A Millionaire by Age 30? Here's How

A fellow named Grant Sabatier has revealed his technique for turning millennials into millionaires by the time they reach 30.

There's a lot of wisdom in his story. But it reminds me of another story.

A concert audience member, blown away by the pianist's skill, walked up to the stage as the other audience members were leaving. She told the performer how much she'd enjoyed the concert, and then added, "I'd give anything to be able to play the piano like you do." Expecting a reply of "thank you," or "ah, shucks, ma'am," what she got was, "Oh, no you wouldn't." Startled, she protested, "Oh, yes I would. Why do you say that?" "Because," he replied, "you wouldn't be willing to practice six hours a day for ten years."

In other words, while our young millionaire has his math right -- any teenager willing to do what he says will have a shot at $1,000,000 by his or her 30th birthday -- few if any would be willing to follow the steps and live the life required to achieve that wealth.

Mr. Sabatier's recommended life, a kind of ultimate deferred gratification, reminds me of another story by way of explanation.

A farmer was leaning on his fence, looking out over his pasture, when his neighbor came over to chat. Noticing a mule lying on his side in the middle of the pasture, the neighbor asked,"How's your mule doing?" "Not so good," replied the farmer. "I was training him to live on dew; almost succeeded when he uped and died."

Sabatier doesn't require that his followers live on dew, but his requirements are only marginally more generous. He would probably agree with the thrust of the Saturday Night Live sketch in which a young couple with financial problems (played by Steve Martin and Amy Poehler) are urged, "Don't buy stuff."

The basic formula is that you hold more than one job, one of which you grow into a business, cut expenses to the bone, and invest a far larger share of your income than most would choose to do.

His investment strategies seem sound enough, and similar to what many investment advisers have to say: Buy index funds with the lowest percentage fees (rather than individual stocks or managed funds); on a regular schedule ("dollar cost averaging"); diversifying among max cap equities, small cap growth, foreign firms, real estate, and bonds (taxable and tax-free). Of course, that's the easy part -- once you have the money to invest.

I've given teenagers similar advice with a couple illustrations, both leading to the million dollars (in my illustrations, by age 65). One involves a 15-year-old smoker who gives up the habit and invests what would otherwise have been burned up. As I put it to a one-or-two-pack-a-day teen, "Smoking is not a $10-to-$15-a-day habit, it's a $1-to-$2-million-dollar habit."

The other illustrates the contrast between paying cash and buying on credit. Two teens want cars. One buys on credit and makes monthly payments for cars all his life. The other saves first, pays cash, drives the car while putting aside and investing monthly payments for the next one, repeating the process for all of his life. When then reach 65 they both still have cars, but the one who pays cash will also have $1-million in investments.

Or, as I used to tell law students (albeit before graduation carried with it $100,000 or more in debt), "If instead of buying a Mercedes or BMW you continue to live during the next ten years (as a lawyer) the way you did during the last ten years (as a student) you could retire at 35. You'll find your 'lifestyle' living on 90% of what you earn not noticeably different from living on 110% of what you earn."

It's all about the capacity for deferred gratification, illustrated by the marshmallow experiment. Jacoba Urist, "What the Marshmallow Test Really Teaches About Self-Control," The Atlantic, September 24, 2014. I was born during the Great Depression. Deferred gratification was not a goal, it was a reality born of lack of money. There was no alternative, if I really wanted a bicycle, to getting a paper route first, saving my money, and then paying cash for it. One saying of the time was, "Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without."

But there is an alternative to poverty as the driving force.

If one thinks of doing without as painful deprivation, it is unlikely any teen who uses all their money to "buy stuff," one whose very identity is dependent upon physical possessions, will have any significant investments by the time they are 30, let alone $1-million dollars.

Yes, it's hard to alter one's behavior if one cannot alter one's thinking. But it's possible to alter one's thinking. I've written a book about it: Test Pattern for Living (available from Amazon).

Interested? Start by learning a little more about Grant Sabatier's journey, accomplishment, and program. Grant Sabatier's Millennial Money Blog; "Millionaire By Age 30? One Blogger Offers a Few Not-So-Easy Steps," Here & Now, WBUR, April 25, 2017.

The financial rewards can be enormous. But, like the lady who wished she could play the piano like that virtuoso, whether you are willing "to give anything" to achieve them is up to you.

