I'm without an automobile for the first time in 63 yeas. Sold both my beloved 1999 Saturn and my Nissan

[sinkingfeeling]

in the last 48 hours. I have always owned a car (and sometimes had up to 3) since I was 14. I'm renting here and will rent in Costa Rica when I get there on July 25. I will then buy a new one there.

[riversedge]

1. I would feel helpless without my car.

[Deuxcents]

2. With a move like you're making, I'll bet you've really purged your belongings. There is a DUer

I believe they go by Lake Arenal..haven’t seen any posts lately but wondering if you communicated with them. They used to send pictures of the area, too.

[sinkingfeeling]

6. Yes, we had lunch back in January.

[Deuxcents]

12. So good to hear that..don't want to pry into your personal space but..are you gonna be living near them?

Moving there will most likely make it easier to have kindred friends there. I send you best wishes for this new chapter in your life and have to admit that I’m a little bit jealous of your adventurous spirit! Hope you will keep in touch with us 🌺

[sinkingfeeling]

13. Yep, Arenal isn't very big.

[msongs]

3. grocery shopping with out a car? goodbye costco lol

[dcmfox]

8. no

Pricesmart is what they have, maybe costo in that country, but taxi's are cheap and everywhere.

[sinkingfeeling]

14. Have my Pricesmart card already, but it's in Liberia, about 90 minutes away.

[FakeNoose]

4. My suggestion is to hold onto your drivers license until you get resettled

Best of luck in your new situation. Let us know how it's going.

[Be The Light]

5. Costa Rica sounds nice

I would be bailing out there myself if I could afford it.

Maybe next year. Things could get weird, they definitely are going to get bad.

Then again, I have a federal pension, it doesn't feel as rock solid or worry free

as it used to. And how solid is it ,will it be if I move overseas. Other than that, Costa rica has a great ex-pat

community I hear.

[dcmfox]

7. feel the same

owned cars since I was 14 as well, sold the house the car, gave away a lot of shit that didn't sell..moved to Medellin..buying another one is in site but make sure you do a few things first.

Travel back and forth is expensive...make sure you renew your DL before moving..so it last for years..sure you don't need it in Costa Rica, but if you return to the states for a visit, its nice to now worry..I didn't do that and now scrapping to get one done from 15,000 miles away, lol..

[sinkingfeeling]

10. Renewed my DL last month for 4 years. Costa Rica will exchange a current US license for one of theirs.

[erronis]

9. Most of the people I provide volunteer services to have had to give up their cars.

I've known probably 300-400 people with various reasons, primarily:
- age and loss of drivers licesnse
- physical disabilities - some have driven with in the past, but it gets harder over the years
- costs. Owning, insuring, maintaining

For the last few years I lived in a very rural part of Vermont - no public transportation and no taxi/uber/lyft. Just friends and helpful volunteers (who become friends.)

Recently I've lived in an area with very good regional transit (small town - quite rural). Many people have learned to depend on these small buses and other public transport.

I'll drive to help others but my days are numbered also. Costs, mental abilities, etc. Unfortunately my new home is around 6 miles from regional transit.

[progree]

11. I have not driven for 6 years. I've been making do with the bus system (first suburb west of Minneapolis)

Last edited Sat Jul 12, 2025, 08:14 AM - Edit history (2)

Not a great bus system, even though my suburb borders Minneapolis, it's like they think we're in the sticks.

Sick of car repair costs and had 2 bad experiences when I decided no more for now.

Being an environmentalist whacko, I can't stand the thought of buying a new car with all the greenhouse gas emissions involved in making it. I know that makes me sick nut whacko flake kook and ding-dong, but here we are, it is what it is. I don't have the gonads to risk buying a used car. So I put that off year after year after year.

Grocery shopping is interesting. I combine an exercise regimen of walking about 50 minutes to a bus stop and then taking the bus the rest of the way. (I'm over 70 and it's getting harder and harder). Getting back, I take the bus to as close to home as I can, but that's 2/3 miles from home. So I walk that distance with $100 to $170 in groceries -- some stuffed in a backpack, plus 4 heavy bags.

