I got this article from my Yahoo Odd News feed:
SHEBOYGAN, Wis. - Brian LaFave couldn’t care less how high gasoline prices climb these days — he’s parked his pickup truck and is refusing to buy gas for a month, possibly longer.
“The goal is to not use one drop of gas for 31 days,” LaFave said, calling it his personal stand against the oil companies.
Now LaFave, 31, is riding his bicycle or walking everywhere he goes. He won’t even let friends pick him up unless they already planned on being in the neighborhood.
“If they’re not going out of their way, I can take the ride,” he said. “But if they’re going out of their way, then … I’m still consuming gasoline so it kind of defeats the purpose.”
LaFave started the effort May 11. He bikes to his third-shift job at Aldrich Chemical in Sheboygan Falls, a 9-mile commute.
“I did like a practice run … two days in a row to make sure I could do it,” he said. “I’m not in the greatest shape. The mornings are the worst. It feels like it takes forever. I get like a mile down the road and I want to die.”
It’s a big change for someone who put 300 miles on his truck the week before he stopped driving it.
LaFave fills out a chart each day listing how many miles he bikes, the destination and the gas price that day, among other things. He plans to compute his savings and donate that amount to a charity that provides food to children in Africa.
“I think just with the gas prices being so high, everybody complains about it but no one ever really does anything about it,” LaFave said. “People continue to drive nonstop and not think about it, but I just wanted to take a stand and say, `I’m not gonna pay this much money for gas.’”
So, does that this mean that Bike Commuters are odd? Get real, this is what everyone else needs to do, stop bitching and complaining and find an alternative solution (my vote is for biking to work).
Maybe they should have posted it on their Front Page News feed instead.
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Bike Commuter Essentials at PricePoint.com
7 responses so far ↓
1 Iron Man // May 16, 2008 at 10:56 am
I guess “spite” is the latest reason to bike commute.
2 Ghost Rider // May 16, 2008 at 11:00 am
Sure we’re “odd”…from a typical motorist’s perspective. Or a typical journalist. What we do as bike commuters is self-empowering, regardless of the reasons we do it, and that’s hard for average folks to understand.
In the immortal words of Jimi Hendrix:
“White collar conservative flashin’ down the street
Pointin’ their plastic finger at me, ha !
They’re hopin’ soon my kind will drop and die but uh
I’m gonna wave my freak flag high, high !
Wave on, wave on…”
3 TJ Eckleburg // May 16, 2008 at 11:25 am
yeah, I kinda like being odd.
4 Moe // May 16, 2008 at 11:40 am
Interestingly, I got this comment from a co-worker: “Hey Moe, I guess you are in fashion”, I looked at her puzzled, “You bike commuters have been in the news all this week” she responded. At least I didn’t get the ‘Dude, you are weird’ comment that I usually get…
5 Iron Man // May 16, 2008 at 1:20 pm
I haven’t heard jack out our local media. You’d think this would be the year because of gas. Nope, not our news. Just one article on increased bike sales nationally that they picked up from the AP and a brief mention of Bike to Work Week in last Monday’s paper.
Our newspaper just recently did an article on what folks are doing to cope with the high cost of gas and not one person in the story was a cyclist. The article was full of brain dead morons. One woman coped by “not paying attention.” Her words. Her philosophy was that there was nothing she could do so why pay attention. That’s the kind of town I live in.
6 tad // May 16, 2008 at 2:59 pm
In the article, when I got to the part “I get like a mile down the road and I want to dieâ€?, I literally shat my pants.
On the plus side, if this obviously out of shape guy is willing to try it, then there is still hope for the rest of America. I bet if he goes the entire month he may even decide he likes bike commuting.
7 Pete D. // May 17, 2008 at 5:57 pm
The media thinks we are odd because “we” are addicted to the car culture. They think we are odd balls. I see these people in their SUVs, and they look so unhappy. It is a sad parade. I feel totally alive when I ride my bike to work or an errand. I like turning the worst part of my day (the commute) into the best part of my day (riding on my bike). The rest of America needs a similar paradigm shift.
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