Shek's Footprint

The best way to reduce a large expense is to cut down one of the largest causes. This is a law and I can not remember who said it. It works in finances and it works with people’s carbon footprint, and sometimes both.

If a person was to improve his finances, he would achieve the goal faster if he stopped spending on the largest ticket item, say car related, than he would if he was to go frugal on smaller things like drying clothes on the clothes rack and not the drier. When I started to read personal finance blogs, I was motivated to cut down on these small expenses: buy food in bulk, drive less, eat out less, buy generic etc. It barely caused a dent in my expenses and my savings barely went up. It was frustrating. I was restricted from doing the things I like and there were not enough savings to show for it.

Similarly, when I set on the path of reducing my carbon footprint, the suggestions floating around in the web were the high-effort-low-impact ones. I stopped using disposable plastic bottles, used the water heater only half an hour every other day, said no to Styrofoam and looked up information on offsetting carbon. The largest impact, to both, my personal finances and my carbon footprint were when I sold my car. All I had to do was ride my bike everywhere. My savings have gone up, my carbon footprint has shrunk and I have lost weight without even trying. Win Win. I did not even have to invest in high capital initiatives like solar panels. My living in a small apartment lets me not have energy wastage like yard maintenance and cooling costs that most single family homes are plagued with.

The primary reason Shek’s Footprint talks about bicycle advocacy more than about recycling and alternative fuels is that bicycling takes a large chunk out of the footprint in one swift go. It is the rational and healthy way of getting around. Therefore, the million dollar question is: how do I get other people to adopt this idea? The gridlock of political awareness of bicycling and subjective safety of bicycling in people’s minds prevents more people to discover this way of life. In several conversations with bicycle advocate David Hembrow (link), I have come to the conclusion that for real impact towards citizen’s personal finances and health, the government needs to realize that bicycling is the future of daily commute. In my recent conversations with Matt Uhrig from Bikejax (link), I have realized that talking about sharrows (wikipedia link) and urban trails is like putting band-aid on a large wound. It raises awareness but does not much for subjective safety of the people.

To do it right, like these guys did (link), one must look at Netherland’s bicycle infrastructure. Till then the gridlock lives and it will take a lot of courage on the people’s part to get out and try this way of life. They are the true heros.

The particularly long box marked Xtracycle sat in the leasing office of my apartment complex when I went to pick it up. With the box in the trunk of the car and my Specialized on a bike rack, I set off on six lanes of concrete clusterfuck to Downtown Jacksonville.

Brooklyn at Cycledelic-Fixity has voluntered to be the only reasonable bicycle shop owner that will put it together for a reasonable price. His cool shop is around 14 miles from my apartment in the historic Riverside area of Downtown. He came out of his shop to greet me as I had started to un-strap the bike rack. He said that he recognized my bike as I am a celebrity thanks to these guys: link.

I browsed around his shop a little drooled on the fixies in various stages of completion. Some day after the car is sold! I did pop in at Jax Ebikes (link) but it was closed, so I decided to head back home. I have never ridden my bike from Downtown to home. Since I may have to do it tomorrow, I decided to give the route a shot in the car. I went up the Acosta bridge and then on Philips all the way south to Baymeadows (see route: View Larger Map)

The section of Philips between San Marco and Emerson is pretty desolate and sad. It is one slip away form being a ghost town. I hope the road is as less crowded tomorrow as it was today. Maybe I should have Brooklyn install a Katana holder while he is at it, a custom from Hattori Hanzo none the less!

As for the name of this post, well, that is the new name of my xtracycle-attched-specialized. The god of strength in the Indian mythology is the name of this bike which is my strength to go car free. In today’s car-dependent world, this bike is my Plan B and my extra set of bollocks! Eat this Big Oil!

I have spent a lot of time talking about bicycling. That is not necessarily deviating from the topic of reducing my footprint because it involves removing a car from my life. Of the other things that I have been doing to save electricity usage is using a clothes drying rack in my balcony and the most recent one being switching off the water heater for a majority of the day. 

My plan is to switch off the water heater all day and switch it on at 6:30 am when I wake up. I shower by 7:15 am which is plenty of time to heat up enough stored water for the whole day, which involves another shower. The only problem is to remember to switch it on in the morning! I did not remember this morning and was left with low pressure mildly warm water to bathe with. Thankfully, the fall weather in Jacksonville has been pleasant, some what windy too so I did not have to scrub too much.

Not using the drier and switching off the water heater should reduce my usage significantly. 80% of the light in my apartment is CFLs. I know about the mercury problem and I promise to dispose of them safely if they ever go bad!

On a separate note, I am not tracking my carbon footprint yet. I understand the benefits of measurement but downsizing usage is a proven method of reducing ones footprint. I also want my footprint measured more accurately and not an approximate as provided by most websites.