biking to work

The other day, I was getting crap from someone about not biking to work. I do live 3-4 miles away from work, and I agree that being afraid of drivers and weather are not very good reasons not to bike to work, so here's my primary reason: I use my car as a mobile garage.

Just of off the top of my head, here are some of the things that I keep in my car so that I can have them whenever I want them: two crates of water, two six-packs of Gatorade, a couple of Power Bars, a first aid kit, extra tape (for jammed fingers), a nice basketball and an old basketball, a frisbee, a softball and glove, bug spray (lots of mosquitoes next to the Bay when you're playing sports outdoors), warmup pants, an extra jacket and an extra sweatshirt, two boxes of Kleenex, hockey skates and a stick (I may have taken the stick out recently), my tennis racquet and three cans of balls, one pair of basketball shoes, one pair of tennis shoes, one pair of cross trainers, one pair of sandals, sunglasses, sunscreen, baby wipes (for hands), a towel, duct tape, and a cell phone headset. Honestly, if you wanted, you could go look in my car right now, and find all of those things.

Granted, I could bike home to get those things before going off to do whatever, but frequently they're useful at unexpected times, and I'm an inherently lazy person. And so, because other people are lazy like me, we end up with these terrible foreign policies based on our need for oil. Sigh.