The background:
1. I sold my previous car in Seattle, flew to New Hampshire, and departed 8 days later on a 10 month deployment.
2. My ship returns home on 15-Nov. (Woot!)
3. I’ll be home a total of 6 non-continuous weeks, before departing for another 10-14 months
The requirements for a car:
1. I’m renting a MIL basement apartment, which is ~12 miles from the ship.
2. I work M-F, and spend most my evenings and weekends on-call.
3. When on-call, I’m required to be within 30 minutes of the ship at all times.
4. The ship has a habit of being in distress around 0245 in the morning, and urgently needing Papa
5. It’s New Hampshire, in winter.
6. I’m not biking 12 miles through NH winter at 0245 in the morning because the ship is in distress and I'm on-call.
The Remainder:
1. The rental basement is $300/month. Short term rentals w/in bike distance from the ship are $1500/month. The math on moving doesn't work, once you add in storage for household goods while on deployment.
2. I refuse to regularly ride in any car that is not equipped with ESC and many, many airbags.
3. I refuse to regularly ride in a car that does not have a full and transparent maintenance history.
4. I have very robust reasons for these refusals. It's possible you, helpful reader, would make different choices given the same history, and that's fine. But these are my choices. Lectures on the expensive illusion of safety will not sway me.
5. Renting a car for the 6 weeks home will cost around $1200.
6. The cheapest method or renting a car is BOS, which is around 2 hours by public transit from my home. Introducing a severe pain-in-my-ass quotient to renting. Especially considering my time home won’t be continuous.
5. The cost of a car with a satisfactory safety rating and maintenance history would be around $15,000.
Given my circumstances, and my stipulations, would you suck it up and rent a car for the 6 weeks? Or would you suck it up and buy a car that will end up sitting for almost a year?