What the Beach Road Says About Us---Time to Connect the Dots

Those of you who have read this blog know that I am a road cyclist and surfer of some years. Almost daily I ride and train on what locals here call the Beach Road. Officially it's Virginia Dare Trail, named for the first English child born in the New World, tragically a member of the Lost Colony.

I try not to ride on the Beach Road during the middle to later hours of the day because of the car traffic and the growing, huge numbers of tourists, and I guess locals, walking, jogging, cycling, crossing to the beach, and just generally promenading. I do love to ride there though when the traffic is sparse. I can ride along on an uninterrupted, steady state ride and see the ocean, check our local sandbars for surf. It's really special.

I've noticed in the last four or five years on the Beach Road that the numbers of people exercising in some form is steadily increasing. It's nothing but impressive. There has also been more and more talk about obesity in our society, especially in children and the general ill effects for all of a sedentary lifestyle devoid of activity. Maybe this show of activity on the Beach Road is the public's reaction.

Let me clear up one thing with you right now though. I'm not on a crusade for health here. My road cycling and fitness escapades are self-serving and intended to prop up my fitness so that I can continue to surf at age fifty-six. Surfing is a big part of what maintains my happiness. The physical and spiritual benefits are too numerous to get into and would probably sound cliche. Suffice it to say, if you surf, you understand.

Let's get back to connecting the dots. My generation was the so-called Hippie Generation, the Flower Power Generation, the Counter Culture Generation. We went off to the college higher learning experience replete with ten-speed road bikes and attitudes which carried a first line distrust for any idea handed down from the "Establishment". Gas prices went through the ceiling for the first time in the early Seventies with gas shortages to boot. When we did drive many of us drove small light cars which sipped gas. My VW Beetle comes to mind. But we rode our bikes EVERYWHERE. There was however, at the time, a nobility in the poverty of functional daily living. Flash forward to now...

This same generation and it's children are the beneficiaries of a prosperity and gain of wealth like no U.S. generation before us has ever known. Many, many are still driving gas-hogging SUV's and bemoaning the $4.00 a gallon price at the fuel pump. These same people are cheering the possibilities of new offshore oil drilling, and cheering the temporary drops in the price of gasoline. I'm sure that if the price of gas remains high enough long enough, the great minds of science and industry in this country will answer resoundingly with viable alternatives.

The longer we delay this important work the greater the pain will be for every single person who enjoys the freedom of driving a vehicle anywhere they please years from now after paying the almost high enough price of gas. If you think $4.00 a gallon crimps your personal pursuit of happiness now, just support the status quo and watch what happens. This and worse environmental implications hang like a noose around our collective necks ever tightening as we fly into the future. Will it take market dynamics and market dynamics alone to finally teach our spoiled, hardheaded vehicle-driving population that this is where it's headed?

The oil producing countries will keep prices just low enough so that our U.S. research and industrial engine doesn't fully engage. Their approach is founded upon the belief that the U.S. population is fat, lazy and are no longer capable of the profound pain and sacrifice it would take to become more self-sufficient again. The pain and sacrifice to which I refer was demonstrated by our parents' generation during the Great Depression, World War II, and the Korean War. It would take the real resolve of every one of us to bull our country out of our present predicament without the market making leadership easy. Can we do it?

Meanwhile our global ecosystem is being trashed by the continued use and addiction to fossil fuel. The obesity-ridden children I referred to above are my generation's children and grandchildren. Maybe we're turning the corner on health somewhat as witnessed by the growing numbers exercising on our 25-mile long Beach Road. I am very encouraged by what I see there now. The Beach Road is actually slammed with physical activity that was never there at this level in years past. It is my local metric revealing whether we, as a nation are getting it. What people do has much more to say than what they say. I still see huge numbers of big fuel-guzzling vehicles on the Beach Road.

But on the side of progress made, I see many new fuel efficient vehicles too...hybrids, flex-fuel vehicles, and many, many more motor scooters for local transportation. One local bicycle shop in Kill Devil Hills rented motor scooters last tourist season. At the end of the season they sold all the used scooters. This year they could get no new scooters because of the overwhelming demand for them on the national market. This is good. We are reducing consumption, finding other ways to get around.

The national strategic oil reserve shockingly though, is good for only about three months oil supply. Think about what that means in leverage to any foreign oil producers who care to put us in a vice over some international issue. Scary thought huh?

We still can't seem to connect the dots on transportation especially local daily transportation which serve our daily needs. Our community planning must begin to support a local pedestrian and cycling lifestyle immediately. I direct you to a website I found which is becoming a clearinghouse for such efforts called World Carfree Network. There you will see another metric for our national awareness on these issues.

I look for signals in the media as well. Advertising is a great indicator of what we as a nation are thinking on a subject and, as if holding a mirror, what the corporations in this country anticipate our posture and positions to be on an issue. There's the T. Boone Pickens ad on TV, there's the very revealing Autozone (auto parts store) ad shown on Versus during the Tour De France of all places, with the scenario of a boy riding his bike who finds an old, giant American gas-hogging car with a note on the windshield, "If you can fix it, it's yours." The kid goes back and forth between working on the car and of course, the Autozone store getting parts and advice until the car finally runs. The narrator victoriously proclaims in the end that the boy will always be able to depend on his local Autozone, but at least he won't have to ride his bike there anymore.

Now this ad speaks volumes. One begs the question, how cash-starved is Versus that they wouldn't filter out an ad like that for a bike-friendly audience watching the Tour. But more importantly here, Autozone's ignorance to the context we are living in, astounds and scares the hell out of me. They like the oil producing nations are betting that the American public just doesn't get it.

Right now I'm shaking my head in disgust. I pray that you are too.