One week without a car in Lagos

Is like a year without rain - channelling "A year without rain - Selena Gomez"

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My car has been at the panel beater's workshop for the past 6 days. It's due to be back with me on Tuesday (two days to go). That said, I thought I'd talk about my experience in the past week where I've been forced to go through life in a state that's comparable to missing a limb.

Uber splurge

As soon as I got home from the panel beater's workshop on Monday evening, I transferred 15000 Naira from my annual car maintenance budget to my current account. Narration: "Uber allowance". Without that, my lean-cut monthly budget could not have survived the blow from me taking an Uber to-and-fro work every day for a week.

Fortunately, Uber has been giving me 50% discount on up to 5-rides per week for the past two months (or longer). And this week was no exception. I had already used one of the 5 discounts on the journey back home from the workshop on Monday. The remain 4-trip discount definitely was not going to get me very far, what with two rides a day for a 5-day week (if you don't know maths like my friend, Ifeanyi, that's 2 *5 = 10). So I decided to address this limitation.

Before midweek, I had gotten my sister and a colleague (Lanre) to apply the same LAG-GOAL 50% discount to their own Uber accounts. It turns out I got to benefit from their each of their discounts only once though. The logistics of synchronizing information when someone else requests an Uber on your behalf can be quite tedious. Yes, I can be quite a pain in the ass but I also have my limits.

On the Uber experience itself, I'd rate it positively. Both my house and workplace areas are Uber hot-zones, so in most cases, my Uber arrived within 5 and 10 short minutes of me requesting the trip, despite my take-off times being really early and late respectively. Also, most of my drivers got a 5-star rating from me. The only annoyance was that for a few rides, the route I was charged for was literally impossible (except cars now swim through water); some bug with the GPS-tracking system on the app I guess. And I think this bug made my fare higher than it would have been otherwise, even though not inordinately so.

Ubering through the five-cowries creek

RIP fitness

For at least four weeks preceding this just past one, I've been going to the gym at least twice a week. Also, I'm trying to improve on my running endurance, so I've upped the frequency of my runs by at least, 100% in the past three weeks. But last week, my streak on all of that good stride was lost as it is simply harder to do all of this stuff without the mobile wardrobe and changing room that a car is.

My car will be back in two days and I trust that I can pick things up from right where I left them two weeks ago without much fuss; so help me God.

Ridesharing idea remembered

And because of the pain of having to spend more on transportation than I usually do, one ridesharing software idea that first popped into my mind in 2016 made its way back. I think I just might make good on it this time; come up with an MVP or something. If I don't end up getting crippled by overthinking, that is.