Living a green life wasn't my conscious goal when I moved to the Central North Side in 1998 and began commuting Downtown on foot. I simply didn't want to pay to park. I saved on gas and insurance, too, and walked at least an hour a day.

As my green consciousness grew, like the rest of the country's, it became a calling. I reused then recycled everything possible, I began to compost, got a rain barrel and eschewed air conditioning.

With few exceptions, my old Volvo (Goldie) had become a weekend accessory. Each Saturday, she woke up for my Spanish class and the big grocery trip and, occasionally, took me to meet friends for a movie or dinner.

It started being fun figuring out ways to do more without her, but she was always there in a pinch. Lightly using a car is a different lifestyle than not having the option, or cutting yourself off from it.

Last winter, Goldie turned 22. She was as reliable as ever, though she had become a gas-guzzler and was exhibiting the eccentricities and creaks of the elderly. My mother in West Virginia worried. To give me no excuse for not visiting more often, she offered me her 2001 Toyota Camry at a bargain price. She would buy a new car when prices dropped.

At the time, I figured I would buy her car -- but toyed with the idea of finding out if I really wanted to. If I was going to reject Goldie, a dignified and fine old car, maybe I should reject cars altogether.

Maybe I had enough options to do it. I had the lifestyle and the situation for it: My house is less than two miles from work, two blocks from a bus stop, a half mile from a large grocery, a few blocks from a smaller market and a drug store. I am child-free, with no soccer practice, ballet class or day care to cart anyone to.

One day in April, I took out an ad to sell Goldie, knowing I would be getting Mother's car in a few months. Goldie sold quickly, and I was truly sad for an hour or two, realizing I would not see her anymore.

Over the next two months, I kept a no-car diary ... and something started happening to me.

April 28: A woman a few years younger than Goldie drove off in her tonight.

May 3: Borrowed a friend's car for a trip to West Virginia. Ended up not going. It was raining hard there, but the real reason was to start building up my strength. After all, my commitment to carlessness is less than a week old.

May 4: Needed eggs to make corn bread for a stoop party. Saw friends in the off-leash dog area who told me they got fresh eggs at a farm the day before. Later walked to their apartment in Manchester -- nine blocks. Gave them strawberries as a trade for a dozen eggs.

Later, walked to Keystone Plumbing for a 40-pound bag of potting soil thinking surely I could carry it four blocks. I carried it across the street and dropped it. Watching cars pass, I got mad at them and mad at myself. I began dragging it. Fearing it might rip, I wrestled it to my shoulders, walked a little way, shifted it, dropped it, wrestled it back up and shifted it around my body all the way home, feeling mad, stupid and hot.

May 6: With a sore back, I walked to an event at Bistro To Go on East Ohio Street. It took 15 minutes. With a car, I would have stayed later. Walked home just before dusk.

May 10: Cadged a ride with a neighbor. Stocked up on groceries at a hyper-market in the 'burbs. Wow. No wonder Early Man went nuts for cars. Instead of slogging through the park with two grocery-filled bags hanging from my arms, I rolled my 10 or so bags in a cart across a lot to the trunk. Thirty minutes later, my stuff was at my front door.

May 11: I dug out the hand truck in the basement to go back to Keystone for more potting soil.

May 17: Mother brought the Camry for a visit. We did all the errands of heavy lifting and volume I'd waited to do, including stocking up on cat litter.

As I drove us, I felt that quick light feeling around my heart that theme-park rides induce.

May 23: Gas at a nearby station is $3.80; high-test is more than $4.

Thought: As I head home from work in the heat or the rain, sometimes I look at all the cars with resentment, as if they were rubbing it in. Most of the time, I feel lucky I can walk home, even though it takes 30 minutes. I always want to be home faster.

May 24: An old friend visited from Washington, D.C., in an old Volvo like my Goldie. I resisted using his car-ness for personal gain, but we did visit a friend in the South Side Slopes, a trip I would never make without a car.

May 31: A neighbor let me ride along on her trip to the grocery store, and I wheedled from her a little side trip to pick up some paintings I'd dropped off for framing when Mother visited.