_______________

Finding Your Different Drummer

June 5, 2013, 2:15 p.m.

An Alternative to the Corporate, Televised Test Pattern

Test Pattern for Living is back.

Originally published as an original Bantam paperback in 1972, the book was reissued in a Lulu paperback edition last week. It should be available through Amazon sometime in mid- to late July. Meanwhile, the publisher is the only source. (There may be a book signing in a couple weeks at Uptown Bill's, at which 20% of the heavily discounted price will be a contribution to Uptown Bill's.)

Meanwhile, the book celebrated its Iowa City debut last evening at "Slices: Performance and Pie" (an event presented the first Tuesday of every month at 7:00 p.m. at Uptown Bill's in Iowa City, Iowa, in cooperation with Combined Efforts Theatre).

"Slices" offers participants an opportunity to present brief (10-minute maximum) readings from favorite or original literature. One of Slices' unique features is that participants must use a total of no less than two persons for the presentation.

I was fortunate enough to have the assistance of two professional actors for this event -- Rachael Lindhart and Jason Grubbe (both Actors Equity members) -- and my son, Gregory Johnson. Any additional background on what we did and why is contained in the script used on that occasion.

An Excerpt from Nicholas Johnson’s Test Pattern for Living
Uptown Bill’s
Iowa City, Iowa, June 4, 2013
Nicholas Johnson (NJ): Test Pattern for Living. 1972.

The women’s movement was just getting started. Women as well as men were still referred to as “he.” But it was also a time of great creativity in everything from politics to the arts. So the Foreword to Test Pattern for Living was sheet music by Mason Williams, the composer of “Classical Gas” and the “Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour” head writer. And instead of text throughout, the text I wrote was on the right hand pages, and the left hand pages had quotes from others that were supportive of that text.

I was still an FCC commissioner, and was trying to bring attention to the impact of television, and its corporate sponsors, on Americans’ lives. The phrase “test pattern” was a reference to the test patterns on the television screens at that time. The book was designed to offer readers a path to thinking through their own individual standards, a way to break out of the corporate interlock.

The pressures on individuals today are similar to those 40 years ago. America is again at war. A collapsing economy is now the reason individuals are rethinking their own set of values. That’s why the book was reissued just last week.

For our excerpt at this evening's "Slices," I’ll be reading my text from the right-hand pages of Test Pattern for Living. My "Greek chorus," Rachael Lindhart and Jason Grubbe,will speak the quotes from others from the left-hand pages. The book also reproduces the text of actual TV commercials. One of them, plus Mason Williams' all-purpose commercial, will be read by my son, Gregory Johnson, who starts us off.

# # #

Gregory Johnson (GJ):

Mason Williams.
At last
New from us
This amazing dramatic proof
There.
See?
You can.
It's easy!
You mean America's favorite modern families?
Yes! . . .
Because they used that other stuff in tests
But without the special ingredient of a magic formula
Now available in two sizes
Fresh and moist
And especially made so effectively light and lovely
That the leading new word for all you ladies
Combined with their report
Is a timely message of less than a minute
And quick to fix from now on . . . .
So why not try big, tough, super
Flakes of special interest for all you guys
With twice the power and vitamins necessary
For a high rate of saturated “duh”
That is free for an unlimited time only
with every Hey!

NJ: The difficulty in America today is that we have turned it all over to the big corporations. Time owns Life. Our colleges, churches, foundations, and public broadcasting stations tend to be presided over by the same guys who decide what automobiles we'll buy and breakfast cereals we'll eat. They publish our children's school books; they own most of the nation's artistic talent—and they have little hesitation in censoring the copy of both.

Jason Grubbe (JG): Mason Williams.
The censor sits
Somewhere between
The scenes to be seen
And the television sets
With his scissor purpose poised
Watching the human stuff
That will sizzle through
The magic wires
And light up
Like welding shops
The ho—hum rooms of America
And with a kindergarten
Arts and crafts concept
Of moral responsibility
Snips out
The rough talk
The unpopular opinion
Or anything with teeth
And renders
A pattern of ideas
Full of holes
A doily
For your mind

NJ: Understanding this concept of "corporate interlock" is really essential to an understanding of this book. In general, people either understand the concept right away or not at all—in which case spelling it out is a waste of time. But I'm going to try.

