Out of Province Vehicle

I remember seeing “The Slipknot”, a fringe play by T.J. Dawe. It was so good I bought the script to it. (Which I don’t have on me because I have put it into storage.) In it he describes his life in Vancouver and the trouble he had with a van that a friend asked him to sell. It was not easy.
I am now living in Vancouver, and my car’s Alberta registration is going to expire at the end of this month. So I will need to register it in B.C. (I think I was supposed to do this within a month of arrival…) This province is picky about the cars it allows to drive here. Specifically, they need to have an “Out of Province Vehicle Inspection”. The registration place that I went to recommended a place to have that done. It’s a ten minute drive away from downtown. However, their hours are almost identical to my work hours. Which means I will probably never see them face-to-face.
On Monday I drove out to their place, dropped the car off, put the keys in the mailbox, and then walked home. The walk took about 45 minutes along a fairly major road. It gave me an opportunity to watch the locals drive.
I’m probably stereotyping here, but I don’t trust B.C. drivers. They have a wonderful mass transit system. This means that they don’t have to get behind the wheel of a car often. So they don’t get to practice as much as other Canadians do. I hear more honking horns here than I did in Edmonton. When they get a bit of snow they also tend to fall apart. Mind you, this causes icy streets that are usually inclined, so I can’t blame them too much for that.
With this lovely mass transit system, and the fact that I can walk to work, I have been wondering if I even need a car. If the car fails the inspection, it might be worth it to abandon car ownership. I could, before the month ends, do an epic drive to Calgary and sell my family my car for a buck and then take a bus home. That sounds exhausting though.
Life without a car would mean I would have to second-guess every time I want to go somewhere I used to drive to. Going to the Superstore outside the downtown would be more complicated, and would the lower prices and wider selection against the cost of the skytrain be worth it? But I’ve been hermitting a lot this winter as I’m trying to get my life organized. The lack of a social life in Vancouver also prevents me from going driving anywhere. But I should keep my options open for the future when I will want to explore the city more in summer.
The inspection failed.
It failed for the same reason TJ Dawe had trouble with his friend’s van. The windshield has cracks. “It was good enough for Alberta!” is how Mr. Dawe put it, if I remember correctly. If I had paid more attention to the play, I could have handled that issue beforehand.
All is not lost, or Alberta bound. The inspection place is having a guy come in tomorrow to replace my windshield. So I don’t need to deal with the logistics of dropping or picking up a car unnecessarily. It will cost money, but not obscene amounts. It does mean that I will actually have to see the proprietors face-to-face; the cost of the windshield is more than they can handle over the phone. I’ll probably try and get there before they open on Thursday so I can get to work at a reasonable hour.