I, The Doomer

So I spent over one hundred and thirty bucks at the bike shop last weekend, buying spokes, ferrules, a tire pump, new brake cables, a new helmet, two new tubes, and chain cleaner. My other helmet was ten years old, and supposedly you should replace them every three years or a crash, whichever comes first.

On a per mile basis, biking is much more expensive than a car. I shelled out $450 last year to get new rims, hubs, chain and new sprockets, because I wore them out. The bike will likely not cost me much more this year, but I the Amateur fixed the broken spokes and the wheel isn't in the best of Rounds. If/when I break another spoke, into the shop it'll go into a professional's hands. More money.

But, if I drove the Honda Civic to work, it'd be 30 miles, and at 27mpg on surface roads (34 on the freeway), I'd be looking at 4 bucks a day in gas. Assuming some incremental cost for tires, brake pads, batteries, struts, etc., maybe $4.30 a day.

This year so far, I've driven 360 miles to work, biked 935, carpooled 150, and bussed/trained 855. That's 43 round trips by bike, and at $4.30, I saved $185. I'm nowhere close to breaking even biking. It's cheaper to drive -- particularly considering I can't drop my car insurance and registration/smog, and the car is losing as much value sitting in the driveway as if I drove it.

It's cheaper to drive...until you factor in the cost of the car itself. Supposedly, the less I drive it, the longer it will last. Here, I really don't know if that's true. At my current rate, I'll be putting 2,500 miles a year on it (we do drive it elsewheres).

This car was the last one I will ever buy -- for myself, I mean. Seeing how I already own it outright, and that my son is three and a half years away from driving, he can use it, and then if he wants he can have it. I mean, there is no person, in a seventy mile radius, between the ages of 17 and 27 who rides their bike for utilitarian purposes anymore...and whatever gas costs in the future, this demographic is still going to drive, and only drive. If you subscribe to several stories that in China, only the guy with the car gets laid, there is no way my son or any other son in the world is going to ride a bike if a car is available. My oldest son at 20 hasn't ridden a bike in probably ten years, and before he was even twenty he owned three cars. Again, that I ride a bike and take the bus has no bearing on what my family does, or what anyone else does. I am in the severe minority.

There is nothing that's going to stop our use of oil...not global warming, not taxes, not potholes or collapsed bridges, and not price. The only thing that will stop it will be its depletion. And I the Doomer think the global production peak is right around the corner. I like the Arabian saying, "My grandfather rode a camel, my dad rode a bicycle, I drive a Mercedes, my son will fly a Gulfstream, and my grandson will ride a camel."