Magazine - summer 03 - St. John's College

{Alumni Voices}
45
method less fuel-efficient than the private
automobile.
I hope that we never have to resort to
buying another car.
Laura: At first I felt a bit nervous about
not having a car. I didn’t really have any
good reasons—it was just unsettling. We
had heard, and answered, many of the
arguments against getting rid of the car
altogether. What if there’s a medical
emergency? Call an ambulance. What if
you’re in a hurry? It can’t be helped, even
with a car. What if you want to haul something
big and heavy? Get a heavy-duty bike
trailer or rent a car for a day. What if you
want to go on a trip? Rent a car, or take
public transportation, trains, or planes.
I think what was behind most of my
unsettled feelings was the big step we had
just taken outside of mainstream culture.
We’re already a little outside mainstream
culture. We don’t own a television, dishwasher,
clothes dryer, or microwave, and
we went to St. John’s College. But something
about the car seemed so essential
to the American identity. And we were
abandoning it.
Now we have to think through each trip
to see if it is worth the effort. I like having
to be creative about how we’re going to get
places. I like the freedom of traveling outside
the main stream of traffic. I like providing
a respectable role model for my kids.
I’ve even stopped impulse-shopping at
thrift stores and yard sales. Now I wait until
there’s something I really need before I go
on a shopping trip.
The other day, Paul expressed exactly
how I felt about the car. He said he changes
his behavior when he catches himself doing
something that makes him feel like an
idiot. Like using the plastic produce bags
at the market, rather than some of the hundreds
of bags we have stuffed in a drawer at
home. Once he reaches the idiot point, he
changes his behavior. I realized that the car
enabled me to do idiotic things—things for
which I could not summon any self-respect.
I was adding to pollution, road rage, the
economy of cheap plastic crap, and I was
getting no benefit from it.
May 9
Paul: Yesterday, I ordered the Bike Friday
Family Triple bike. I think it is going to be
a good bike, but it is costing us quite a bit
of money, almost $700 over what we
received for the car. We are getting the
john hartnett
suitcases and trailer kit, so we will be able
to bike to the train station when we get to
that point in our lives. In the afternoon, we
bicycled out to Eldorado for a baby shower.
I wanted to mention that we sold the car,
but I was somewhat uncomfortable, almost
apologetic about it. Getting rid of the car is
a bold move, but if it works out, it is, in a
way, an indictment of others’ behavior.
And people are apologetic about their own
car use when I talk about getting rid of
ours. I suppose that’s a good thing, but I
wouldn’t want to lose any friends over our
decision.
Laura: Yesterday, Paul ordered us a triple
bike. We already own a tandem bike. Paul
rides on front and Sadie rides on back.
Together they haul Zeb in a bike trailer
that we refer to as “the Chariot.”
We now have nine bikes and one on
order. I have a backup in case mine needs
repair. We own three tandem bikes, two of
which we ride a lot. The first one we
bought has sentimental value (we got it for
each other as an anniversary present). Paul
has three bikes. He’s a collector at heart,
but he tries to ride all three. And we have a
kid trailer and a bike trailer for stuff (not
people).
Everyone seems to think Santa Fe is not
a safe town to bike in, mostly because there
isn’t a good trail system. Personally, I feel
safer on the roads. As long as I follow the
traffic rules and act predictably, I get to
flow easily with the traffic. I think Santa Fe
is a very bikeable town, only seven miles
across, and most rides within city limits
can easily be done in less than an hour.
The Cooleys found a better use for their
garage.
May 18
Paul: It’s been almost two weeks since we
sold the car. I am working on a book on
being car-free, focusing more on the
difficult-to-describe social impacts of the
reliance on automobiles. Ivan Illich’s
Energy and Equity contains many of the
ideas I would like to focus on and which I
am still struggling to understand. He
speaks of the growth of time and space
scarcity as vehicles begin to pass 15 miles
per hour. He also points out that our
freedom to travel is restricted by industry
once we begin to rely on motor vehicles
and transportation engineers for our
means to get from one place to another.
We make a fundamental shift from travelers
to consumers of transportation. Has
the ability of our intellect to wander over
vast and shifting fields of imagination
been influenced by the restriction of our
physical wandering to well-laid roads and
clear destinations?
Behrman’s The Man Who Loved Bicycles
captures some of the spirit of what I would
like to say. How can I express the freedom I
feel at not being restricted to driving when
so many people would look at the same
thing as a deprivation? We do have more
friends taking to their bicycles, if only for
short rides.
Laura: We just got back from an overnight
camping trip to Hyde Park. I never thought
I’d spend three hours riding up, hauling
kids and camping gear. It’s amazing to see
how my perspective is changing. It’s very
empowering to know that we can take our
family on a self-supported bike tour–even
one that includes mountains.
Lately, we’ve found ourselves drawn to
bike activist meetings, trying to get more
rights for bicyclists in our city. If we don’t
do it, who will?
Paul’s wondering again what to do with
the driveway. He’s mentioned digging up
the concrete and putting in a garden.
He’s talked about putting in a bike shed
for storage, or a bike rack to encourage
visitors to bike over. But for now, I’m
enjoying the new open space and the
satisfaction of one less car on the block. x
{ The College • St. John’s College • Fall 2004 }