passenger seat. That was when I realized the car could hold about as much as I could. I made a mental note to reserve a normal-sized car for next time. By the time I left, I didn't have enough time to swing by my apartment and drop off my bags so I just had to go back to the parking lot. I carried the bags the five blocks back to my place, realizing that if I had just taken the bus I could have been dropped off much closer to my apartment. It was dark, getting cold, and I had decided to walk on the scary side of the street.

Mission not so successful, but I haven't given up on ZipCars just yet. Plus, I have the membership for a year.

*The result being that it was well-hidden behind all of the other cars at the parking lot and I had a mini panic attack convinced someone had stolen the car.