After seeing An Inconvenient Truth, I discussed the movie with a friend who asked a good question: What are you doing differently? My answer took some thinking. While I do a number of everyday things taking resource consumption and impact into account, I hadn’t really made any specific changes despite being horrified at the future painted by Gore if we don’t all make some big ones.
So I decided to revive a routine from the days when NetDynamics was its own little company in Menlo Park and ride my bike to work whenever I don’t need a car for other reasons during the day. Plus it’s extra exercise time, another good thing.
I took my old Trek hybrid into Bicycle Outfitters for a tuneup–surprisingly they have a backlog on service work so it took 10 days to be ready–and picked it up Tuesday afternoon. TS1 went with me so we could stop at a market too, and when we got home the bike went in our storage space.
But I forgot, afterwards, to lock up the 4Runner. Old story, if my head wasn’t screwed on… Wednesday morning we came down to go to the gym and somebody took advantage of my laxity. Stuff from the glove compartment, between seats compartment and even the little bin on the inside of the door was strewn across the seats!
Apparently I do not leave good crap in the car since nothing was missing as far as either of us could tell. The only thing I would have picked are my nice pair of Oakley sunglasses, the rest is essentially a dozen or so rock cassettes that are at least 10 years old and two pairs of prescription glasses (one is sunglasses but the other is because I’m paranoid about being out on the road and losing my contacts). Also there’s a nice long winter coat, not very desirable in the midst of this nasty heatwave.
So we got away easy this time. Maybe it was just a neighbor demonstrating our poor judgment rather than a thief or a kid who wouldn’t know Bruce Springsteen from Bill Bradley.
Anyway, I had to run to Menlo Park yesterday to get my CPAP machine so no biking to work. Today was the day and despite going about six (seven?) years since my last ride I made it all the way to the office. A big seven miles of essentially flat riding, w00t! Plus the same to get back home in a couple of hours. Tomorrow is another trip to Menlo Park so Monday will probably be the second ride.
So this is my answer: As often as possible I’ll ride the bike to work rather than drive. A small change, only about 13 miles each day, but a good one.
My challenge to all my web friends: What can you–will you–do, small or large, differently to improve the odds we’ll leave the future a more habitable world?
BillSaysThis 