I regularly hiked before COVID; trails that I would rarely ever see another person on suddenly had a dozen or two in March 2020. I immediately gave it up for walks in neighborhoods; not nearly as nice but safer for what we knew about it at the time.
Driving was greatly curtailed early in COVID because there was nowhere to drive to; even the supermarket became an every other week thing. Thank Og that has ended. Last year was back to normal; > 20,000 miles…& I work from home!
Didn’t give up driving, but I’m definitely driving a lot less. For two years my employer had us working exclusively from home, except for people who needed to be physically present to do hands-on mechanical work. So I didn’t commute much at all. Even though we officially “went back to the office” last spring, we now have a lot of freedom to work from home, so I’m making good use of that.
Also stopped eating out for lunch during the pandemic, and haven’t really gone back to it.
Grocery shopping? Once we started getting it delivered, we never went back to shopping in the store, and don’t plan to. We always did the shopping together, and between the commute to the grocery store and the time spent in the store, that was about 90 minutes used up for each of us each week. Now it’s maybe 20 minutes poking an iPad to make groceries appear on our front porch the next day.
During the pandemic we drove to various places to go walking, more than we used to. That offsets the decrease in driving for groceries and work.
My wife used to go in to her office about twice a week before the pandemic. Now it’s a just a few times a year. Since she has a long commute, and she really hates driving, and I can now work remotely, I do this drive for her and telecommute from her office.
So my car used to rack up about 7000 miles per year, and last year it was only about 4000. I don’t keep close track of the mileage for my wife’s car, but I’d guess it was just a few hundred miles last year (versus maybe 5000 miles per year before the pandemic).
Not myself. Can’t get anything delivered to my house. Well I could ask UPS or FedX but that would be mean.
I do work from home now though (thank you Starlink). So I do drive a lot less.
I do still have to drive about 200 miles on weekends. I’m managing my mom’s estate. I’ll be doing that for another year or so. I had been making that drive for a long time to take care of her when she was alive.
But from my observations, MORE cars are on the road. And the people are driving worse. They seem anxious. There is no, zero, reason to drive 20 miles over the speed limit. Especially in bad conditions. These people scare me.
Once, during bad winter weather, I ordered delivery from a smoothie place. It costs double what it would’ve cost if I’d bussed it.
I’ve never had a permanent license.
It takes me 20 minutes to get to work, and for $2, I can ride everywhere all day long.
I’ve had two short periods of my adult life when I lived without a car - both times I was living in London. I didn’t need one, the tube is quicker, everywhere is accessible on foot, parking is a nightmare, etc.
But my GOD I missed having one. I couldn’t haul rubbish to the tip, or buy furniture in Ikea on a whim. A countryside walk on a Sunday involved trains or buses which just makes the journey exhausting before you’ve even got there. The last straw was visiting friends for the weekend and then discovering there were ‘engineering works’ on the trainline, which involved getting a bus replacement service home, turning a 1.5 hour train ride into a 4 hour slog. I bought a car the next week.
I’ve had groceries delivered before now, but honestly, food shopping is the only kind of shopping I like.
During Covid, there was a period of time when we were restricted from unnecessary journeys, so dog walking became a trudge to the decidedly-average local park instead of the glorious country estate two miles away. Me and the dog grew to hate that walk.
My mom was 89 and living alone when Covid hit and was still driving to Walmart, CVS and her doctor appointments in February of 2020. Her car sat in the garage for two years since we were able to get things delivered to her and was able to make arrangements for everything else. When everything opened back up she no longer felt like driving and there was a shortage of used cars, so she sold her 2004 Hyundai Elantra with only 30K miles (driven by a little old lady) for a handsome price.
I too switched to online grocery delivery when Covid hit (Kroger) and never looked back. Online grocery shopping is convenient, kind of fun, and cheaper (cheaper for me than Publix, who raised their prices higher than Kroger recently). Whenever I think of something I want, I just add it to my cart during the week and have the completed order delivered on the weekend. Easy-peasy.
My youngest daughter’s boyfriend and his 5 cats moved in with us just after Covid subsided (he didn’t have a great home life, and my daughter said “pretty please?”). He didn’t have a car, so I gave him full use of my car (he helps with some utility bills and chores, so I figured that was fair), and I bought a slightly snazzier, cheap used car.
I needed a snazzier car because my 2 daughters convinced me to try online dating and I didn’t want to pick up dates in my ugly, old minivan. I went on a few dates, and got that out of my system, realizing after being on my own for so many years after my divorce, I was pretty set in my lone-wolf ways (like a 66-year-old Marlon Brando, in Wild One). 
6 cats (boyfriend’s 5 and my 1) are all the company I need…and catnip from Kroger is cheaper than steak from Ruth’s Chris. Actually, 6 cats are more than enough company for me—the little bastards are always stealing my food, right from my plate, when I have my head turned. 6 cats working in concert are very conniving indeed. They stole a whole Rock Cornish hen from my plate just last week before I took my first bite. It was just a pile of bones when I found it.
