Low-car diet: not counting carbs
I've been showing up, breathless and sweaty, at appointments. "I'm on a low-car diet!" I'll tell my meet-ee. He or she will look at me strangely for a minute (I'm obviously not overweight -- the metabolism, it is good to me).
"Not low-carb!" I'll explain. "I'm reducing the use of my car."
In a crunchy city like Portland, this seems ho-hum. Since I started my car diet informally a few weeks ago, I've found lots of people who, like me, are running fast in the other direction of gas prices. Some of my friends are taking the bus a lot, others I pass on the Springwater Trail commuting to and from work.
The thing is, I'd be crazy to count carbs with my low-car diet. I'm hungry all the time. When before, if I needed to pick up my photos from my fave downtown lab, I'd just hop in the car and zoom over, dreaming about drivethrough on the way home -- now I have a hard four-miler up and down hills and over the bridge.
The best thing about choosing my bicycle over the car, so far, is that I never have to look for parking -- even in this bike-friendly city, there's always room at the rack for me. The worst thing, so far, is that I haven't yet found a Burgerville with a bike-up window.
I wonder if anyone's done the math on human fuel vs. fossil fuels. Is it more expensive to power a human or 1000 pounds of steel, rubber and cushy leather seats for an eight-mile ride? Because I'll tell you, those energy bars just aren't cutting it when I'm biking 5-20 miles a day.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Claiborne Booker 7:26PM (7/03/2006)
Ms. Gilbert --
Congratulations on your low-car diet. You have a kindred spirit in Lucy Kellaway of the FINANCIAL TIMES, whose column this week is about her decision to switch to cycling some time ago:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/503348b8-09ea-11db-ac3b-0000779e2340.html
(It will most likely require a subscription to read the whole article, but it's well worth it.)
I enjoy your contributions.
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Elly 4:08PM (7/04/2006)
I've never been turned away from a Burgerville drive-through window while on my bike. You'll get funny looks from other customers, but the clerks seem to think it's totally normal. At some stores, a bike isn't heavy enough to trigger the intercom--the one time this happened to me, though, the manager ran out and took our order and brought it out to us on the green strip.
Other fast-food restaurants are rumored to be not as bike-friendly.
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