Out of Shape
"I think that it's brainless to assume that making changes to your window's view will give a new perspective." -Death Cab for Cutie, Blacking out the Friction
Sharon, Asher, and I got bikes this weekend. Each of those stories is funny, but now is the time when y'all get to make fun of me first.
I forgot that bicycle tires are much more sensitive to low air pressure than car tires. I know, how could I forget. That's like when people tell me they forget how to work their digital camera when it's connected to their computer. But confession is good; I simply forgot. So I thought it'd be a fine idea to take my new bike (with almost no air in the tires) over to the gas station to use their pump to air them up. The air held in the front, but the back inner tube popped almost immediately, leaving me a mile from our house, with a (relatively) heavy bike with no back tire, which I then had to carry home. I'm so pathetically out of shape it took me something like thirty minutes to get home, with me stopping about every 100 yards to catch my breath and switch the side I was carrying the bike on.
It was then I realized the huge accommodation we've made for cars in our culture. Gas stations are somewhat far apart, but they're close enough together you almost never run out of gas. No one would think of selling a car you couldn't drive off the lot. If you saw somebody on the side of the road with their hood open you'd probably stop to help. Of course, if you were said person you'd have no qualms about leaving your car there to go get help for it worrying that it'd still be there when you got back. And of course the biggest: that the closest gas station to your house is a mile away, which is pathetically close when you're in your car and need air for your tires, but crazy far away when you have to carry your bike because you popped a tire.
I'm not advocating anything here (though, Lord knows, I like to advocate) just noticing an observation I had when I realized that, being new to the city, I didn't know anybody to call. There is a bike repair shop in Grove City, but I wouldn't expect (and neither would most people, I think) to call them and have them come get my bicycle and I in order to repair it, much less that an entire organization could boost their membership by offering such a service to its members for free.
We expect people riding bikes to have this stuff figured out for themselves. This doesn't surprise me; but it does surprise me that we don't make the same assumptions about people driving cars. We have developed an entire economy around making having a car convenient, and from that economy our culture has grown to an acceptance (even an expectation) of the use of one.
I know that cars are about a billion times more useful than a bike, but the centrality of the automobile is soon to be put to the test now that Americans have begun to realize that so much of their life (indeed, their whole economic world) is built on the premise that oil has a fixed price. As that fact changes, so will a whole boat load of economic assumptions.
(I remember overhearing in a conversation among the Rice speech people that the US was, more or less, an "oil standard" economy. I obviously don't know enough economics to say one way or the other, but it's an interesting premise.)
The other two stories will have to wait for another post, but I'll tease the Asher one by pointing out that this is the bike Asher really wanted and that we eventually ended up getting for him, despite the fact that we were going to originally buy him a tricycle.
Sharon, Asher, and I got bikes this weekend. Each of those stories is funny, but now is the time when y'all get to make fun of me first.
I forgot that bicycle tires are much more sensitive to low air pressure than car tires. I know, how could I forget. That's like when people tell me they forget how to work their digital camera when it's connected to their computer. But confession is good; I simply forgot. So I thought it'd be a fine idea to take my new bike (with almost no air in the tires) over to the gas station to use their pump to air them up. The air held in the front, but the back inner tube popped almost immediately, leaving me a mile from our house, with a (relatively) heavy bike with no back tire, which I then had to carry home. I'm so pathetically out of shape it took me something like thirty minutes to get home, with me stopping about every 100 yards to catch my breath and switch the side I was carrying the bike on.
It was then I realized the huge accommodation we've made for cars in our culture. Gas stations are somewhat far apart, but they're close enough together you almost never run out of gas. No one would think of selling a car you couldn't drive off the lot. If you saw somebody on the side of the road with their hood open you'd probably stop to help. Of course, if you were said person you'd have no qualms about leaving your car there to go get help for it worrying that it'd still be there when you got back. And of course the biggest: that the closest gas station to your house is a mile away, which is pathetically close when you're in your car and need air for your tires, but crazy far away when you have to carry your bike because you popped a tire.
I'm not advocating anything here (though, Lord knows, I like to advocate) just noticing an observation I had when I realized that, being new to the city, I didn't know anybody to call. There is a bike repair shop in Grove City, but I wouldn't expect (and neither would most people, I think) to call them and have them come get my bicycle and I in order to repair it, much less that an entire organization could boost their membership by offering such a service to its members for free.
We expect people riding bikes to have this stuff figured out for themselves. This doesn't surprise me; but it does surprise me that we don't make the same assumptions about people driving cars. We have developed an entire economy around making having a car convenient, and from that economy our culture has grown to an acceptance (even an expectation) of the use of one.
I know that cars are about a billion times more useful than a bike, but the centrality of the automobile is soon to be put to the test now that Americans have begun to realize that so much of their life (indeed, their whole economic world) is built on the premise that oil has a fixed price. As that fact changes, so will a whole boat load of economic assumptions.
(I remember overhearing in a conversation among the Rice speech people that the US was, more or less, an "oil standard" economy. I obviously don't know enough economics to say one way or the other, but it's an interesting premise.)
The other two stories will have to wait for another post, but I'll tease the Asher one by pointing out that this is the bike Asher really wanted and that we eventually ended up getting for him, despite the fact that we were going to originally buy him a tricycle.
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