driving it home

Branden Klayko made mention the other day of the Disney cartoon Motor Mania. I've linked to it before, David Crowell linked to it some months before that, and Copenhagenize linked to it a week or two ago.

It's a popular video in my circle of online friends, to be sure.

It also illustrates one of the reasons I am leaning more and more toward riding a bike instead of driving: I dislike who I become when I'm at the wheel of a car. I find myself far less patient with the world and the road users around me. In my own defense, I don't get upset at cyclists for slowing traffic, but I am frequently frustrated by the zoned-out inattention I sense in other drivers, and can see where many of those drivers fail to differentiate between cyclists and slow-moving motorists in terms of "get the F*@$ out of MY way!"

Jenn and I were talking about bikes as transport mode the other night, and how far toward or whether I wanted to go car-free. I keep coming back to, "I prefer to ride," as a simple statement.

Sure, the money-saving part is nice. The exercise part is good, too--I get over a hundred miles in each week just by riding to work instead of driving, not counting any other utility bike uses I find on days off. "Doing my small part" for the environment is probably offset by the goofball in his outsized Suburban Assault Vehicle with the monster tires, loud exhaust, louder stereo, and various ego problems, but I figure I'm also showing that it can be done, and it's the example I like to set.

But at the end of the day, as the expression goes, the bottom line is that I simply enjoy cycling more than I do driving.