How far would you go?

Residents of Los Angeles don’t know quite what to make of 28-year-old Jeremy Michaels  -- it’s been eight months since the native Rhode Islander moved into a Redondo Beach condo, and he still doesn’t have a car.

            “I don’t need one,” says Jeremy, shouldering a heavy knapsack as he starts his daily commute. “My two feet and a Metro pass will carry me everywhere I need to go.”

Jeremy works in a virtual office in Pasadena, buying and selling used plasma TV’s on eBay. Roughly 35 miles away, his commute would take less than an hour in a car, but using public transit the trip takes him about two and a half hours, each way.

“I never needed a car in Rhode Island,” Jeremy says, “and I don’t need one here. People just need to change their perceptions.”

 Jeremy’s day starts at 5:30 am with a half-an-hour walk to the nearest bus stop, then a 45-minute bus ride to another bus that takes him, finally, to the train. Once he gets off the train in Pasadena, another 15-minute walk gets him to the office.

“I try to get there by 9:30, but it doesn’t always happen. Luckily, I don’t have a boss, so if I’m late, it’s no big deal,” Jeremy says, straightening his tie.

Friends and neighbors are at loss to explain his bizarre behavior.

“You have to have a car in L.A.,” says Martin Clarke, 31, one of Jeremy’s roommates.  “I've never heard of anyone without a car. Even winos have wheels." Martin takes a sip from his super-sized Red Bull.

"One time I gave Jeremy a ride to Inglewood where you can get any kind of car for $500, and he said he didn’t have any money. But then later he showed me a CD player he got at Bang & Olufsen for at least $1000.”

Martin shakes his head.  “The dude just doesn’t want a car.”

Jeremy defends his purchase of the $1400  CD player. “The BeoSound 1? It’s amazing. Music gives you something back every day. A car? It’s just tomorrow’s recycling bin. Literally.”

 “At first I thought Jeremy was just broke,” says Jonathon Gold, 39, speaking to us outside the Redondo Beach condo he shares with Martin and Jeremy.  “I know a lot of people from back East don’t have much money, so I thought he was just saving up. But when he didn't buy something after a couple of months, I knew he was weird.”

 Jonathan, a professional valet and surfer, is a native of nearby Manhattan Beach, and never remembers a time when he didn’t have a car. “I got my first car when I was three – a 1974 Jaguar XKE convertible that my dad bought me to use as playhouse. In fact, I still have it. It's a collectible."  Jonathon points to dusty car parked on the curb. Two tires are flat, and weeds have grown up through the bumpers. 

"I offered to sell it to Jeremy for $12,000, but he said no. I don’t drive the Jag much anymore, not since I got the Carrera.” Jonathon glances at a car under a car-cover in the garage and pats it on the hood like a dog.  “I can’t imagine life without a car. Not here. Not anywhere.”

            “At first I thought Jeremy was one of those 'trying to save the Earth' people,” says Jeremy’s ex-girlfriend, Rhalanda Jones, 19. “I liked him. He was different and cool. But he wasn't Vegan or anything and he didn’t even want to ride in my car, a Prius!"

Rhalanda finds a picture of Jeremy on her phone. The photo shows a dimly parking lot and a lone figure walking away, bent under a large backpack -- like Frodo climbing to Mt. Doom. ‘No cars’ he said. ‘No cars.’”

             “Jeremy was always proud,” says Jeremy’s father, Daniel Micheals, 52.  “Too proud. Wouldn’t take piano lessons because it bothered him that he didn’t already know how to play. Tried to change his own diapers. The truth is, he can’t drive, and he’s too stubborn to learn how.”

Jeremy denies that he actually doesn’t know how to drive. “I can breathe, can’t I? No one taught me how to do that,” he says.  “Of course I can drive. I just don’t want to.”

Jeremy admits that he could probably do his job from home, and not commute anywhere at all but he says he likes the structure his commute provides.  “I came out here to write a book, and I'm doing it. I’m writing a book of exercises  that people can do while they’re sitting -- isometric crunches, deep breathing, that kind of stuff. It's going to help a lot of people.”

            “That time on the bus is my time, my time to meditate, my time to think,” he says, boarding the Gold Line to Pasadena. “Plus, I get away from Jon and Martin. I wouldn’t trade that for any car in the world. "