What Machka doesn't highlight at the start is that three-quarters of this year will be based for me on public transport, or walking or bicycles in most of our movements.
While we have two vehicle, one hasn't been operational for over a year, and the other was bought to replace it for me to access work (Machka was already using buses).
But then my workplace accident that critically injured me with a long stay in hospital resulted in my driver's licence being handed over until I can have a serious brain injury cleared (which is likely to happen in January so I can return to the workplace -- the licensing situation had nothing do with my driving).
One result has been that I have slowly but surely returned to bus travel, too, to attend my medical and recovery appointments in the city.
Machka has continued to catch buses to and from work every day and while bicycle riding might appear to be an option for her, there are steep hills over the 15-plus kilometres involved in the route into the city, as well as considerable doubt about safely putting her bikes in storage there. And as far as driving goes, she would have to find car parking several miles from her workplace, or pay an incredible fee of something over $150 a week for city car parking.
And as to my return to work, my experience when driving to the ferry I have to catch along a relatively narrow country road shows that I would be at serious risk from the less than quality drivers I have seen, most of whom are tourists from other states or (even worse) other countries..
As to the bike riding, I have had what could only considered to be limited rides on the bikes since the workplace injury, especially after doing a 300km randonnee just two or three weeks before it happened. But I have done up to almost 30km on one ride, which recently drew a neurologist I had to see last week into a comment that I had made a remarkable recoverable to even go that far and considering the injury I had suffered.