Can't speak for the rest of the world, where things may be different (owing to different laws, culture, fuel costs, etc.), but here in the UK I've found it massively convenient. I was a member of StreetCar for a while before they were taken over by Zipcar, and the whole thing has been really good. In my case, I live in Oxford, which is a pretty car-hostile city: little on-street parking, priority given to buses and bikes, expensive car parks, etc. I don't own a car, and - for the amount that I drive - it would cost me more to own and run (maintenance, duty, insurance, etc.) that it does to Zip, so that really works out well. I Zip about one evening a week, termtime, to get to college in a town about 20 miles away. Renting a Zipcar gets you 40 miles travel included, per day, so that kind of journey length is just about the "sweet spot". I sometimes borrow one on a weekend to go do some paramotoring. It's convenient to be able to pick up/drop off a car only when I need one, and not think about one the rest of the time. I've had only a handful of issues, ever. One came when the car I'd booked was returned late by the previous customer. It was the previous customer's first time renting a Zipcar, and (apparently; so Zipcar tell me their statistics show, new users are most-likely to miss return deadlines) he got it back about half an hour late, which threw my schedule off too. Zipcar worked hard to try to find my another conveniently-nearby car in their fleet to switch me to, and refunded me the difference in lost time, but it was still a little inconvenient. That was a year and a half ago, and since their fleets have been increased in size around here, it's not been an issue again. Their customer service is very good, and their web interface is friendly. You can pay an extra annual premium to reduce your excess in case of an accident, but I found that it's cheaper to get third-party excess reduction insurance (by about half), so I'd recommend that instead. We also use Zipcar For Business at a non-profit company that I run, which works out pretty well - it's often easier than calculating mileage for our volunteers using their own cars, and it means that we're quickly able to leverage a whole fleet of vehicles if we need one: at a conference we ran last year, it was great to be able to just grab as many cars as we needed, for the day, transport equipment around, and dump them back afterwards. I wish the nearest Zipcar to me wasn't parked three quarters of a mile away, though! I usually cycle out to collect it, but I'd far rather there was one on my street. Maybe someday: they seem to keep adding more!
Thank you for the great response. Right after posting this comment I saw something called a We Car in a parking lot here, which seems to be a similar concept. | I sometimes borrow one on a weekend to go do some paramotoring.| Paramotoring as in this? That's a whole different post. I'd love to hear more about that...
Not sure what I can say about paramotoring as a sport that you can't find via Google, so I'll try a personal perspective (with a little bit of fact-stuff in there): On paramotoring: Paramotoring is probably the lightest possible form of powered heavier-than-air human flight. A full set of paramotoring gear is lighter than a "trike" microlight (basically a hang glider with a trike and a propellor underneath) and less cumbersome than a hang glider. As a result, it often falls into a curious legal "gap" and is somewhat hard to define - here in the UK, for example, an aircraft that is (a) launched from feet, not wheels, (b) carries under 11 litres of fuel, and (c) is only flown in VFR conditions (in short: flown during daylight, not in fog, not in air-traffic-control areas, away from people) does not require a license to fly. In other words, you could go out and buy one and fly it today! You shouldn't, of course: it'd be very easy to break the law once you were airborne (air law still applies to unqualified pilots, just like the highway code applies to cyclists), and furthermore nobody would insure you (which means that when you get yourself snarled up in power lines or something, and they have to cut you down, you're gonna get stung). So I'm training with a tutor about 15 miles South-West of Oxford, where I live. I don't own my own equipment yet (I'm borrowing school equipment), but I'm hoping to buy my own this summer. I came to powered paragliding via hill paragliding (basically: running off the side of hills with a paraglider strapped to you). I did about 6-7 days training at hill paragliding about 14 years ago, with my dad (who was always interested in air sports, although he was never very good at them). I'd always been interested in powered paragliding, and so after my dad died (in an accident while training for an arctic expedition!) in 2012, I thought that a great use for the money I inherited would be to pick the sport up again. But round here, there aren't many hills, so hill paragliding was out anyway! For me, powered paragliding represents freedom. I love the idea that - once I'm confident enough to fly without supervision - I'll be able to just fling myself into the air for a quick fly. You don't need an airfield - just enough land (owned by somebody friendly) to take off from; you don't need a hanger (a paraglider wing folds into the space of a large backpack; the harness is no larger and far lighter; and the engine is no bulkier than a mountain bike); you don't need to file a flight plan; you just push-off-and-go. Paragliders in flight are, in my experience, just about the most unintrusive kind of human flight: having tried flying light aeroplanes, paragliders, hang gliders, microlights, and parachuting (and having been in larger aeroplanes and hot air balloons: haven't yet been in a helicopter or glider), I can say that for me, nothing feels quite like the "dream" of unaided flight like a paraglider. Once you're up in the air, floating on the breeze, you could easily forget that you're being aided by a wing at all, and trick yourself into believing that you were actually flying by yourself. Here's an awesome video (with thanks to /r/paragliding) which I think illustrates the freedom that I'm talking about. And how Zipcar helps me with the sport: Oh, and Zipcar? Zipcar just makes it really easy. I don't need to know in advance whether or not the weather (very variable, in my part of the world!) is going to be suitable for flying in advance: I can wait until the night before or even the morning of a flyable day, go pick up a car, and drive off to the club. Unlike a conventional rental, I don't need to book in advance to be sure of getting a car (and don't have any difficulty picking up or dropping off on Sundays), and unlike owning a car, it doesn't sit unused through the winter months. All I need now is a job that will let me take holiday days at very-short notice, and I'm set for all the paramotoring fun I can handle. Right now, sadly, I'm mostly limited to weekends. We Car has started to roll out in the UK, too (under a different brand), by the look of things: their prices look pretty similar to Zipcar's. I've also seen Community Car and WhipCar, the latter of which takes a different approach of letting car owners lend their cars to others, rather than owning their own fleet.
Thanks for the fantastic reply, I really appreciate it. As someone that had 0 knowledge of the sport, I feel as though you caught me up to speed nicely. The video you linked to makes it look like wonderful activity but I have to ask, is it similar to parasailing? I've done that in Acapulco, and while it was fun it wasn't what I thought it would be. First off, I imagine you have control while paramotoring, which I didn't have parasailing. But I also thought it would feel "fast" and be exhilarating from a "speed" perspective and it really wasn't. It was more pastoral than I thought it would be. Beautiful and serene but in no way fast and adventurous. Is paramotoring different? I find it admirable that you used some of your inheritance to further explore that which your father introduced you to. On a side note, I record the TNG Podcast for Hubski and was planning on having the next topic be "FUN", as in What do you do for fun? Would you care to participate and talk about paramotoring? Have a listen to previous podcasts: http://hubski.com/tag?id=tngpodcast and let me know if you'd be interested. Thanks again and happy sailing...
Indeed: paragliding does give you a great feeling of control. You're constrained by the weather conditions, especially if you're not paramotoring, but I can't imagine it's much like parasailing at all (which seems more like parachuting to me, but with even less control than that!). I'm not sure that I'm knowledgable enough to paint the best possible picture of paramotoring (still a beginner, really)! Still: thanks for introducing me to the podcast: I'll give that a listen!