Well, you could haul the gravel in your panniers, one load at a time... ;-)

This was never an issue for me personally. I Had two cars and a motorcycle when I met my wife 14 years ago - still preferred commuting by bike back then and still do (no car or truck or MC for me now - we share her little car in the city and kinda wish we didn't own that anymore......makes more sense to just rent a car for the dozen or so occasions a year we need one.)

I WILL Say this -

1. Living out in the suburbs I felt (often and regularly) the scorn and ridicule of teens, adults and anyone in a motor vehicle who looked down upon an adult male riding a bike. Clearly the feeling was that I was a Loser for not having a car (ironic since I did and used when neccessary).....only children, migrant workers and dishwashers rode bikes in my home town in Suffolk county. A bike was looked upon as something bums resorted to because they couldn't afford the almighty car. Unless we're talking megabuck mountain bikes ridden by extreeeeme sports weekend warriors or flashy road bikes for the spandex-inclined. These were apparently acceptible due to the expense but the humble three speed or basket paperboy cruiser or modest mtb were not for a real man. God forbid an adult attempt a responsible and healthy method of transport which is accepted in most of the world......I guess in America real men drive internal combustion engines and pollute the air their wives and kids breathe, all so their 'self images' can be enlarged.........puke!:mad:

2. For any guy who HAS faced this - why would you want to be with a woman who has this attitude? I am not saying dump her (You certainly may want to try and explain your position first) but if she won't budge, you may find her priorities are a wee bit skewed......but, hey, to each his own.

among the majority of americans, yes there is a stigma attached to bicycling, esp commutting by bike. Especially outside large cities, as soon as you cross the border to the 'burbs, the perseption is you must be on crack, homeless, or have a dui or something if you're riding a bike. though i know there are different categories of bikers I can tell (yuppie roadies, commuters, old people on old bikes, etc) I know this isn't true.

BTW I agree most people dont "need" a car..... (like I'm supposed to NEED cable tv, a cell phone, a large truck, etc etc , none of which I have)

how is my statement "blatently" false? if you really wanted your patio gravel, you could take it one load at a time or maybe get a bunch of friends and haul it all in trailers. takes longer but still done by bike. and whats a resonable timeframe. it took me all day to move the rail road ties for my garden on my bike. that was fine. the reality is that its more comfortable for you to have all the gravel moved in one trip. its more comfortable for you to use an automobile. and a patio? now thats a nonessential in the xtreme to make you more comfortable. a luxury. you did not give any evidence that it is false to say that no one needs a car. the example you gave of why you needed a vehicle just proves that you value living a comfortable lifestyle

It's unrealistic that people will give up any luxuries once they become accustomed to them. Now that I drive very infrequently I actually enjoy it at times (couldn't say the same about my daily car commutes, even though they were short and traffic-jam free).

I do personally like to challenge myself to do things old skool but I have my agenda and everyone else has theirs. Saying your business or prsonal use of a motorized vehicle is necessary is one thing; having no regard for the environment is another. I don't expect everybody to follow my model for universal utopia, but when their choices have what I believe will be disasterous results for the planet, wouldn't it be imprudent not to act?

There's no reason to not question the alarming overuse of oil in the USA - whether using cars for trips where feet, mass transit or a bike would suffice, or worse yet, using a gas guzzling, penis lengthening, third world draining ghetto riche pompous piece of SUV for sheer vanity where a humble econobox would do.

ok, enough rant from pgoat today.....

If you're going to argue such extremes, why do you even have a bike? Everything you can do on a bike, you could do on foot. It's just slower.

Slow enough that it gets rediculous, perhaps, but so is the idea of moving almost 2 tons of gravel by bicycle. How much can I carry in a trip? 300lbs would probably be pushing it, and even at that, would take me 13 trips... Probably 2 hours per trip, you're talking 26 hours of labor. Versus about 40 minutes by truck. This is a PERFECT application for an automobile... using it at or near its maximum capacity, for a task it was designed for. Using a 5000-lb truck to move 3700 lbs of cargo is efficient. Using a 5000 lb truck to move 220 lbs (me and lunch) to work is a waste.

Are you going to try and argue that ANYONE does not value living a comfortable lifestyle? Everyone values comfort. They may not value particular comforts more than other things, but no one deliberately chooses a harder lifestyle without good reason.

i'm trying to argue that a comfortable lifestyle doesn't have to involve being fat, being a yuppie, killing the environment, killing our society with urban sprawl and pollution-all that. its not hard at all for me to live the way i do. i'm supre comfortable. we just value different things. the difference in our values is that you have a totally unsustainable lifestyle(mines only semi-sustainable, my ecological footprint is 16acres).

