In response to the government's depressing non-answer to global warming (and because I fear a world without fish and polar bears), I decided to try not driving for an entire week. A few highlights.
Day 1: Excited, I head up to the Duke Bikes Outpost after work, but all 130 bikes are out on loan. Good for the program, bad for me. I decide carpooling is going to have to count.
Day 2: Feeling environmentally magnanimous, I join my roommates on their trip to the Durham Farmers Market and learn how to cook spaghetti squash from a local farmer, only to come home and realize all I have to eat in the house is my new spaghetti squash, a tomato and mustard, and Target is on the other side of a freeway. Crap.
Day 3: I hitch a ride to Duke and find out no bikes have been returned all day. After hissing in frustration/hunger, I call my friend Jen and her two cyclist roommates and borrow a sick ten-speed Trek.
Just when I'm starting to stare dejectedly into my cupboard again, another friend calls and says he's on his way to The Cheesecake Factory, if I'd like to come. I dance a jig for my good fortune as I run out the door, then proceed to get absolutely toasted on two martinis because I haven't eaten all day. After lunch I ask for another basket of bread and steal it.
Day 4: It's only after I hop on Jen's $3,000 bike to ride the six miles from my house to school that I realize I haven't actually ridden a bike since I was about 12. I decide I need to give mad props to real cyclists as I almost fall into a bread truck while fiddling with the eighteen different gear shifts.
Day 5: I have to TA, so I spend an entire hour trying to contrive a way to schlep a ten -pound computer and eight-pound power strip to school on a bike with tires the width of slices of bread and become flummoxed. I finally give up and drive but stop at Target on the way home 'cause I feel guilty and buy five-year fluorescent bulbs to replace all the incandescents on my side of the house (and, OK, some food, but nothing individually packaged). I also finally get a Duke Bike! Score!
Day 6: Thicker tires in hand, I ride to school on a Duke loaner, which is substantially bigger than Jen's bike and makes my crotch feel like it's going to fall off. I have been to hell, and it involves TAing in spandex after lugging an archaic computer six miles on your back. I'm beginning to wonder what I did to deserve this.
Day 7: Finally free of my burdensome computer, I bounce out of my house with more energy than I've had in weeks. With the wind whistling through my cheesy superhero helmet and my feet actually touching solid ground, I almost don't notice the bruises on my thighs. I find myself smiling at people with open windows at stoplights; being nice to the environment makes me feel all warm and squishy inside.
I begin to suspect the solution to my ever-present stream of anxieties about papers and work could be solved if only I put myself in constant danger of being hit by a car. Throughout the day, I only print papers if absolutely necessary and notice when other people don't recycle. I'm eating more vegetables, and I have more time since I don't have to schedule trips to the gym.
In my (almost) week of carelessness, I discovered, as I might have expected, that forgoing driving entirely is not a reasonable option for most suburban Americans, who would have to expend an enormous effort to switch to human-powered transportation simply because of fast-paced lifestyles and the distance between work and home. As difficult as it was for me to keep my work life together on a bike, it would be insurmountable for a parent with kids that needed to get to soccer practice.
That said, making a short intense commitment, even if you fail (as I did), makes the little stuff, like recycling and eating foods from local farms, seem even easier. Furthermore, getting out of my little air-conditioned bubble to touch real earth and see the sky without the film of windows made the environment seem like a much more real thing to save. I can ride on that.
Jacqui Detwiler is a graduate student in psychology and neuroscience. Her column runs every Friday.
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