What I saved not filling Goldie with petroleum product in May: $60.80

June 3: Walked the hand-truck to Caruso, the neighborhood beer distributor, for a case of Penn Pilsner. (This entry appears more often in the actual diary.)

June 14: Walked the dog to the Urban Gardener, about 10 blocks up Brighton Road, to buy four pepper plants. If I had driven, or even with the leash hand free, I'd have spent a lot more. The dog needed a walk, but she was a prop on that errand.

REALIZATION: Carlessness is guiding me toward a greater thriftiness. They're both equal parts of this discipline I am liking. The savings from carlessness goes beyond what you spend on gas, oil changes, etc. I only needed four pepper plants, I could only carry four pepper plants and that's all I got. The spree at the hypermarket cost me $116. When I tote my two canvas bags across the park, I carry only the groceries I need at the time, worth between $16 and $30.

June 15: Turned down an invitation to join friends for dinner in the East End. I could have taken a bus Downtown and gotten a transfer, spending maybe 45 minutes getting there, another 45 back. I did want to see these guys, but an hour and 30 minutes commuting seemed excessive for what would be a 20-minute car ride. I told them I couldn't go because I didn't have a car.

June 18: Angst ... whether to buy Mother's car ... really deliberating. I asked a few friends who have given up on cars if they wanted to ride-share. Ride-sharing would have made the purchase more prudent. They said no; they like being free of the expense altogether.

An idea emerges: The three times I've cadged rides, I have offered the driver $5. Since we usually go less than 15 miles, it's a little windfall for them and a bargain for me. All three times they told me to stop being silly. But a ride-share plan at $5 per person is a worthy idea: It more than covers a gallon of gas, makes the cadger feel participatory and makes the trip more fun.

Could this idea catch on? I'd bet a lot of people might give up the car if they had ride-share arrangements.

June 26: A neighbor drove me five blocks to Moxie DaDa Gallery to deliver my paintings for tomorrow's art show.

Been Googling bicycle types. A colleague who pedals to work has been sending me updates about bicycles. They all look natty, some quite the ride, but I'm still thinking like a dinosaur -- that no bike should cost as much as a 26-year-old Volvo.

July 1: Rode my bike to the post office, the bank and the Giant Eagle all in one North Side sweep. I took a curb cut badly and wound up with the kind of boo-boos I used to get on my knees as a kid. It felt strangely satisfying.

July 2: Agonized over whether to tell Mother to sell the car to someone for what it's really worth and free myself for the long haul. But I couldn't do it. She would either wear me out worrying about my carlessness or I would end up mad at myself for turning down her offer.

July 4: I listened to the Declaration of Independence read on the radio and dug out my own copy when I heard this passage: "... all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed ..."

It sounded apropos of what we as Americans have come to -- being OK with a new tyranny. Enough of us can afford the gas, and will, to keep the gasbags happy and the gasbags won't make unpopular decisions to change the structure of our transportation policy.

July 5: I caved... It's Dependence Day.

At the Toyota dealership with Mother, I began to breathe like a cornered cat. She was signing over her car to me and buying a new Corolla. The agent smiled at me as if I were 16. She works for a car dealer, so she thinks buying a car is GRRREAT!

I wrote a check for $411, for the title transfer and taxes. Jeez. Four-hundred-eleven bucks just for that? And that's just the beginning.

Thought: In some polls, people say the price of gasoline is their No. 1 concern, and yet SUVs pass me in blur after blur as I drive 55. I wonder what the No. 1 concern of these drivers is. Mine is that I'm right back in the good old dysfunctional American swing of things.

August 23: I refilled the tank for the first time and spent $62. I am keeping the tires inflated to the recommended pressure, not exceeding 55 mph, coasting to stops when I can and changing lanes to avoid braking when I can. Mother said she got between 26 and 32 miles per gallon but on the one tank I have used so far, I got 35.

August 23: So far, I am sticking to the plan: Walk or take the bus to work every day. No automatic weekly trips to a big grocery. Instead, I keep a running list and chip away at it with each pass by a store on foot. I have cut my big trips in half.