The Blue line train approaches at the Foggy Bottom-GWU Metro stop.

In the last two weeks, I’ve probably spent more time on the Metro than anything else, except being on conference calls where I can hear only two out of every three words. It’s quite an adjustment to go from driving absolutely everywhere to planning one’s outings around the Metro map.

My husband wrote about his new carless lifestyle in his weekly WSJ column, Eyes on the Road. I agree with his observations and the tradeoffs. However, and it’s partly the lighting, he looks pretty unhappy about his new life. One commenter speculated that he must have recently gone through a divorce.

Not true! It’s just been a couple of tough weeks. The Tigers failed to make the playoffs, we left our house of 20 years, we had to unpack a couple of dozen boxes so we could walk through the aparment, make dinner and sleep. We still have dozens of boxes to go. Also, Joe’s dad had emergency surgery last week (he’s thankfully on the mend now), and we visited two Ikeas in Maryland and Virginia on the same day. Finally, and this is key in my opinion, HE HASN’T PLAYED THE GUITAR SINCE WE MOVED. This is a man who has owns an untold (at least he hasn’t told me) number of electric guitars, three of which he brought with him, and who heretofore spent every hour he wasn’t working, sleeping or eating, practicing guitar in the basement, with the Fender amp cranked up to 11. And it’s not my fault.

In any case, here are some things I’ve observed that Joe didn’t mention about commuting by subway and foot:

• I get more unintentional exercise. Did I mention the 50 stairs up to our apartment?
• Taking Metro isn’t really relaxing. If you nod off or get too deeply involved in your book, you miss your stop. However, it is way, way better than driving at 10 mph for an hour or more at a time, which is what apparently happens on the Beltway every day.
• We still have a car, my Saturn Astra. It’s a cute car, soon to be a collector’s item, but it doesn’t have a turbo and isn’t as macho as the Subaru WRX. It does get 30+ mpg on the highway and parks easily on city streets.

In any case, there’s a reason that the suburbs attract millions of people. It’s not that the automakers have brainwashed millions of people into buying cars. It’s that cars offer independence and autonomy, green space and backyards to hunt rodents in.