All By Myself

This morning, because the car has been acting funny and because in one of the only traditionally gender-specific activities around our house, I’m usually the one to take it in, (another might be flower-arranging; Jen does that), I put my bike on the back of the Focus and drove it to the Ford dealership for some overpriced (but probably necessary) service.

I’m pretty sure this was the first time so far in 2008 that I’ve taken the car for what will be a round-trip all by myself. Every other time I’ve been alone in it, at least one of the legs of the drive has been to pick up Mimi or Jen and even those are a small minority of my times behind the wheel; on most of the occasions I’m in the car, I’m with at least one member of my family, if not both.

I say this only in part to brag—and to some extent, I’m not even sure it’s brag-worthy. Mainly, I propose it as an aspiration of sorts: think of what a difference it would make to our country’s consumption of fossil fuels if lots of us tried to do this. Consider of all the one-person car trips that are taken and how different our roads, environment, and pocketbooks would look if we really tried to minimize them.

Now granted, I’m incredibly lucky: almost everywhere I go—especially when I’m going there myself—I can get to by bike or through a combination of bike and bus. And because I have a racks, panniers, bags, and if I’m dealing with bigger stuff, a trailer, to haul stuff around, I can run nearly all my errands on two wheels.

But I’m not the only one, either; I have a couple other friends—one of whom has three kids—who are also trying not to drive unless they’re driving their families.

None of us always succeed at this goal, but we’re not alone trying.