The Problem With Cars

Cars are the enemy! I have been thinking about cars and bikes more than usual lately because I find myself faced with the problem of not having enough dough to get my car through inspection which is coming up this month. I have often thought about using my bike to get everywhere and save the money I am spending on gas, insurance, upkeep etc. Now may be the time when I have no choice! The problem is I like driving. Maybe too much. I like riding my bike more though, when the weather is nice. When the weather is not nice I sometimes have difficulty getting myself outside. The other difficulty is that I live 33 miles from work. I think 70 miles a day on my bike might be bad for me. There really is no other obstacle to bike commuting for me. I have done the ride on a number of occassions. I realize now that bike commuting may be too impractical for many people. But on the other hand, bike commuting is probably very practical for others but they just won't do it!
I saw a "news" report the other night that showed people being interviewed about how bad the traffic congestion is in New York City. It was kind of funny though because one of the guys they interviewed was sitting in traffic, in a car, by himself. Hmmmm...One interviewee felt the city government needed to do more to find solutions to the problem. I laughed. Most folks don't realize that the answer to all the congestion is to stop driving so much! If the city just said "no cars in Manhattan" people would be up in arms and suing right and left. Lot's of that in the USA--"solve my problems for me but don't take anything away from me. Oh, and by the way, make sure it doesn't cost me any money either!"
I was talking with a friend of mine the other day and, based on our conversation, I have been labeled a communist. That's okay with me because I suspect my friend is a pretty staunch conservative. No, not one of those right wing, fanatically Christian, "Neo-Cons", just an old fashioned type. My friend has some money and it suits him well. He is also an attorney specializing in criminal defense so I suppose his ideology on politics and econmics is heavily influence by his contact with that world. He thinks I am a communist because I have the same viewpoint as H.G. Wells who said that "In Utopia, cycle tracks will abound". Wells was a hard core cyclist! From my friends perspective my perfectly reasonable ideas must seem radical. The point is that lots of the problems currently faciing this country could be improved tremendously through the use of the simple bicycle. Energy consumption, pollution, congestion in the streets, highway expense, terrorism (think about it, you'll start to make the connections), the obesity epidemic and it's related problems, not the least of which is the cost of treating them; these are all issues that would be addressed and improved if more people used bikes more often.
The thing that my friend and I could agree on was that people will not change their behavior until the situation becomes too painful. I wonder when that will be. Gas $6 a gallon? Homeland security eating up 50% of the federal budget? War with China as we fight for dwindling resources? More and more obese people dropping dead in the streets? Schools having to change the size of student desks because they are becoming too fat for the size desks available now? Health care being available to only 10% of the population? As human beings we have a bad habit of trying to stop things from happening after they have already happened. Closing the proverbial barn door after the horse has galloped away. Perhaps the muslim fundamentalists trying to kill all of us should save their explosives and just wait us out. We seem perfectly capable of bringing ourselves to ruin and getting there in our cars.

To Goal or Not To Goal?

My previous post seems to be pulling my relatives out of the woodwork! So far it's unanimous, setting goals is not necessary for having fun on your bike. Maybe not. The sad truth of it is that I live and die by goals. Sales goals, labor budget goals, inventory budgets, that sort of thing. If I miss my goals enough times, I basically don't eat. So you see, goals are somewhat important to me. Anyway, since goals seem to running my life right now, I decided I should have a goal that forces me to balance my life out a little bit. If I don't, the monster that is bicycle retailing will consume me whole.
I had a great ride tonight. It was one of those times when you decide at the last minute to go. The weather was threatening to be mean earlier in the day but the rain held off and the evening, although humid, turned out to be really nice. I sneaked on to the back of tonight's "Girl Power" ride. Our ride leader, Cathy, has a great route that I wanted to document using my new GPS computer toy. (Garmin Edge 205). The ride is twenty miles over some beautiful paved quiet roads, which if you are from around here you know, is a pretty rare treat., At one point we were riding on the Boulevard in Mountain Lakes which was paved recently along it's entire length. This stretch of pavement is so sweet I found myself just peddling as hard as I could for as long as I could. It was so much fun I barked like a dog when I got to the end! Sometimes the best experiences are the little ones that come about serendipitously.
The Garmin unit fascinates me. It stores all of my rides and allows me to download the data in to a variety of different mapping programs. I can also download on to a website called motionbased.com. The free "lite" version of there software allows you to see your route overlaid on to Google Earth photos. Pretty cool stuff although it is a little unnerving to know that there are 27 satellites in space watching me ride my bike. Weird.

Be your own hero!

Somebody named gnome1979 sent me a terse note that just said "time to update SON" Hmmm... What kind of a gnome would be so rude? I was getting ready to post anyway, so here are some random ramblings.
First, I decided last week that I had to start riding more. It is kind of stupid that I have a great job in the bike industry, but I don't get to do as much of the thing I love, which is riding, that got me started on this path to begin with! That said, I realized that I was not riding enough due to my own laziness and fondness for excuse making. Yeah, I work an average of 60 hours a week, but I still find myself wasting time doing stuff that isn't really productive or important, so I decided to stop doing that crap and start riding more! So, to facilitate my resolution I did two things that I realized were key. One was to set some sort of goal, and the other was to get myself out of bed earlier in the morning and go to bed earlier at night. It is amazing how much more you can do getting up an hour earlier than usual. I also realized that I did not need a crazy, lofty goal. A simple one that is achievable will work better. So, my goal is simply to ride 2500 miles more this year by December 31st. Since I started eight days ago I have logged 137 miles of road, mountain and rail trail miles. I think I am going to make it!!

Setting a goal got me to thinking about something else as well. Since the whole Floyd Landis doping thing surfaced, lots of people have been asking me what I think about it. I have to admit that I was pretty annoyed about it. First, Floyd winning the Tour De France seemed like a good thing for American cycling. Then, Floyd being under suspicion of cheating seemed to instantly tarnish the sport. I secretly worried about the very future of the bike industry. Then I thought "to hell with that". The world is obsessed with it's sports heroes and hold them up to impossible standards. Cycling, baseball, football...at the highest levels of these sports, with so much money on the line, cheating seems to be inevitable. I am not saying that I think Floyd is guilty. I am saying that I don't care! I realized in a moment of clarity that we all need to be our own heroes. A bicycle is a vehicle for turning yourself into a hero. Set goals and work toward achieving them. The goal should be a little out of reach but not impossible. You should need to stretch yourself to get there. That is how we become better. Set a goal that is hard and maybe a little intimidating. Have you ever ridden your bike a hundred miles at one time? Two hundred? Maybe five miles seems almost impossible. It doesn't matter. Just believe in yourself and work toward the goal. In the process you will find out that the journey towards becoming yourself and realizing that you are a strong and powerful person is the important thing and makes the journey worthwhile. Like Lance says, Livestrong! Become your own hero