Trying to live a little more gas friendly is difficult at best. I live, like most Americans (even ones in cities like myself) live in a residential area. As such, there really isn’t that much with in walking distance, but that doesn’t mean I can’t make a go out of walking to where I need to go.
What I currently have within walking distance of me is a grocery store, which is too far to actually get a trip of any decent size but close enough that I could go there for a couple small bags of groceries. An office supply store, but who needs office supplies really? Still if I need paper or pens or whatever I can go there, I do think they have candy and soda which I could get from there. A KFC, an ice cream shop (which we walked to on Sunday, it is a fairly long walk and I am sore but it was fun), a sub shop, a bar, a mini-golf course (which again is of some length enough that I likely wouldn’t walk there as I would be too tired to play!), and a couple smaller grocery stores (a deli and a mexican grocer) that I’m too afraid to enter.
That offers me some options at least but not much. I am hoping that increasing my walking though will make it so that I can get further than I currently am. I fully admit that I’m not entirely in shape. The previously mentioned trip to the ice cream store really tested my limits. But if I can get used to that distance, a little further is two strip malls with more restaurants and stores I could go to (a pizza joint and a movie theater in particular would be nice if we could walk there as that provides a form of entertainment in walking distance and the pizza joint is one of our favorites). I also hope that getting more in shape can help make me walk to these places faster.
In a way it is good and in a way it is sad that I have to do this due to the gas situation. I mean it is good in the sense that we as Americans really should have been walking to local places for years. Maybe we wouldn’t be as fat as we currently are and we wouldn’t be so dependent on gas. However, it reinforces how dependent on gas we really are as a lot of people are in even worse situations than this (and not just people who live in the country). My mother lives in a huge residential area with hundreds of other people and she isn’t in walking distance of anything other than church, parks and other houses. This country by design was meant to seperate residential from industrial, from commercial and as such we are stuck having to drive everywhere. Whereas older cities such as London and even New York didn’t have that luxury and thus most in these cities don’t have the same gas issues as us because a lot of people who live there never have been dependent on gas.
And while I’m at it, I will mention the irony in our presidency on this issue, and I hate to give Bush any credit. But Bush has done largely what Carter tried to do in the 70s. Carter had the idea that if we made gas more expensive perhaps people wouldn’t drive as much as we do and we wouldn’t be so dependent on foreign oil. This is how gas became taxed in the first place, it was a way to artificially raise the price of gas. It was a philosophy I’ve largely been a fan of, but the problem is that this country was founded on oil and being able to travel large distances in a short amount of time. It was never designed really to be able to walk or ride a bike. Carter was thought of as a bad president for this and many other reasons and thus got the axe after four years. Bush who has raised the cost of gas much more, has brought us to war for no reason, has systematically taken away American rights, has no care of the poor, but care of the rich, and has been on vacation for more than 1/3 of his presidency may not be considered a good president but at least got 8 years in office.
This does make me want to go out and buy a bike…. too bad I don’t have the money.