For Home: Cars: Friday night car rental

First post ever!!!

So it's the weekend again and Ian and I had to delve deep into Scarberia to visit our friend Ben for yet another intense games night. On the list of games worthy of consideration are: Agricola, Powergrid, Caylus, Dominion, El Grande, Puerto Rico, etc.....

But games are not what I'm going to talk about... that's a total other posting. So what am I really going to talk about? (and you will see this a lot in my blogs to come... is something totally different in the intro than the body of the blog; this is an atypical style; but is a pretty accurate representation of who i am and how my feeble mind works)

Where was I? Oh yeah, the real topic:
Autoshare! The hourly rental car company!

This is a perfect example of how to live well and cheap in the downtown T.O.

When people think about car rentals, they usually think of family road trips that take days and days, car games, sightseeing to the point of living in your car, cross country endeavours that transcend tears, car-cabin fever, and the likes. But my guess is that most people don't think of renting a car for a few hours to pop over to a friends' house. Which is what Ian and I are starting to really love, not only for the convenience or not having to take care and pay for a car, but also for the experience of being able to drive safe, comfortable, clean, cars that are close to our apartments for a really reasonable price. The pay-as-you-go plan is perfect for couples or single families living downtown that don't need to use cars everyday.

This hourly rental stuff largely came out of high costs that result from downtown parking, car payments, regular car maintenance, gas, oh yeah, did i mention parking? I didnt' mention parking two times for no reason. Parking happens not only at the place you're going to , but also the place you're starting from -- your home. So this means that you have to have a parking space at your apartment. If you are rich enough to live in a house downtown, you can probably afford the parking too, so you can probably skip this blog.

But for the rest of us lowly minions who live in our overpriced <500 sq ft downtown apartments, parking and owning a car becomes just too much of an expense. It could really be the straw that breaks the camels' backs (esp newlyweds with a huge debt). So, what to do, what to do..
RENT BY THE HOUR! Sounds dirty when i say it like that, but really I'm talking about walking down the street, (<5 mins), putting your key in the lock, doing a minute amount of documentation, and then voila! off you go!

It's the perfect way to go and see friends who live our of town, go to that non/not easily-TTC accessible grocery store that has all the good stuff (T and T Supermarket), or just a day trip around town.

The best deal around town for this is with Autoshare: http://autoshare.com/rates.html.
Their rates range from $5.50/hr - $9.75/hr depending on how often you need a car per month. And after midnight, it's FREE!

And here you will find that the most mundane experience become something worthy or record: After our second trip (first one was driving to Ajax to see our friends Adam and Dotti; second was to see Ben, like i said, in Scarberia) There is a lot down the street from us and it has a silver Toyota Matrix that we've affectionately dubbed as "our little car".