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  "description": "Reflections on a Car-Free Adulthood",
  "path": "/no-regrets/",
  "publishedAt": "2026-05-22T15:35:53.000Z",
  "site": "https://www.highspeed.blog",
  "tags": [
    "Substack channels reader money to Nazis, fascists, white supremacists",
    "you can follow the link to the sign-up portal here",
    "Subscribe now"
  ],
  "textContent": "_There are no ads on the HIGH SPEED newsletter, and there never will be. (No A.I. slop, either!) It's entirely supported by readers like you. I publish it on a platform called Ghost, because I don't like the way_ Substack channels reader money to Nazis, fascists, white supremacists_, and the likes of Andrew Tate. Unlike Substack, though, Ghost charges an annual fee. I want to keep HIGH SPEED going, but to pay that fee and continue doing the research, travel, and writing necessary to keep this up week in, week out, I need your support. I hope you'll consider becoming not just a free subscriber, but a paid member. Your subscription will help me keep this train rolling;_ you can follow the link to the sign-up portal here_. And to all those who have already helped out by becoming a Rail Pass Holder or Founding Member, thank you!_\n\n// When I was 14 years old, my parents set up a house swap in England. The English family got our post-war fixer-upper on the west side of Vancouver; we got the headmaster's house, attached to a public school in Oxford. (I still think we got the better part of the bargain; my sister and I soon discovered a passage from the house to the empty classrooms. For a couple of weeks there, we were in Hogwarts heaven. Or rather, C.S. Lewis-land, as this happened pre-J.K. Rowling.) I remember that my mother went to fetch the keys from the headmaster's son, who was in his twenties. She was a little miffed that he didn't come and drop them off himself; but when she got back from his flat, she told me, with evident wonder, that he'd told her that he didn't own a car, and expected he never would.\n\nI remember thinking to myself: Wait? Is that a possibility? You can be an _adult_ and never own a car?\n\nOver the next few weeks, I realized that, yes, in certain places, living without a car is completely normal. We travelled all over England, and eventually to Ireland, using public transportation. I even made my first solo excursions on British Rail. (A day-trip to Bath, in which I had a thrilling flirtation with a much older woman—she was, like, 18 years old—in a second-class compartment. She was amused; I was blushing scarlet.)\n\n💡\n\nAn interesting thing happened along the way. The fact of __not__ owning a car led me into the kind of life that I'd always wanted to live.\n\nThis is proof, if nothing else, that travel broadens the mind, and opens up future possibilities: I'd been exposed, briefly, to a different way of life, and it was clearly a vision I filed away for future use.\n\nI took an Indian Railways train to Jaisalmer...then camels to the oasis.\n\nBack in British Columbia, I returned to standard North American adolescence, which in the 1980s was haunted by the aggressively-marketed romance of highways and gasoline. (Think: Bruce Springsteen's \"Born to Run\", _The Road Warrior_ , the _Back to the Future_ DeLorean...) I got my driver's license at 16, and one of my first jobs was as a delivery driver for a dental lab.\n\n## Sign up for High Speed\n\nTravel, Transit, Bicycles, Urbanism, and Dispatches from the Global Passenger Rail Renaissance, by Taras Grescoe\n\nSubscribe\n\nEmail sent! Check your inbox to complete your signup.\n\nNo spam. Unsubscribe anytime.\n\n### This post is for subscribers only\n\nBecome a member to get access to all content\n\nSubscribe now",
  "title": "No Regrets",
  "updatedAt": "2026-05-25T17:44:31.294Z"
}