US ENERGY CRISIS UPDATE
Gas prices are too high, right? Absolutely unbelievable — somebody should do something about this, shouldn’t they? How can we get by paying $4 a gallon? Who’s getting rich off this? Why doesn’t the government step in?
Those thoughts - headlines - rants - often go through my mind as I ride. Sitting on a bike turns out to be a great place from which to observe strange behavior, the most glaring of which, at least recently, is just how people USE their precious gasoline. Some examples I’ve experienced recently are listed below; see if any of them sound familiar to you:
> Chevy big-as-the-burbs Suburban with mom and maybe one kid occupying it’s dozen or so seats accelerates from behind small group of riders, bringing its Queen Mary girth up to Starship Enterprise Warp-Speed in less time than it takes soccer-mom to speed-dial her cellphone.
Promptly thereafter, same mom slams on the binders, melting carbon brakes to a heat that induces a small blackhole in the universe and causes the stirrings of a new cyclone over Bangledesh, and hangs a tighty-righty in front of the fluxomed cyclists. Entire distance covered in this maneuver, fifty yards.
Auto fuel consumed unnecessarily: enough to make a Saudi prince blush.
> Pulling out of my garage, which is conveniently located a whopping ten bike-lengths from the entry to a significant-sized new subdivision (yes, they’re still building more homes), I note cement trucks, tractors, and a small fleet of pick-em-ups from the builder, developer, the city inspector, gas company, Ma Bell, and pretty much anybody else who owns a pick-em-up truck and doesn’t have anywhere else to be.
What in the world could all these vehicles have in common, beyond that almost every one is operated by a man? The answer is that EVERY VEHICLE HAS ITS ENGINE RUNNING.
So? So, you ask. Well, most of them aren’t actually doing anything, except sitting there burning gas. Yes, they do this on cold days, to keep the cab warm for when they get in at lunch and at the end of the day. Oh, and they do it on hot days, to keep the a/c running for when they…you get it. And they do it on 70 degree days, because, well, I don’t know why. So I asked. Here are some of the responses I got -
* I need to keep my PC charged (quote, ATT guy)
* Company pays for the gas (i.e., why care about something someone else is paying for?)
* It uses gas if you turn it on and off (notwithstanding that it probably uses more if you never turn it off - ed.)
* Just habit
So there you go.
> Out riding the white line which drivers grudgingly view as the edge of cyclist kill zone, and behind me is a tentative driver torn between the urge to not drive 22 mph (my speed at the moment) in a 25 zone, but sorta wanting to avoid killing anyone, unless need be. He is a youngish guy in a decrepit minivan with paste-on flames. No joke.
Next thing I hear from behind is the sound of his engine winding up for an apparent shot at the checkered flag at Taladega. Then, lurching out into that no-man’s land called Oncoming Traffic is said anemic minivan, making its move at great cost to a vehicle already well past it’s “best used by” date.
It wheezes by so close to me I reconsider my longstanding alienation from the Boys R Us church, while vehicles approaching from the other direction are forced to make acquaintance with the gravel shoulder on their side of the road.
Fortunately, I wasn’t struck by anything other than irony. Of, uh, what? You ask. Of the fact that this Jackass outtake occurred less than fifty yards from an upcoming Stop sign, where the van and I, once again, share a moment in time. The driver wouldn’t look at me. I was okay with that.
Gas used unnecessarily: A week’s take-home pay for our star of this Jackass video.
- Out on a Sunday morning Oh-God-Early with the guys, five of us riding a paceline along the twisties of rural America. We pass properties with grass and pretty fences, behind which we see horses, deer, birds, etc. - and they’re all asleep.
“Car back,” shouts one of the guys in our group, and there’s bubba in his fanciful Ford Four-by-Four and Bigger’n-A-County-Fair pick up truck. He sits back patiently, it seems, until he can see around the next bend, which gives him possibly a nanosecond to get by us without playing Russian Roulette with any oncoming traffic around the next bend. He juices it, gas pedal floored, engine noise blasting through Glasspack “mufflers” loud enough to wake up the entire county.
By the time he drops our lead rider, he’s doing a zillion miles per hour. He raises his hand, you can see him do it through his rear window, and makes a gesture (no, not that gesture, the other one) like he just won the Daytona 500, and we just lost.
Later, we take a break from our ride and try to come to grips with how a guy in a vehicle with a five hundred horsepower engine feels as glorious as Lance Armstrong dropping Pantani on Alpe d’ Huez — when he gets the best of five guys on bicycles?
Okay, so there are a few of the countless examples one can see in any given ride, of people’s behaviour behind the wheel being completely independent of the price of fuel.
I mean, I drive a car also. This isn’t a story of us-versus-them, bikes against cars, and we’re holier than thou. But the fact that I ride a bike means I get a Skybox view of things people do that suggests that either their whining about fuel prices isn’t from the heart, but maybe reflects simply that there haven’t been a flurry of shark-attacks recently to dominate the news and popular discussion, or that we want fuel prices to be lower primarily so we can continue to senselessly waste the stuff.
Based on my observations, the average driver could cut his/her fuel bill by at least 20% if they just drove more conscientiously. But we refuse. So we get $4 a gallon and climbing.
In short, we get the gas prices we deserve, don’t we?
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