I can see now that you and I are really not in disagreement. There are some tasks that clearly are better and more efficiently done by motor vehicles. But those that live car-free have discovered there are often legitimate and feasible alternatives to the private motor vehicle. For instance, I will use your example of the patio. Assuming neither you nor the gravel store had a motor vehicle for delivery and there were no local places to rent a truck, there is still another alternative. In fact, by coincidence, I also added a patio to my home within the past year. I simply hired a contractor, not so much because of any difficulty in getting the materials, but because I'm a total incompetent at anything resembling construction. The contractor purchased and delivered the materials, built the patio and handed me the bill. I assume it may have cost more than doing it myself, but it was far, far less expensive than purchasing and maintaining a motor vehicle. Besides, if I was a handy man and wanted to build it myself for further savings, I have no doubt I could find someone to deliver the materials. (It is a pretty slack enterprise to sell a product like gravel and not have a delivery option, IMO.)

Back to the original topic of this thread. Being car-free does not mean being independent of motor vehicles. What it means is a willingness to forsake the costly convenience of owning one. I, for instance, live 25 miles from my job. But I have a good option for bus transportation. I commute two miles to the nearest bus stop, load my bike on the front rack and take the bus to my job. No traffic and parking hassles. The bus fare I pay each year is less than the amount of a single month's car payment and parking fees. Does this mean I'm cheap? Not exactly, it means I choose to spend my money on higher priorities.....like living in an upscale neighborhood, going to Europe twice a year and routinely eating out at nice restaurants....things I could never do if I was saddled with the expense of motor vehicle ownership. Without a doubt, one of the smartest things I ever did in my life was abandon the car. It has made me more free and independent and I can not imagine ever going back. If people view me with a social stigma because I don't own a car, I really don't care and in fact relish the idea that I am showing it can be done.

My wife loves it.......

Secret your posts are awesome! I did that footprint thing and I came out at 12 acres, as I live right now. If I change a few things like no more flying, bike-only, and "electricity with energy conservation" whatever that means, it goes down to 9. Americans average 24. The footprint idea comes from a book called "Radical Simplicity" by Jim Merkel. Well worth reading!

Someone a while back on here compared universal car ownership to slavery, it made life easier, and while everyone kinda knew in the back of their mind it was wrong, it was profitable, or at least felt profitable, so everyone kinda went along.

its freaky when you take the quiz. i'm trying to lessen my footprint. i eat too much prepackaged food and my house isn't very energy efficient. i also dont have a water catchment system all set up. but it should be by next rainy season.

I find it ironic that someone who prefers two-wheeled transport, only of the non-motorized variety, would subscribe to such a ridiculously ill-informed stereotype of motorcycles and their riders.

-Trevor (Commutes via motorcycle on non-pedal days. Though not being a crotch-rocket I guess it's not "cool".)

You must be some kind of amazingly powerful cyclist!

How can you tow a 4,000 pound boat with a bike?
How can you drive 900 miles in 12 hours to get to fantastic riding in other states?

etc.

etc.

For some people, cars are also another form of recreation, and not basic transportation.

What is so amusing about this thread is that carless evangelists who bemoan the close mindedness of people who can't imagine not having a car are guilty of the same close mindedness, in reverse.

The fit cyclist in the Porsche.

But who would want to hang out with someone who is so shallow as to be attracted to someone simply because they drive a certain make of vehicle?

The USA has an incredibly high average standard of living, taking for granted luxuries not remotely available to the majority of the world. Acknowledging this is NOT being evangelical, or ultra-liberal. Ackowledging this does NOT mean that I don't think I'm spoiled myself.

Taking your boat to a lake to fish, or towing jet skies or ATV's to a park, or building a patio or pool, are in the end personal luxuries that seem to be repeatedly mistaken as necessities by some posters. I highly recommend to these posters that you spend some time world-hopping in under-developed countries and avoiding the three star hotels. If you'd been born in a different place, to different parents, chances are you would not be reading this email right now but would instead be bent over in a rice field, knee deep in water, sun-up to sun-down, and would have an average life expectancy of about 40 yrs. What some of us are saying is that we COULD get by on bike, or FOOT for that matter, if we lowered our standards of living. That's all.

As far as the 'same close mindedness in reverse' I agree. We should avoiding being elitist when it comes to the biking thing, and try to remember when it was new to us. I can't fault people who look at me askance for commuting so much when until a few years ago I never would have dreamed that I could bike as far as TEN miles <gasp> let alone hundreds.

You know what the secret is!!! Keep your car, find a great girlfriend who has a nice car and caring to you. Then sell your car, ride, and make her drive. :D

Please pay attention. I never claimed, nor has anyone else for that matter, that those activities are neccessities.

