Fixpert

I’m glad gas is getting so expensive — you heard me! Gas prices are finally spanking us into thinking twice about our habits.

I own a car, and I drive to work every day. In fact, my #1 complaint (and sometimes my only complaint) about my job is that it is situated far enough outside of town that it’s not reasonable to bike every day. I’ve biked to work a few times and it’s around 15 miles each way — 30 miles total, which makes for 2 hours of riding. My company has a bike rack behind the building, but there are no showers, so the weather has to be perfect. I am totally willing to ride in the rain, sleet, and snow as long as I can change clothes and look professional at work.

Although I would love to ride to work every day, a two hour commute is not practical. It’s not a bike-friendly route either, no bike lane, no shoulder, crazy country roads with blind curves and people drive 50 mph, so I can only ride to work during Daylight Savings. Even then, it’s still kind of dangerous. And that’s coming from an ex-messenger. Seriously, if I got involved in a hit and run (not unlikely in the country, with no witnesses) no one would find me, and there’s often no cell phone coverage out there. It’s pretty dangerous for a girl by herself I’m sad to say — sometimes NYC is safer than ol’ Virginny.

All that said, I am prepared to ride my bike to work every day if/when we run out of gas, or if the prices get too ridiculous. I suspect we’ll at least have a temporary bump in prices as Rita heads towards all of those refineries in Texas. I’m interested in hearing from you, do you have a plan? What will you do if we run out of gas?

If you’re interested, keep checking back here at Fixpert — I’m going to be writing a lot more about our country’s dependency on oil and how that relates to city planning, infrastructure, disparity between economic classes, and our society and culture as a whole.