As I mentioned in one of my previous posts, historically, I was only a fair-weather biker and usually only rode out of necessity.
I've been aware of the environmental destruction associated with petroleum-powered transportation for a long time, but unfortunately, I had a tendency to make excuses (to myself) for my personal automobile usage, such as:
My car gets great gas mileage.
My car is 12 years old and it's only logged 84,000 miles (overall, I'm not driving much).
I plan my errands so that I don't have to make frequent trips.
I don't want to be late--I HAVE to drive.
But a year ago, a couple of events happened that began to haunt me. On April 2, 2010, there was an explosion at the Tesoro refinery in Anacortes. Seven people were killed, which made it the deadliest workplace event in Washington state history. Then less than three weeks later...Deepwater Horizon.
After those events, every time I found myself behind the wheel of my car, I felt terribly guilty. I knew that it was humanity's oil addiction that drove the dangerous business of oil refining. It drove us to put oil rigs farther out in the ocean, which was risky and tested the limits of our engineering abilities.
A few weeks after the incident in the Gulf of Mexico began, I took my car in to a local mechanic to have the oil changed. For the rest of the day, I reflected on that normally benign act of vehicular maintenance in such a negative way, that I began to make myself physically ill.
My home is about a mile from my workplace. Given the recent tragedies, my excuses for why I couldn't ride my bike or walk to work seemed a bit shallow. I knew I needed to make a change. No more excuses...
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