Rachael Lindhart (RL): Philip Slater. “One cannot successfully alter one facet of a social system if everything else is left the same, for the patterns are interdependent and reinforce one another.”

NJ: Let me begin with an anecdote. One evening Mason Williams and I were debating whether to go out for dinner or cook something at his house. We finally decided we'd stay home—principally because we didn't want to bother to change clothes. This prompted Mason to start speculating—as do a great many of life's quirks. "Nick, I've finally figured out why you have to dress up to go out to dinner."

"Why's that, Mason?" I asked.

"Because the same people who own the restaurants own the clothing stores."

His years of working for television have forced Mason to think in one-liners. (That's all you ever have time for.) And, like many of his one-liners, this one is both inaccurate in its particulars (so far as I know clothing stores are not owned by restaurateurs) and profound in its more general wisdom. "Living" ought to be individual, spontaneous, extemporaneous; a personal quest, evolution, and growth; an experience in uniqueness. But living your life according to the corporate plan involves no more of a creative "centering," or flowering soul, than painting in numbered spaces with the indicated colors is "art." It's like putting together a jigsaw puzzle. You are living out somebody's else's plan—not yours—paying them handsomely for the privilege of doing their work for them.

JG: Timothy J. Cooney and James Haughton write, “In America one of the basic rules many people live by is that one must keep up with the Joneses. By your own example you must turn this rule upside down. If you absolutely need a car, let it be the oldest on the block. . . .

At first, such "odd ball" behavior will cause some embarrassment and you will hardly be popular with your neighbors. . . .

Half the worry of . . . people in this country is how to pay for all the brand-new and superfluous junk they have signed up for, at just "pennies a day." By your example you will be offering an escape from this endless worry . . ..”

NJ: The psychology of acquisitiveness is to know, at every stage, what pieces you must next acquire, and in what order—house, car, sailboat.

GJ: Once upon a time there was a girl who dreamed of a doll that had everything. And then came Dawn, the doll that comes with these beautiful things. Like a car with Dawn actually at the wheel! Just look at Dawn go! There's a Music Box with Dawn on top, and the fabulous Dawn Fashion Show—the only one in the world with a revolving stage like this. Dawn comes with it—watch her walk and model, all by herself. And start collecting all these accessories: a handbag, elegant furniture with a phone that really works, a beauty parlor set. You can display Dawn, her friends, her fabulous clothes, right in your own home. Make your dream come true with Dawn, the doll that has so many beautiful things. Dawn's clothes are so beautiful, so stunning, so elegant, you'll want to collect more than one doll just to show them off! And it's so much fun to put two Dawns here, three Dawns there, call it "Midnight Magic." Then change their clothes, set them up, and call it "Sweet Dreams." Use your imagination! Dawn. Fun to play with, fun to collect.

NJ: "House" takes on an externally imposed meaning: suburbs, air conditioning, grass, wall-to-wall carpeting—just as surely as "Dawn" would be incomplete without her "car," "fabulous clothes," "elegant furniture,” and "beauty parlor." Sound familiar? Could it be you are now living in the doll house you used to play in? Is that an accident? Is it really what you want?

The corporate interlock of jobs, products, and life style means that once you come into the circle at any point you find yourself surrounded by all of it. And once you're in it's very difficult to get a little bit out.

The choices remaining to you are relatively meaningless—such as which color and extras you want with your Chevrolet, whether you'll drink scotch or bourbon, how "mod" your ties will be, and which toothpaste you'll use.

JG: William F. Fore. “Free selection of a wide range of goods and services does not signify genuine freedom, particularly if the desire for these goods and services tends merely to foster more frantic work, more compulsive buying, more fear and self-doubt. In this context, free selection tends to create and sustain alienation.”

NJ: It all fits: corporate white-collar job, suburban home, commuting by automobile, eating in restaurants, and the clothes. There is the canned entertainment of radio and television for the boredom, the bottled alcohol and aspirin for the pain, and the aerosol cans of deodorant and room freshener to maintain the antiseptic cleanliness of it all.

JG: Mason Williams. “We're like a race horse shot full of speed to make us run harder than is good for us, to win for the owners and lose for ourselves, to win the race for only the price of the chance to run.”

