Yesterday, just in time for hockey camp at 9, I checked the (paper) mail to find that my Flexcar membership kit had finally arrived! Since I moved to Seattle, I've been borrowing the Neon from Matt all the time to get to hockey. The arena is located 15 miles north on I-5 and camp ends pretty late so neither taxi nor taking the bus is an option. Flexcar is a system whereby members reserve cars parked around the city in advance and pay about $6 - $9 per hour to use them. Since I can bike to work every day, the only time I really need a car is for stuff like climbing or hockey in the evenings. The price seems high when you are used to owning a car and driving for free, but if you amortize the cost of buying your car, insuring and maintaining it over all the miles you drive, on average Flexcar turns out to be cheaper. Here's a link to the AAA research the Flexcar people quote. So the procedure is pretty simple. I go to the website, login and reserve the car. I'm pretty lucky because there's a Honda Civic on 24th and Madison, only one block away from my house. I spent a minute looking at the schedule and it looks like the car is almost always available. Both times I needed it for Hockey, I booked only 2 minutes in advance, and never had a problem. Next, you walk to the car (which is always parked in the same 24hr reserved spot) and open the door by waiving your card over a sensor on the back windsheild. The keys are in the glove compartment, but the car won't start until you type your PIN into a keypad inside the vehicle. I guess the car has some kind of wireless connection to the internet because later on the website it knows exactly how many hours/miles you used. Anyway, I think it's a cool system partly because of the technology and mostly because I don't need to worry about car maintenance, insurance, parking, theft, etc, etc, but I still have the 90% of the convenience of a car ownership.