Someone claimed that bikes can do anything that a car can do which is incredibly silly. Hence my reply.

Get it?

Been there, done that.

Guess what?

I couldn't get there by bike...

Which is completely different than claiming that a bike can do anything that a car can do.

Do you get it yet?

Its called being a "bicycle boy", they are accepted in some circles, in big cities. Definately not a suburb thing.


There certainly is a stigma to not owning a car. I grew up that way and always felt humiliated when friends found out my family had no car. My parents raised my brother and I in the middle of an affluent suburb. We were, as far as I could tell, the only household with no car. The household income we grew up on was so low that I am embarassed to say what it was.

What was a stigma then, I see as a tremendous achievement now-- I have to tip my hat to my parents. They raised a strong family in a nice neighborhood with excellent schools on a laughably low-budget. How was this possible? No car expenses. Good public transportation (this was an older "inner" suburb, designed with public transport in mind).

Families like I grew up in cannot exist in today's outer suburbs and "edge cities".

I get it fine.

No one said that bikes could do ‘anything’ a car can do, you just interpreted it that way.

One could technically carry, pannier by pannier, as much gravel as one wished over time. Practical? No. No one said it was. The writer of this comment was not seriously suggesting such a thing. It was an academic point. It's a mystery that it was treated with such seriousness and caused such outrage. It’s a stupid point to quibble over, so let’s stop.

Several people rebuffed the idea that cars weren't necessary by citing recreational activities. If such activities make cars a necessity, then implicitly they are being considered necessary by the people who cited them. Get it?

Thanks for the snideness, always appreciated.
I thought it constructive to recast this debate in a broader perspective. That the majority of the world lives in privation, and considers it normal, should not be offensive to point out. I also stated that I wasn't implying that I was holier than anyone BY pointing it out. I find it sobering to occasionally remind myself that my PROBLEMS would be considered luxuries by many.

There are many people who have never travelled very far from their birthplace. These people may well be shocked at the differences in human attitudes, lifestyles, and goals across the globe. Is this an objectionable statement? I have had many students who knew very little about the world outside of the Midwest, and in not knowing they typically 1)believe they know all life's answers, and 2)assume their way is the 'Right' way. These students were often the ones who had the strongest convictions and were the loudest during debates.

Obviously you don't.


Which part of "everything you do by car can be accomplished without one" are you struggling with?


Assuming that people consider recreation uses "necessities" is almost as silly as the claim that everything that you do by car can be accomplished without one.

Unless all of those people don't understand the definition of recreation.

No problem!

My condoleces on being trapped in the Midwest, BTW.

Yeas, I understand that there are many clueless folks who can't distinguish between luxeries and necessities as defined by Third World living conditions.

What an excellent tangent, although it has no bearing upon my original comments whatsoever.

You might pay more attention to the qualifications included in some of these statements, and to consider and respond to their point rather than be contentious over semantics.

I obviously agree with him, because the scheme of things for ME is freaking broad enough to make the statement work.

Could be, but what I wrote was written courteously and with an attempt to contribute. You might consider trying the same thing in your next post.

Yes, I paid attention to the qualifications and despite your protestations to the contrary, the fact remains that his claim is still downright silly.

Sorry.

Just because you apparently think that you can do everything in your life on a bike that you can do in a car (that's a huge stretch but for the sake of the discussion, let's ignore that) that doesn't make his claim any less ridiculous since there are many folks out there who do things every day that simply cannot be accomplished without a car.

Thanks. It's been amusing watching you try to defend the indefensible.

Anything necessary that can be done with an automobile machine can be done by other alternative means. Human beings thrived for thousands of years before the invention of the internal combustion engine, and they'll thrive long after it's obsoleted. Anything that can't be done without it does not really need to be done.

Let me start by saying, I'm just shy of 17 and offically no longer own a car. I have noticed slight differences in some people, I know have two kinds of friends, my 'friends' and my (real) friends. The former group sticks their noses up at my bike, the latter offers me a ride when ever I need (or they feel I need). Maybe it is because I'm young(er) than most here, but I haven't really noticed a dip in my dating life, my girlfriend doesn't mind driving as I hate it anyway. So like I said maybe its cause I am (slightly) young(er) than you others but I haven't had a problem. Even if I still had my car I'd ditch it after next year any way as I wouldn't want to deal with the burden of all those payments on top of college and being on my own.

Elvish

With my financial situation it looks like I'm going to have the SUV for a while, but I've decided to drive it as little as possible (wait, that's not at all, so I'm making sure I drive is a little so the battery etc doesn't die) and it's going to be interesting to see the social acceptance/nonacceptance I get going around with my bike, bike clothes, messenger bag etc. Obviously a bike-only to the casual observer.