NJ: You wear your office, your home, and your car as much as your clothes and deodorant. And from the corporate layers of externals comes your very identity—and the smothering of your soul.

RL: Suzannah Lessard. “A young person gets a big bang out of taking a well-paying white-collar job with a large and important company, thinks to himself "I'm making it," and sees . . . himself in the saddle. It's only later, much later, when the exits have all been quietly sealed off, that it becomes apparent that the saddle is really a harness . . ..”

NJ: Let me try another example. Once you have accepted a job in a professional or managerial capacity with one of the nation's top two hundred corporations, you will be led inevitably to the purchase of a special automatic dish-washing detergent. Here's how it happens:

You are probably working in a large, fairly new office building in a major city, and living in the suburbs. You not only feel under pressure to get a house about the same size and cost as your neighbors, but such a house is, in fact, the only kind available.

JG: Paul Swatek. “Social custom teaches us to strive for a privately owned, single-family home in the suburbs, possessing a garage of at least two-car capacity, and filled with "conveniences" that assure us of more "leisure" time. Advertising urges us to consume and dispose. Is this really what you want? The decision is yours and you are free to say no.”

NJ: The kitchen is really quite large. It has lots of cupboard space. You may have moved a lot of kitchen stuff with you; or maybe you bought it because you never envisioned any other way to live, or because you're expected to entertain in a particular style.

In any event, even though you find a camp cook set more than enough in the way of kitchenware when you're camping, you don't want all those empty kitchen cupboard shelves.

Once they are filled, you feel a compulsion to use the stuff. Instead of washing a pot after it has been used, you put it aside and dirty another one. Silverware, glasses and cups, bowls and plates are likewise dirtied in great number, even during the course of a family meal, let alone when you are entertaining.

Having dirtied so many pots and dishes, it really is a drag to have to wash them all by hand. So you get an automatic dishwasher. Maybe it was already in the house. Maybe you were partly influenced to buy it because the neighbors have dishwashers. But mostly you get it because you have all those dirty dishes.

And once you get it, you find it's designed so that you have to use the special dishwasher detergent or the soap will suds out all over the floor.

And that's why, once you accept the job, you have to buy the special dish washing detergent.

# # #

Bicycles As Problem Solvers

May 14, 2012, 9:10 a.m.

Bike a Week, Bike for Life
As the Press-Citizen reminds us, "Bike to Work Week" has rolled around on its two wheels again this year. Editorial, "Try Biking to Work This Week, Month," Iowa City Press-Citizen, May 14, 2012, p. A 7 ("As we have during past Bike to Work weeks, we urge area residents to try biking at least part of their commutes or errand-running this week."). For local resources see "Think Bicycles" (and thanks to Rod Sullivan for that link).

Just as dutifully, here's my annual essay on the subject. These ideas were first advanced 40 years ago as a section of an article in the Saturday Review, Nicholas Johnson, "Test Pattern for Living; How About Trying to Find Out What You Would Do and Be and Think and Create if There Weren't Some Corporation Trying to Sell You on Doing Everything Its Way," Saturday Review, May 29, 1971, which was modified into a chapter in a subsequent book with the same title, "Antidote to Automobiles," Nicholas Johnson, Test Pattern for Living (Bantam, 1972), ch. 7, pp. 110-117, and later in the New York Times, Nicholas Johnson, "Bicycles are Model Citizens; The Bicycle -- It's Like Giving Up Smoking," New York Times, August 2, 1973, p. 35, col. 2 -- reprinted at the bottom of this blog entry.
_______________
Iowa City is once again devoting a week to reflecting upon, and riding upon, bicycles as a preferred system of small town transportation.

The week has often involved some data gathering regarding the comparative virtues of three transportation modes: automobile, bus, and bicycle. The conclusion from the bike, car, and bus race across town last year, from the Coralville Library to the Iowa City Library? "[T]he commute takes about the same amount of time, no matter what mode of transportation." As Emily Schlettler quoted Coralville City Council member Tom Gill as saying, "'Why burn the gas? The commute by bike is more convenient and quicker.'" Emily Schlettler, "Bike to Work Week Celebrated," Iowa City Press-Citizen, May 17, 2011, p. A3.

