One For the Road

photo via James Vaughan

Guest Post by Jan Bono

Crabby McSlacker and her intrepid spouse, known here as"The Lobster," are currently on the road. Regular readers may recall that they are heading from Provincetown Massachusetts to Austin Texas to spend the winter.  They are not flying (or walking or biking for that matter), so they find themselves spending many, many, many hours every day scrunched up in their perky but diminutive Honda Fit. Alas, it takes quite a bit of unscrunching at the end of the day to be able to walk again.

But anyway, it seems fitting that this week we have a car-related excerpt from Jan Bono's inspirational book, “Back from Obesity: My 252-pound Weight-Loss Journey.” Enjoy! --Crabby

Singing the car buying blues

My car was nine years old and had over 130,000 hard-earned miles on it. The trips to the repair shop had become alarmingly frequent. On Thanksgiving eve my vehicle had refused to restart after I shut it off at the gas station.

It was time to buy something new, but I was dragging my feet. I had purchased my Honda Accord in 1991 simply because it was the only car I could find at the time I could fit into. Now I was 30 or 40 pounds heavier. I was terrified I wouldn’t be able to find anything I could safely drive and stay within my budget.

“Get a Toyota,” said my friend Pat. “You’ll fit in a Camry, I’d bet on it.”

I didn’t want a Toyota.

Car Trouble

 via X-ray Delta One

By Crabby McSlacker

Yes, this is another gripey post, bringing yet more Cranky back to Cranky Fitness. Um, yay?

Our subject today: New cars and why they suck.

Why marathons are safer than elections

All the research I've studied lately seems to lead toward one conclusion: cars bad, bicycles or foot power good.

Marathons reduce road accidents

According to a British journal, "... marathons lower the risk of fatal motor vehicle crashes that might otherwise have taken place if the roads had not been closed."

On the other hand, road accidents rise on election day.

So it seems to me that what this world needs is more marathons and fewer elections. Can we take a vote on that?

Don't drive in the rain

Almost 25% of car crashes occur in bad weather. But apparently, snow and ice aren't responsible for as many crashes as mere rain. More accidents occurred in the southern parts of the U.S., which don't really go in for the ice and snow like the Midwest does.

"Many drivers recognize that snow and ice can cause them to lose control of their cars, but most underestimate the dangers that rain can pose. For this reason, more people travel in wet weather, and do not realize the need to adjust to lower speeds when traveling on wet roads."

On the other hand, runners and cyclists...

tend to reduce speed a whole lot when the weather's bad. Or opt to spend the day at the gym. Or they just go back inside, curl up on the couch, and catch up on the latest in Reality TV shows.

Yeah, we'll run later...
Photo credit: cursedthing

It's true what they say about Those Kinds of Drivers

People always told me that Volvo drivers were the worst on the road, because they felt safer in their cars. Turns out there might be something in that theory. (Not necessarily Volvo drivers, but in general people in 'safe' cars.)

According to The Smithsonian, the concept is that humans have an inborn tolerance for risk—meaning that as safety features are added to vehicles and roads, drivers feel less vulnerable and tend to take more chances. The feeling of greater security tempts us to be more reckless. Behavioral scientists call it "risk compensation."

Likewise, airbags and anti-lock brakes seem to thwart their intent because drivers with these are more aggressive.

I think there's a lot of truth in these studies, but I take exception to one part of this research.

These experts go on to say that this practice extends to sports, but I don't see that in my own commute. Cyclists wearing bicycle helmets are not nearly as risk-seeing as the ones who don't wear helmets but do wear headphones. Those are the ones you have to watch out for.

See? Wearing a helmet makes people happy.

Note: no one in this picture is wearing a helmet.

Likewise, a runner wearing fancified running shoes with a garmin or whatever is much less likely to take off his shoes and throw them at you even if you're a foreign president visiting his country. It took too much money to get his shoes; he'll want to keep them near his feet.

I know that if a study agrees with your own observed behavior, you're more likely to agree with it.



But I don't see people with fancy types of safety sports equipment being reckless, unlike people who drive fancy cars.

Moral? Buy lots of fancy sports equipment and stop saving up for that Lexus. You'll live longer. So long as you don't vote.

Screaming lobsters living the car-free life

[By Merry]

What would you do if you woke up one day and there weren't any cars?

Oregon is in general quite bicycle friendly, and Portland even more so. To prove it, the city is putting on a street party, taking back the street from cars. It's a Car-Free day, shutting down part of North Portland for a day.

On June 22nd, a circular route of traffic-free streets in North Portland will link four parks: Arbor Lodge, Peninsula, Unthank, and Overlook. The resulting 6-mile loop will be available for pedestrians, cyclists, rollerbladers, skaters, etc. (While streets will be closed to automotive through traffic, a soft-closure will assure that neighboring residents have access to and from their homes.)