It's the only serious exercise I can motivate myself to do anymore. Another one of those "it is what it is" things.

I'm working on hanging 2 of those bags from my shoulders with some success. They have a tendency to slip off my shoulders and it's a real bear getting them back on the shoulders and to stay for a while. I'm working on a strap with clothespin arrangement to keep the bag from slipping from my shoulders, long story about all the things that go wrong and the things I've tried like simply tying the bags' straps in front, but it still slips off. But it works well when it works well. It's simple in concept, but when a heavy backpack + 2 heavy shoulder bags are involved, it gets harder than it looks.

I'm too cheap and too environmentalist whackadoodle to take Uber/Lyft and I don't get my exercise that way if I did.

.

[wolfie001]

15. That's pretty impressive!

Way to go!

[progree]

18. Thanks 😊

[mnhtnbb]

16. Do you walk on pavement? Sidewalk? Dirt path?

Would you be able to push a cart?
When I lived in a high rise downtown apartment for several years, my car was parked in a multi level garage. I put my cart in the car and loaded all the grocery bags into it to get my groceries from the garage into the building and up to my 17th floor apartment. City living. All in one trip.

Versa cart is what I have, available through Amazon.

I've had excellent luck buying cars 2-3 years old since the late '90's. I've bought from CarMax, private parties, Hertz ( bought a great Nissan Altima from them that was about a year old), and dealers. My current car was 3 years old coming off a lease and had 27,000 miles on it when I bought it in 2019. I don't drive a lot and it just turned 42,000 miles. Only normal maintenance since I bought it.

[progree]

17. I've given a lot of thought about a cart. I've held back because I don't want to drag it along on my

Last edited Sat Jul 12, 2025, 08:12 AM - Edit history (1)

50 minute to-grocery-store walk. And then what to do with it at the store. Chain it up outside? Try to put it on the shopping cart in the store?

I've got a heavy-duty kind of heavy dolly. Someone who shops with a cart and takes the same bus has a reasonably sized cart for the job, but heck it only handles 2 large bags, but I suppose I could make it work for the other two bags, hang them from the handles.

Anyway, the only real challenge and the only use for the cart is the 2/3 mile home with groceries. I keep telling myself to get like 20% fewer groceries and take 25% more trips, but I end up with 4 heavy bags + heavy backpack almost every time. Anyway, good upper-body strength exercise. With the shoulder-bag contraption working, I have to put the bags down maybe just once to rest. Carrying all 4 bags by hand the regular way, I maybe have to put them down about 8 times to rest.

Thanks much for used car buying encouragement. I'm glad it worked out.

[mnhtnbb]

19. The Versa cart folds up

So you just put it in the grocery cart while at the store.

Here are the dimensions



Which I took from Wayfair, where it is also available. I've had mine for 18 years. It holds up to 120 lbs and although I no longer use it for groceries, it does come in handy around the house from time to time.

When I used it for groceries, mine were packed in plastic bags from the store Heavy stuff on the bottom, lighter on top, and more could be hung from the handles. It holds a lot of groceries.

Here's a photo I took of it loaded during the early days of COVID 2020 when I would only go to the store about every two weeks.



Oddly enough, I bought the cart to ship with furnishings going to a house in Panama, which was on an island in the Bocas area. Shopping would be done on another island, so we'd have to bring groceries from there by boat to our house. It was intended as an escape from Bush. When Obama was elected, we figured we'd no longer need to leave the country, and sold the place in Panama after our house here burned down. Everything I had in storage to be shipped to Panama, I used to furnish a new place here. Somebody once told me I was lucky to have a house in a box and didn't have to start from scratch after the fire, which destroyed everything. Who knew I'd be using a collapsible cart years later during a pandemic, living in a high rise apartment? Life is so damn unpredictable.

[progree]

20. Thanks! I'm impressed, definitely more than the amount of groceries I carry /nt