Of course, there are many more reasons than efficiency and comparable speed for biking. Here are some of them:

Costs. Even without $3 or $5 gas, operating a car is extraordinarily expensive -- and even more in time than in money. Years ago, when the average mileage was 7500 miles a year, I calculated (a) the total costs of car ownership: amortization of the purchase price, gas and oil, repairs, insurance and license fees, parking fees, tolls, and so forth. (b) The amount of time it would take the average car owner to earn the money to pay these costs -- plus the time it takes to drive the car, take the car to the mechanic and pick it up, pump the gas, look for parking, and similar non-transportation, car-related time consumption. (c) The total time totaled 1500 hours a year. (d) To take 1500 hours to go 7500 miles is an average of 5 miles an hour -- something you can do without an automobile in a very brisk walk. (e) Can't get from Iowa City to Des Moines that way? Think again. You start working, I'll start walking. I'll be there before you. And that's walking! A biker who's in shape ought to be able to average 20 miles an hour and get there days before you do. This may not be a reason to never own, rent, or otherwise operate an automobile. But unless you are so wealthy that "money is no object," it is certainly something to think about for trips around town when a bike would do as well, or better than, a car. You can acquire, operate, maintain and insure a bicycle for roughly 1% of the cost of a car.

Time Saving, Convenience. Parking in an urban area can be a real hassle, as well as an added cost, whether navigating a parking garage or looking for street parking. My rule of thumb when looking for street parking in the Georgetown area of Washington was to pick the first parking space I could find within one mile of my destination. The 15-minute walk would take less time than driving around and around looking for a closer place to park. Iowa City's not that bad, but you can no longer pull up in front of your downtown destination (and not have to deal with parking meters!), as was the case when I was a boy. And don't talk to me about parking garages! The ticket often turns into nothing more than a hunting license, as you drive around and around, ever upward, until you end up parking on the roof. And allow plenty of time to exit, especially if you're coming from an event where numerous other attendees are in line ahead of you trying to pay for the pain of parking and exit.

You don't have to warm up your bike in the winter. You don't have to search for your car keys (if you have a combination lock for the bike). The odds are good there will be either a bike rack, or something else to lock your bike to, right outside the front door of your destination. And you will be taking up about 1/30th the space required for a car when you do so.

War for Oil. We send our brave soldiers off to war around the world in search of an answer to the perplexing question: "How did our oil get under their sand?" It costs us taxpayers trillions of dollars to provide this military protection for our oil companies -- not to mention tens of thousands of lives, and hundreds of thousands of wounded, Americans and others, military and civilian. Bicycles do require a little lubricant for the chain from time to time, but aside from that their only demands for energy involve peddling with your leg muscles.

And Speaking of Muscles -- and Obesity. You can bike outdoors all over town for a month for far less than what your favorite fitness center will charge you to bike in one place indoors. And if you're interested in firming up, and losing a little weight -- and who isn't -- biking just may be your answer. It's cheaper than Lipitor and better for your heart -- as well as a positive for prevention of diabetes and cancer. In fact, virtually every bit of advice about our health, regardless of the disease or injury in question, ends up coming back to "diet and exercise."

Multitasking. "Don't move your thumbs while I'm talking." Students sit in class with their laptops, managing their Facebook pages. Couples sit in restaurants, each on their cell phone. Kids think they can do their homework while watching TV, talking on the phone to one person, while texting another. Whatever you think about those kids of electronic multitasking, bicycling offers another that is in no way socially offensive. You have to go to work, or shop for groceries. If you drive, maybe you'll listen to the radio, music, or engage in the risky behavior of talking on a cell phone or texting. But if you hop on your bike, instead of hopping into the car, for those trips (or even portions of them; drive to cheap parking, with a bike rack and your bike; bike the rest of the way) you're multitasking: building exercise into your day in a way that takes no additional time (or money!) whatsoever. Bike baskets can carry many of the items you formerly drove to the store to get; and if you want to do more, the relatively cheap bike trailers will enable you to carry almost anything -- up to and including your small child.

