Oilpocalypse Now

Here in the Southeast we are getting a preview of things to come. There has
been a gasoline shortage going on in our area for the past three weeks. Since I use a bicycle and don't drive at all, I wasn't really aware of this until Mrs. Flyer pointed it out tome. People in her shop have been spending the majority of their free time driving around in search of filling stations that aren;t dry, and
as a consequence have been arriving to work late, or not at all. Including the store manager.

Putting aside the irony involved with bike shop employees that need to drive a car to work, it brought home the fact that there isn't enough gasoline for all of the millions of drivers in the Greater Atlanta area. And this means that there are 6 million gasoline addicts in constant search for a gasoline fix. And they are competing for a drastically limited resource.

So, naturally, human behavior quickly descends to the lowest common denominator. All of last week, we both witnessed scenes straight out of a Mad Max-Martian Invasion-apocolyptic movie. People cutting each other off at the pumps, cursing, and leaning on horns was commonplace. I saw a fist fight at a station by the perimiter highway, and there was a report of a gunfight at another. People were cruising around, looking for tanker trucks to stalk to their destinations. (If you are low on gas, why would you drive around, burning your supply, without a guarentee of getting more?) There were several abandoned cars along my commute route, and I passed several people with gas cans on futile hikes to filling stations whose pumps were roped off.

On our Saturday training ride through the Buckhead Hills, we saw more cars than we ever have early on a Saturday. "You know what's going on here, don't you? They are all out looking for gas", said Mrs Flyer. And right she was. We passed a filling station on the top of a hill only to be greeted by a line of cars stretching in both directions.

Amazing. How much longer does a sane person put up wih this before they start investigating alternatives? How much longer do you hang on to the dead cat that is the automobile culture? Right now, it smells pretty bad, and it will only get worse.

The Critical Mass ride was a lot larger on Friday. Many new faces, and not just returning college students. For the first time in recent memory, we got
all positive vibes from people along the way, and only one incident of token harassment from APD. I attribute that solely to the number of people, estimates would be about 220 - 250. The ride was pro peloton size, and there were too many of us to fit in the back of all of the paddy wagons in the county.

With the economic system on the verge of collapse, gasoline in short supply, and peoples confidence in the ruling party badly shaken, the time is
ripe for a change. Some people are starting to "get it" - that bicycles CAN be a way to get from Point A to Point B. And do it on a daily basis, not just a weekend ride with the kiddies on the Silver Comet Trail.

The cycling revolution is happening from the bottom up, affecting lower income groups first. But as it reaches upwards into the American Middle class, it's
going to reach the point where we will get real change. That will take some time, and will be extremely painful. Our society has been structured around unlimited automobile travel for 50 years. Changing that beavior is going to take, well time. And when time runs out, based on what I saw this week, is going to make me head for the mountains. Or the nextr flight to Europe.

The probolem here is complex. It's not just that we have become addicted to gasoline, we have also changed from a Do-It-Yourself to a Hire-Someone-Else-To-Do-It societyWe don't mow our own lawns, clean our own homes, nor cook our own meals,
we pay someone else to do it. If a household item, piece of clothing, or appliance breaks, we throw it away instead of repairing it. So the whoke mentality at work is precisely the opposite of what's needed to solve the crises. I wonder if we are going to have bicycle rickshaw service in the cities, with portly middle class people hiring young people and immigrants to pull their fat bods around the streets.

And it's all so unnecessary. Those of us that are old enough remember a time when it was NOT like this. We rode on streetcars, walked, and yes, rode a bicycle to get around. A long trip meant taking a bus or train. We had then what we need now. Most of the civilized world still does it this way. Some of us - mostly in the big cities in the Northeast, Chicago, and the Northwest - get around in this manner.

We don't need to rely on each of us having our own automobile. It's a very carefully crafted myth that has been foisted on the public. It's time to put an end to this myth. We can all make a change, and we can start making it now.

Like all change, it can be scary. Depending on my bicycle instead of a car was a scary proposition for me. It literally kept me awake at night when I was preparing for it. I can't begin to imagine what it's like for people that have never been physically active. The prospect of giving up the easy freedom of the car for the physical exertion involved in walking or riding a bicycle is probably frightening on a visceral level.

Yet, here in the Southeast, it's not beyond the realm of possibility to see a change. We see more cyclists, and MARTA is having to put more trains on
duty on the weekends. But many - too many - still cling to the old habits. It's time to give them up. If we ever expect to get out of this current mess we find
ourselves in - and it's all related - then we need to let go of the old and bring in the new. What we are getting here in the Greater Atlanta area is a preview of what's coming for the rest of the US, and it ain't going to be pretty.

Today I passed a gas station just before I reached the office. The red lights of cars waiting in line stretched down the road, out of sight. And the sound of angry drivers blowing their horns carried on the breeze, like the sound of cattle going to the slaughterhouse.