You don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone

You don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone by Cathy Hastie

Six months ago, I was healthy.

The most important writing about riding a bike in some time.

2 thoughts on “You don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone”

zundel Post author2014-08-12 at 5:27 pm

Also:

The car is also a great economic stimulator. It really does make the world turn, from the hundreds we spend on auto repairs to the fitness club membership we are obligated to buy because we have gained 20 pounds from sitting on our asses while driving an hour and a half every day back and forth to work. Gas money funds far more than the weekend partying of the corner store gas station attendant. It buys politicians, bankrolls foreign despots and funds wars – always a profitable endeavor for someone.

Even therapists see financial benefit directly related to the car and its use. The car screws with our heads. It encourages vanity, but shames us mercilessly. Like it or not, it serves as a calling card, an Avatar, and a symbol of the driver inside. Our image to other drivers on the road is wrapped up in the size of our ride, the shininess of our grille, the eternal youthfulness of the latest, sexiest model. Forcing us to keep up appearances, the car inspires us to embrace peer pressure, compete for attention and try to impress upon the world how awesome we are, all while wearing mustard-stained sweats and a sweaty baseball cap behind its tinted windows.

The car makes us independent — so independent that we can drive 45 minutes to work in a neighboring city every day for a month without knowing a single thing about the place.

The car pumps us up with bravado, then turns around and humiliates us as we sit in mile-long traffic jams, making us feel like insignificant sheep, following the car-commuting herd. Powerless behind the steering wheel, we endure boredom, anxiety, unpredictability and impatience on the inescapable auto-Alcatraz of the freeway during rush hour. Solitary and frustrated in a sweltering, fume-emitting metal box, who wouldn’t need a little therapeutic venting? It blows away our calm. It eats away at our pride. The car is a malicious trickster, wooing us with its allure of promised studliness and then slapping our widening cellulite thighs in cruel mockery.

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zundel Post author2014-08-12 at 5:39 pm

How I went over to the dark side

Like the big-city stereotype of cut-throat competition, today’s business model assumes that employees will do whatever it takes to earn more money, build more prestige and climb higher on the professional ladder. They assume we live the accompanying middle-class, suburban, auto-centric lifestyle. But I don’t like to drive, let alone cut throats and climb ladders.

I value my time and how I spend it, maybe even more than my money.

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Wrench Fu

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