Stress Reduction. Driving can be noisy, aggravating and stressful. Biking makes virtually no noise and is more calming and peaceful; the additional oxygen to the brain makes you more creative. You are closer to nature and know you're doing something that uses no fuel, is non-polluting, and healthier for both you and the Planet. And that's just for the commuting and shopping trips. With 80 miles of bike trails locally, there's also safe recreational riding -- such as the Clear Creek trail from Iowa City to the Coral Ridge Mall, or the Iowa River Corridor Trail from the City Park to the new Terry Trueblood Recreation Area and lake along Sand Road. That will really clear your mind.

The list could go on and on, but as a concession to the necessary shortness of a blog entry, and life itself, it will stop here.

Finally, for old time's sake, a republication of a column I wrote on the subject for the New York Times about 40 years ago. A little background: I was then working as an FCC Commissioner in downtown Washington, D.C., living in Maryland, and commuting by bicycle each day along the C&O Canal towpath. The facts it contains are from 1973, and the theme of the column is as much an anti-automobile and petroleum-based transportation system tirade as pro-bicycle -- as befits the early '70s. But many of the points are still valid. Chapter 7 ["Antidote for Automobiles"] in Test Pattern for Living, published by Bantam Books a year earlier (and now available for free download), strikes a similar theme.

"Bicycles are Model Citizens"
The Bicycle -- It's Like Giving Up Smoking
New York Times
August 2, 1973, p. 35, col. 2
I ride a bicycle. Not because I hate General Motors but haven't the courage to bomb an auto plant. I don't do it as a gesture of great stoicism and personal sacrifice.

I am not even engaged, necessarily, in an act of political protest over that company's responsibility for most of the air pollution tonnage in the United States.

It's like finally giving up cigarettes. You just wake up one morning and realize you don't want to start the day with another automobile.

Cigarette smoking is not a pleasure, it's a business. In the same way, you finally come to realize that you don't need General Motors, they need you. They need you to drive their cars for them. You are working for Detroit and paying them to do it. Automobiles are just a part of your life that's over, that's all.

No hard feelings. You've just moved on to something else. From now on, you just use their buses, taxis, and rental cars when they suit your convenience. You don't keep one for them that you have to house, feed and water, insure and care for.

You ride a bicycle because it feels good. The air feels good on your body; even the rain feels good. The blood starts moving around your body, and pretty soon it gets to your head, and, glory be, your head feels good.

You start noticing things. You look until you really see. You hear things, and smell smells you never knew were there. You start whistling nice little original tunes to suit the moment. Words start getting caught in the web of poetry in your mind.

And there's a nice feeling, too, in knowing you're doing a fundamental life thing for yourself: transportation. You got a little bit of your life back! And the thing you use is simple, functional, and relatively cheap.

You want one that fits you and rides smoothly, but with proper care and a few parts, it should last almost forever.

Your satisfaction comes from within you, and not from the envy or jealousy of others. (Although you are entitled to feel a little smug during rush hours, knowing you are also making better time than most of the people in cars.)

On those occasions when I am not able to cycle through the parks or along the [C&O] canal -- because the paths are rough with ice or muddy from rain or melting snow -- bicycling enables me to keep closer to the street people, folks waiting for buses or to cross streets, street sweepers, policemen, school "patrol," men unloading trucks.

Needless to say, you cannot claim any depth of understanding as a result of such momentary and chance encounters but by the time I get to the office I do somehow have the sense that I have a much better feeling for the mood of the city that day than if I had come to my office in a chauffeur-driven government limousine.

Although I am willing to brave the traffic and exhaust, I am aware it is dangerous. I think bicycles ought to be accorded a preferred position in the city's transportation system. At the very least, they deserve an even break.

Notice that bicycle riding also has some significant social advantages over the automobile. Cars unnecessarily kill sixty thousand people every year, permanently maim another one hundred and seventy thousand, and injure three and a half million more.

The automobile accounts for at least 66 percent of the total air pollution in the United States by tonnage -- as high as 85 percent in some urban areas -- and 91 percent of all-carbon monoxide pollution; it creates about nine hundred pounds of pollution for every person every year.

One million acres of land are paved each years, there is now a mile of road for each square mile of land. The concrete used in our Interstate Highway System would build six sidewalks to the moon.

Even so, everyone is familiar with the clogged streets and parking problems -- not to mention the unconscionable rates charged by the parking garages.