If you wanted to ride your bicycle (or walk, skate, skip or jump) outside but were afraid to do so, something like this sounds perfect. Utopian, maybe, but fun -- and practical too. Walkable neighborhoods help you keep fit and also help you keep in touch with people around you. If we all got out of our cars and walked or biked or hung out out on the front porch, it would create a community. Especially in newer areas of town, people don't use the front door. You get in and out of the house via the car via the garage. Neighbors? Don't meet 'em. Rarely even see 'em.

It's a crazy idea, but it just might work... or not ...
Two things come to mind:

1. If you want to get people to adopt a car-free existence, even part time, you have to provide a safe environment for them to experience it in. This event seems designed to create just such an environment.
2. No matter how this shindig is arranged, it is going to seriously piss off some people.

Am I pissing people off by writing another 'walk in your neighborhood' post? I'll have to check the temperature as the post goes on.

Some possible reasons why you would need a car
I mean, I'm not a totally unreasonable woman. I can see that some people absolutely need cars, especially if:

• you have a long commute and don't have public transport
• you have to drive kids, maybe even your own, to soccer practice here and dance recitals there
• you live in Wyoming, or the Northwest Territories, or the Australian Outback, anywhere that involves long stretches of nothing very much interspersed with the occasional mammal.

It's a long way to Tipperary... or anywhere else, frankly

How am I doing so far? Are you miffed yet? Okay, then I'll go on ...

Some possible solutions

• Can't help people who have to travel long distances because they live in Wyoming or the Northwest Territories or the Australian Outback. However, these areas are sparsely populated, at least compared to the concentrations of humanity found in the cities and suburbs. Concentrating on the highly populated areas would make a huge difference to the high demand for gasoline.
• People who have to haul children from point A to point B? Seems to me the best way to solve this would be to restructure the community so that A and B are within walking distance of each other . Planned communities, like Orenco Station, are designed so that you can get to most of the places you need to go without using a car. Likewise the older communities have parks, schools, and local shopping areas within walking distance. It's the neighborhoods in-between that are the worst designed and sadly also the most numerous.
  
• People who drive long hours to commute to their jobs? If a convenient commuter train or lightrail were available, a lot of people would use it. Especially with the cost of gas increasing so radically. Solutions like these are expensive in the short term -- but so is the cost of gas. (Public transport costs also go up when fuel prices increase but -- this is the catch -- not as much.)
  

Getting a bit warm in here, is it? Well, maybe I'll just go a little bit further...

Screaming lobsters
Stephanie from Back in Skinny Jeans wrote a post about the high cost of gas. One commenter pointed out that a lot of people in Europe have always had high gas prices. I think that's the point. It's not the fact that gas prices are high, it's the fact that they've suddenly increased a whole hell of a lot that's upsetting people.

(Crabby? Don't read these next two paragraphs, okay?)

Supposedly, the best way to cook a lobster is to place it in tepid water and slowly increase the temperature so gradually that the lobster doesn't realize how hot the temperature is getting. (I say supposedly because all the sources I could find that did any research into invertebrate physiology said that lobsters do not register pain. Just to be on the safe side, I've vowed to strike lobsters from my diet. If you're interested, here's the R.S.P.C.A.'s view on how to cook lobsters.)

The other generally used method of cooking a lobster is to plunge it into boiling water. It's quick and it's supposed to be painful. The lobsters are reputed to 'scream.' Some people say that since lobsters don't have vocal cords, they're not actually screaming; still, it's a useful metaphor for what's happening with gas prices in this neck of the woods. We're screaming lobsters around here.

Hmmmn... nobody's throwing stones at the blog yet. Maybe it's safe to go a little bit further...

The first thing to change
Eventually we'll learn to ease up on our car-dependency. Maybe. Or else the thought of tearing up whole neighborhoods will scare people into buying hybrids and electric bicycles.

Suburbs and cities can be changed. But the first thing to change is the mindset that everyone needs a car all the time. Try one day without a car, to see how it feels. Test out bicycling, jogging, yada, in an environment where it feels safe and you're more likely to survive enjoy the experience and maybe repeat it.

That's why I like the idea of this car-free day. It will be kind of cool to see how this works out.

Cyclists take over I-5!

On the other hand, if you hear of riots breaking out in North Portland later this month, you'll know why.

Don't blame Crabby; this is all my fault
If you are sitting there steaming, glaring at the computer screen, and snarling "Merry, you fool!" please bear in mind:

1 - These are my thoughts, don't snarl at Crabby

2 - I was wrong once. I could be wrong twice. Something's got to change, that's all. Anything that nudges us towards self-propelled transportation sounds pretty good right about now.

I'm going to go hide behind Crabby now.

Portland's version of a traffic jam... fender to fender traffic.