After two years on campus without a car, I, like many before me, have developed an acute appreciation for life’s smaller pleasures: anything and everything off campus.

During happier, more mobile times, I would never have thought that the stomach-turning texture of an over-microwaved Costco sample or the persistent stench of a crowded gas station could provoke a feeling of such freedom. None of us really knew, in happily signing that on-campus living agreement, that we were resigning ourselves to the kind of 10-week dorm entrapment and dining-hall overconsumption that could breed insanity in even the most zen of dorm dwellers.

Last weekend, though, my sense of confinement reached new heights.

After a Friday night that ended in barely succeeding to make macaroni and cheese with a good friend at 4 a.m. and promptly thereafter passing out face down — mud still damp on the back of my pants (don’t ask) — we awoke the morning after with insufferable headaches, green rhinestones plastered to our cheeks and a strong sense of purpose.

At some uncertain point during a party in Hillcrest the night before, my friend had managed to rid herself of both a brand-new iPhone and her keys (Lady Gaga, anyone?). While the phone ended up safely in the hands of another friend somewhere in the Windansea area, her car keys nowhere to be found. Given our lack of vehicular mobility, options for recovery were limited. Just as we were preparing to concede our fates to the harrowing inefficiency of the Metropolitan Transit System, though, we were struck by brilliance: With my roommate’s ZipCar account at my disposal, we’d surely be able to book it to Windansea, Hillcrest and back to campus in the span of a single hour — my forgetful friend returning with car keys and a renewed sense of personal dignity.

The ridiculousness that resulted bore little resemblance to my ingenious plan. Evidently, we weren’t the only ones itching to flee campus on a Saturday afternoon, as each of the four designated ZipCar parking spots were empty for the duration of our two-hour search.

After spending half the afternoon circling campus in a golf cart and matching sweatshirts, calling out the occasional campus tour guide on his dirty, vicious lies about UCSD, our vain search for a vacant ZipCar concluded. I took out a $20 from the ATM downstairs for her bus fare, we hustled to Gilman and Myers just as MTS Bus Route 30 was about to depart, and she was on her merry way out into civilization.

What struck me most about the whole ordeal, though, wasn’t so much my bitterness toward the car-sharing program, nor toward whatever cruel, selfish souls prioritized taking a ZipCar for a Costco joyride over my friend’s well-being. No, the whole episode reminded me most of what is probably my least favorite thing about this school: Without the aid of motorized transport, an on-campus dweller’s greatest exposure to the outside world comes in the form of a $2 burger from Price Center. Or a Jamba Juice — which, as of press time, doesn’t even have a two-for-one promotion anymore. Great.

This dire state of affairs will probably only worsen come fall, when the Parking & Transportation Services department will be forced to cut campus shuttle lines and/or bus-line subsidies. In the meantime, I think I’ll start handcuffing my friends’ keys to their wrists when we go out together. It’s a long, cold walk back down to the bus stop.