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September 2, 2005
moving towards living my politics 
Like so many, I cannot believe the devastation in Louisiana and Mississippi. I feel so helpless. This could have been prevented. This could have been prevented. Not hurricanes, obviously, but the conditions that make hurricanes stronger. Not flooding, but ensuring that the levees were strong enough. What about evacuation of the poor? What about securing our largest national port? Isn't that national security, having a plan for disasters that have been predicted, for heavens sakes? Isn't that national security, protecting the poor—if for no other reason that they will cause revolution if you don't?
As Michael Moore wrote:
Can you imagine leaving white people on their roofs for five days? Don't make me laugh! Race has nothing -- NOTHING -- to do with this!
Anyways, sorry. It's really on my mind.
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Bike ride, ride, ride. Lots of bicyclists out. It's quite nice, that.
I've been thinking that I need to take everything down a notch. I've been running a deficit the size of my student loan payment every month since my student loan came due, and I think it's time to acknowledge that it's there, and figure out how to stop that.
What I've been coming up with is pretty common sense, I suppose. Cook and eat at home, that should save a pile of cash. Use the bike for transportation more. Try to use the car even less than I already do.
Something that I've been really interested in is a local product called a stokemonkey.
Stokemonkey is an electric motor assist kit for Xtracycle Sport Utility Bicycles. Xtracycle gives almost any bike amazing cargo capacity, and Stokemonkey gives you the power to haul it over mountains or swiftly across town.
It's for people who want to transport their spouse, their child, and their camping gear a dozen hilly miles offroad and back. It's for picking up a friend with two checked bags at the airport. It's for your knees. And if there are thousands of vertical feet between your farmers market and your family kitchen, now you can pedal those couple dozen melons home without qualifying for charitable sponsorship.
It's for people who commute twenty-five miles each way, can't shower at the office, and never want to sit in traffic. It's for taking the lane without slowing motorists down.
It's for people who understand that tweaking the efficiency of personal vehicles too heavy to lift is coming at sustainability problems from the wrong end, while ignoring the social and health problems of car dependence in built environments altogether.
I love the idea of being able to give up the car almost completely—to move to a Flexcar type model. I'd love to be a bicycle zealot—but as long as I'm a hundred pounds overweight and riding a 3-speed, even as wonderful as it is—that's going to be a hard row to hoe, you know?
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Tomorrow is an 11 miler. I'm game to make it a 30K, to make up for a couple weekends ago. I haven't entirely come up with the game plan for this yet. But I'm looking forward to a good walk.
Posted at September 2, 2005
Comments
I want a stokemonkey and an xtracycle too! I'm in lurve with the xtracycle.
Posted by: Cheesepuppet at September 3, 2005 10:26 PM
I'm with you, VJ. I'm so saddened for those suffering and so angry with our government. There have been some very good OpEd pieces in the New York Times that have got me both steamed and thinking (especially about FEMA), but I feel pretty helpless. Yes, money has gone to the Red Cross (is there a better option?) and I'll continue to vote my conscience, but I don't know what else to do. Sigh.
Posted by: dark_o_clock at September 5, 2005 10:56 AM