Sometimes Ideals are Just Ideas

Time for a little moaning and groaning today. As I read stories about others and how they have been able to get rid of their cars, live more environmentally friendly, etc. it becomes inspiring and really gets me thinking about what I can do. I commute to work by bicycle most days. We still own 2 motor vehicles, though. Last weekend we (me, my wife and 2 kids) decided to go to a little holiday street festival in a nearby town. I thought this would be a great opportunity to take our friendly neighborhood trolley. It is a great system, except it rarely goes where you need to go. Luckily, it takes us right to the holiday fair. However, it is about 2 miles from our house to the nearest station. Unfortunately this means driving our car to the station. OK, it is still better that driving the nearly 10 miles to the fair and looking for parking. We get to the station and my wife and I each pay our $4.50 for fare. That’s 9 bucks for us to travel less than 20 miles round trip. This is minus the kids, since kids ride free on weekends. Again, I know that public transit is better overall for the environment and traffic congestion, but 9 bucks for a simple trolley ride? We could drive nearly 100 miles in our car for that! Now I guess if we had to pay for parking that would make up for it somewhat, but I think in this situation we could have found free parking without much trouble. The other thing is time. This 10 mile trip took at least a half hour. By car would have been about 10 to 15 minutes. Coming home was worse, as we had to transfer once and the wait was about 20 minutes. It was probably about 45 minutes to return. Plus, we are waiting out there at night, there are a few teenagers messing around, and my wife is obviously getting very nervous about the whole thing. We had no incident and made it home OK, but I know this has turned her off from the whole “take the kids out on public transit” thing.

OK, the following morning I plan to take the kids in our bike trailer down to the grocery store a few blocks away to pick up bagels for breakfast. They get ready and I get them all buckled in the trailer. They are OK at first, but then start bickering at each other. By the time we get ready to return home my daughter does not even want to ride with her brother. She says she does not want to ride in the trailer with him anymore. Well, there is another one of my bright ideas shot down in flames. Maybe by next time they will have forgotten about the bickering and enjoy the ride.

I try to do the right thing, and the ideas sound really good in my head. Putting them into play seems to be quite a challenge sometimes, though. It looks like we still have a long way to go.

Guilty

I must confess that yesterday I acted like the typical person who does not care what he is doing to the world… It started out innocently enough. I had the unexpected surprise that my wife was going to visit some relatives for a party, and she was taking our two kids with her. This meant that I would actually have a few hours to myself. If you have small kids of your own, you know that this is an opportunity not to be squandered. I am the kind of person who, when he gets this type of opportunity, about a million things run through my head. So, this day I decided to go mountain biking. I normally ride a road bike, and have not been mountain biking in a few years. I acquired an old mountain bike a couple of years ago and have been slowly, very slowly, getting it into good working order. I had it just about ready, so this seemed like a good day to test it out. I pull it out of the garage and inflate the tires. I notice that the front tire is on backwards. It is one of those that has the little arrow indicating the rotation direction. Great. Well, I figure I’ll just flip it around, just reverse the quick release lever and be good to go. Now the brakes are not centered. One side is rubbing. Now I figure the quickest thing to do is readjust the brake pads. This is one of those old bikes, and adjusting the pads can be a bit tedious. So, an hour later I have the pads close enough to make do. The pads are adjusted and I am running around trying to remember everything I need for not road biking but mountain biking. I find my water-carrying backpack. I find my old hand-held tire pump that fits into the backpack. I grab the little mini-tool and patch kit off another bike. I grab a spare tube that I hope will work in case I get a flat. By now it is around 2 in the afternoon. The days are getting pretty short now, nearly dark by 4:30. My plan was to ride the bike over to the regional nature trails park about 3 miles away. So, by now I am thinking it’s only 3 miles, but it is a bit hilly. What if I don’t make it back before dark? I have been trying to maintain the philosophy that all of my bike riding should begin and end at my house. None of this “load up the bike and drive somewhere just to ride” kinda stuff for me. But, the hour was getting late and by now I was determined to get out and ride. So, reluctantly, I load up the bike and associated paraphernalia into my big, but seldom used, van. I head on over to the park and even while unloading the bike I already feel guilty about it. But, I really want to test out the bike. So, off I go. About 10 minutes into riding I hear something rattling against the rear spokes. I finally determine that the chain is slipping off the bottom gear of the rear derailleur. Then I notice that one of the rear cogs is slipping a bit. Well, this is nice. I proceed on down the paved road to another section of trails. It goes OK until I try to make it up a steep rocky hill. The chains slips off again I am forced to dismount. I get it back going again until the next hill. Same thing. This time I have to walk the bike up to the top. By now I am pretty much frustrated with the bike and turn around. With a couple of more chain slips I make it back to the van. Wasn’t that fun? I load up and head back home. All in all, maybe an hour on the bike at the most. It is hardly dark yet.

While I am out in the van I realize how dirty it has gotten from being parked under a tree at my house. Lots of sticky stuff dripped down the driver’s side. Once I get home I decide that this thing needs a good washing. Out comes the bucket of hot water and soap. I soap up the van and spend a good hour trying to the get this sappy crap off of it. All the while soap and all kinds of dirt go floating down the driveway, into the street and down a storm drain somewhere. Yep, that should help out the ocean.

So, what am I gonna do? Try as I might, sometimes I just give in to the normalcy of our society and do the regular stuff people do to screw up the planet. This morning I made sure to ride my regular bike to work. Even though it was cold and I was struggling a bit, it felt great! Guilty as charged.