So, now I have two cars and hardly drive either one of them. In fact, the battery in my new car went dead twice in the past 6 months from disuse. Most places I want to go, my daughter and/or her boyfriend want to go too, so I just go with them (they’re always parked behind me in the driveway and it’s too much trouble getting my snazzy car out).
I should get rid of at least one of my cars. On the other hand, if during a major hurricane, my daughter gets pissed off at me before evacuating, she might just say, “you’re on your own Pops”, as she, her boyfriend, and the 6 cats drive off into the sunset, leaving me blowing in the wind.
Not discounting your experience, but here’s mine.
Back during COVID I tried online grocery shopping. Less than half the items that I knew were on the shelf because I still shopped in person too were even listed in the Shipt catalog for my store. Which was a large Winn-Dixie, not some local Mom’n’Pop. The prices were about 20% higher than the shelf prices. Plus what Shipt charged for the monthly membership. Plus the tip you’re guilted in to paying the worker, who is certainly underpaid by Shipt.
Less than half of what I ordered would arrive in my shipments. “They were out of it” was the usual excuse. So after inventorying my delivery I drove to the store and there the stuff was, right in the usual spots.
I admit I have not tried it since COVID was eradicated here in FL about 2 years ago. ( 
)
But my experience was that it was utterly, absolutely, useless, simply a way to spend an extra $25 buying a lot of frustration.
I use public transit a lot less. First, I mostly work from home, how. Second, they cut down on the frequency of trains, so there are less likely to be convenient ones, so I am more likely to drive when I do go someplace that’s on publuc transit. But I need to drive to get the to the train. It’s about an hour’s walk to the closest station, and I rarely have an extra two hours in my day for that walk and return.
Naw, I drove less for a month or two, when we never went out. But now I drive to visti friends and to shop. I suppose I buy more on Amazon than I used to, but there aren’t great delivery options for groceries near me, and if I’m driving to the store to pick up, I’d just as soon pick out my own produce.
I’ve noticed this too, and I don’t think we live in the same area. Their driving skills, and general social skills, took a sharp plunge in 2020 and have not recovered.
Around here, I wouldn’t say there are more cars on the road now compared to Pre-pandemic days, but drivers have absolutely gotten worse. Over the two years of not very much driving, the people who used to be bad drivers seem to have forgotten what little they ever knew. It used to be that I’d see someone make a really boneheaded driving decision about once a week. Now, it’s a unusual if I don’t see at least one boneheaded decision every time I drive, and some days, I’ll see multiple such terrible drivers.
Rush hour traffic is definitely worse than it used to be. I haven’t tried to analyze why.
I never gave up driving because I worked through the pandemic. As I was a hotel night auditor it’s not like I could work from home. I do go to the store less, now.
Lot’s more little local vacations is what I am seeing. That’s fine. But many folks don’t have mountain driving experience. Let alone in bad weather.
If you’re still interested in online grocery shopping, you should browse the Kroger website and compare prices. I pay yearly for free shipping (and they give free shipping for the first couple of times you order).
As you know, we don’t have Kroger stores in Florida, just warehouses, so I don’t know if their online prices are higher than their in-store prices (I don’t think they are). But, the prices for most things are significantly lower than Publix’s in-store prices (but probably similar to Winn Dixie’s).
It’s nice having groceries delivered to your door, and they don’t accept tips (hopefully they pay their drivers well to compensate). And, you can specify if you want them to substitute similar products if something you order is out of stock. Plus, they have lots of online coupons to clip and they always give something away for free every week (good things sometimes). I’m a fan.
My daughter, on the other hand, insists on getting Instacart Publix delivery and pays a hefty premium for that. Father knows best!
I’ve been doing a lot of grocery pick ups at Walmart, and their substitution system has improved a lot. It used to be you only had the choice of “Substitute or not” if an item was out of stock, but now, they tell you which substitute they’ll try first, and give you the option to select a different substitute. I find this works pretty well.
Thanks for the info. I had no idea Kroger had any presence in FL of any sort. Nor would I have thought to try to buy groceries from a warehouse, although there’s nothing nutty about that idea. It was just out of sight to me.
At least in my part of FL, Publix is the “pay 15% extra just because” store. It’s not like the product quality is any different, nor are the stores cleaner, more inviting, or anything. I suppose there is a certain snob appeal to being surrounded by other people willing to spend the extra just to be surrounded by other people willing to spend the extra. Not my bag, but whatever floats folks’ boats.
Publix does have a great bakery and deli department, though. So, I still go there for those things. Publix subs are better than most dedicated sub shops that people rave about. And, their fried chicken is better than KFC.
that was another thing I really loved about Europe – mass transit… I thought the pain in the ass was driving to Chicago, especially leaving. It was Sunday night, and we were stuck on 94-E for 2 hours, still in the city limits. The L-train is very good, and never had a problem getting around.
The opposite. Nobody’s coughing in my face in my car.