 Hello everyone, November marks 18 months since I started living a car free lifestyle. I did share back in January how I've been going living without a car and how I've managed to either ride or catch public transport everywhere, but I thought I'd share some new updates over the past 10 months. What I love about riding is how I can slow down and admire the beauty and scenery around me. Going by the coast I get to ride past beaches, parks and cafes and it's so nice to be able to stop along the way and go for a swim or grab a hot chocolate if I like. I also love how it saved me so much money in fuel and ongoing car expenses. I only need to service my bike once a year and that usually only costs me around $80. For public transport I'm usually only paying around $30 a month so I've been able to save quite a lot over this time. However, I'm now finding there are quite a few limitations to having only a bike to get me from place to place. For instance, I haven't been able to go hiking at all this year as the mountains are too far away for me to ride my bike to and there is no public transport out there, unlike Sydney which has a train that goes to and from the mountains. I would normally carpool with a friend who would want to go hiking with me but it's just been unfortunate that in every time I try to organise a trip our schedules don't align. Plus, a lot of my friends that I've made here actually don't own cars either so it's very limited in who I can go hiking with that has a car. So hiking has been something that I've really, really missed. Public transport has also been a struggle, the buses here aren't as reliable so I sometimes wait up to an hour or more because a bus or two haven't toned up. I've also found it takes about double the time to get to any destination. It could take 20 minutes in the car but 40 to 50 minutes on the bus or if I want to go to Brisbane rather than drive the hour it will take me around two hours by train. At the beginning this didn't bother me too much but I've just found over time that I'm spending more and more time travelling to my destination than I am actually there. These are some of the limitations and hindrances I've found with car free living but there are things that I've loved about just owning a bike. When I'm travelling just around the Gold Coast I can pretty much bike anywhere I like. I'm thinking of buying a car in the near future just so I have it to drive long distances such as up to Brisbane, to the Sunshine Coast or to the mountains. For shorter commutes such as to work, to the beach or anywhere nearby I would prefer to bike. One of the things I've been trying to foster more of in my life at the moment is learning how to slow down. I'm so used to living such a fast paced go go go lifestyle focused on productivity and trying to get as much done as I can throughout the day but I've learned over the years that this constant level of productivity is very exhausting and I find myself burning out a lot. Barking has helped me a lot in slowing down as I can only go so fast and it will take me longer to get to wherever I need to go so I allow more time for myself to do certain jobs or errands and I don't book my day out as much with things that I need to do. Sometimes I'll only give myself three things to do in a day that I want to get done then I'll allow myself the rest of the day to relax, read a book, go to the beach or a cafe and just do things that don't count as productive but which I still really enjoy. I've been trying to adapt more of a slow living lifestyle I believe it's important to have some goals and things to focus on but I also believe we aren't machines that need to be achieving more and more results every hour of every day. I know they can be a balance and I'm still trying to find what works for me. So, for me, Barking has been one of the best changes I've made in my life and I will continue to back as much as possible but I am looking to buy a car within the next year just to help with travelling long distances, like I said. Thank you so so so much for watching this video let me know if you're someone who lives a car-free lifestyle too or are looking to live car-free, I'd love to hear how you go. I'm sending you all big hugs and lots of love. Take care and I'll see you soon again.