News - Local/State - Andrew Dys

Tuesday, Aug. 12, 2008

Columnist ditches gas guzzler; plans to commute by bike, feet

commuter \ n. a person who travels regularly, especially by automobile, between a residence and place of employment.

That's me, and almost everybody else in York County who lives somewhere and works somewhere else a few or dozens of miles away.

Wednesday will be different. I am changing my commute. Weather permitting, I plan to don my daughter's "Dora The Explorer" backpack, hop on her older sister's red bicycle and ride about halfway to work. Then I'll ditch the bike, if I am not catheterized in an ambulance by that point, and walk the rest of the way.

If it rains, I'll do it Thursday.

Is this a rebirth of attitude? Am I no longer an unwilling and mocking recycler of those who would re-use beer bottles? A laugher at the futility of the fitness crazed? A jabber at those cyclists in funny stretch pants and cottage-cheese-thighed walkers carrying weights?

Will I no longer slam politicians of all sides and their blathering and shameless media blowhards when they all claim to be able to free us from oil dependency in just hours?

Of course not. I still would be driving a big gas-guzzling V-8 car if the beast hadn't finally died. When any politician starts talking about solar and wind power, I still will cry out in agony and run away.

I just want to see what I might run into on this trip. Not literally, I hope: I haven't ridden a bicycle farther than the corner in at least 25 years.

Apparently, Wednesday is something called "Don't Drive Day." The people who monitor air quality around Charlotte -- and York County's air is part of that Charlotte air when it comes to exhaust and ozone and dirt and the bureaucrats who inexplicably spend time and tax dollars monitoring such things -- are asking people to commute to work differently by car-pool, bike or foot. They even have a contest to win an "iPod Touch" or other great prizes.

I do not know what an "iPod Touch" is. But certainly it must be great if these people in flat-soled shoes with their taut muscles -- who just know that every car I have ever driven is an environmental nightmare -- say it is great.

The group states: "These actions will help clean our air, save you gas ..."

I am as willing to help and save a dollar as the next goody-goody.

As a normal commuter, only my feet touch gas, brake and clutch. My hands are free to steer, pick my nose, roll down the windows and use a lighter. I normally get in my old beater parked above the pooled oil and coolant and steering fluid in my driveway in Fort Mill, pass the shaking heads of my neighbors who can't believe something so decrepit still runs, and hope the jalopy makes it to The Herald in downtown Rock Hill. Between 13 and 14 miles -- I guess. My car's odometer probably hasn't worked right since President Bush's father was president.

Bike a while, walk a while

My plan is to bike south on U.S 21 on that girlie bike without a sissy bar until I cross the Catawba River bridge. Then I'll walk -- if I don't need to be carried by then -- down Cherry Road to the homestretch of Oakland Avenue, Wilson and White streets to The Herald.

Just like walking the dog.

Except I dislike dogs, despise dog-walkers and have never walked a dog in my life.

The farthest I walked in one stretch was in 1983. About 10 miles, when my second car, a rusty 1976 Buick Century -- think Kojak's car -- without heat or springs and featuring an illegal exhaust pipe that I jammed underneath to replace the catalytic converter broke down with me and three buddies inside. Malcontents like me did those kind of environmentally-illegal things so we could use cheaper 'regular' gas all those years ago. The farthest recent walk was maybe four or five miles last summer. And that was with the carrot of cold beer at the end of that stick: And that was again because my old car broke down.

Hitchhiking is out because a committee of other goody-goodies might think I am homeless and try to count me to get a federal grant to study why I am homeless or hitchhiking.

Maybe you like a good bike ride for the exercise among 18-wheelers or because you want to personally save the earth. Maybe you always enjoy a stroll down Cherry Road past the eye candy that is payday lenders and gas stations.

Come out for a bit. Join up for a stretch if you want, or just laugh at me, the reigning Gold medalist in the 13-mile Wheezing Sedentary Drive in the Olympics.

My research did take me a bit deeper into the dictionary:

commute \ v. to change a punishment to one that is less severe.

You might have seen the word commute -- as in, "The governor will commute a death sentence." Of course you have never seen that term "commute a death sentence" in conservative South Carolina, where I'm sure somewhere the death penalty is being used in overseas ads promoting our tourism, but it probably has happened somewhere.

This will be a piece of cake, right? Sports Editor Gary McCann and I drove almost 5,400 miles round trip last year to cover Winthrop University in the NCAA men's basketball tournament. Then we drove to Denver and back earlier this year for this year's hoops.

But as McCann has written about driving cross-country with me -- twice -- using the immortal words of his wonderful wife, Debbie: "Stupidity is not a crime. You are free to go."