Automobile transportation is the largest single consumer of the resources used in our nation's total annual output of energy. It is an economic drain on consumers -- in no way aided by auto companies that deliberately build bumpers weaker than they were fifty years ago in order to contribute to an unnecessary bumper repair bill in excess of one billion dollars annually.

The bicycle is a model citizen, by comparison.
__________
Happy biking -- not just for "Bike to Work Week," but the other 51 weeks as well.

# # #

Fat People, Fat Profits

September 28, 2009, 5:30 a.m.

Need to Shed a Few Pounds?
Target the Right Enemy
(brought to you by FromDC2Iowa.blogspot.com*)
This morning's blog entry about nutrition and weight loss (and gain) is a blend of public policy and personal anecdote.

I've never seen the fascination in the details of others' hour-by-hour lives, and therefore assumed no one would find fascination in mine. Tweets, text messages, instant messages, blogs and journals detailing when the writer awoke, what they ate, and their frustration at having missed their bus and lost their true love (again) not only suffer as what general semanticists call "dead-level abstracting" but tell me more than what I really want to know. So you won't find much, if any, of that in what are now some 700 public policy entries in this blog -- except for today.

I've been interested in nutrition issues for nearly 40 years. As an FCC commissioner I sought to learn more about the impact of television on our society for good and for ill -- though I tended to find, and emphasize in my writing, more of the ill than of the good. In the course of doing so I couldn't help but notice the contrast between the advice from dietitians and nutritionists, on the one hand, and the foods promoted by TV commercials, product placement, and programs on the other.

Some of that interest found its way into Test Pattern for Living, a Bantam paperback now available for free download from my Web site. And on some occasion I delivered a speech titled, "Sweet Grease, Salty Grease: Television's All-American Diet" -- though I can't now find it either online or in hard copy.

For years, running miles every week meant that weight gain was not a problem. Although a few pounds over the height-weight charts' ideal, friends (including doctors) would respond to my concern with, "Oh, you look fine; you're a big guy, you can carry it."

As a knee deteriorated, and bicycle coasting downhill was substituted for running uphill, the pounds crept up a little more. Research on various diet plans indicated they pretty much all produce weight loss, but that for most dieters the weight soon returns with a few more pounds as a bonus. The Weight Watchers program seemed to be the most successful at keeping participants' weight off over time. So I tried that. It worked. But ultimately even the Weight Watchers' weight loss was regained.

What prompted a new approach a couple months ago is not clear. Here are some possibilities:

(1) Following his first heart attack my father -- although athletic and never "fat" -- was advised, and chose, to take off some weight. He did so, and also gave up smoking. But it was too late, and he ultimately died of a heart attack at 59 -- probably more from the cigarettes than the weight. So that may have been a part of the motivation; as I recently mentioned to someone, "As long as doctors will someday require that I shed a few pounds I might as well do it now, before my heart attack rather than after."

(2) In July the New York Times reported that the reduced-calorie diet that was found to extend the life of mice also had similar effects on rhesus monkeys and presumably could do the same for humans as well. Nicholas Wade, "Dieting Monkeys Offer Hope for Living Longer," New York Times, July 10, 2009, p. A1("Mice kept on such a diet from birth have long been known to live up to 40 percent longer than comparison mice fed normally"). As the years pass by such research becomes of ever-greater interest.

(3) And then there was David Kessler's book, "The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite" (New York: Rodale, 2009). Dr. Kessler was formerly the commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Here's a four-minute video with Kessler that pretty well sums up his thesis:

THE END OF OVEREATING by Dr. David Kessler
Uploaded by expandedbooks. - Explore lifestyle, fashion, and DIY videos.

It turns out that Kessler's point is very similar to mine 40 years ago in Test Pattern for Living and the speech, "Sweet Grease, Salty Grease: Television's All-American Diet."

He begins by noting that "For thousands of years human body weight stayed remarkably stable. . . . Then, in the 1980s, something changed." (p. 3) He goes on to report the work of Katherine Flegal, senior research scientist, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. She observed that in 1960 women between the ages of 20 and 29 averaged about 128 pounds; and that by the year 2000 their average weight was 157. Between the ages of 40 and 49 the increase during the same years was from 142 to 169. Moreover, there was an increasing spread in the difference between the weight gain of low-weight and higher-weight people. "Weight gain was primarily about overweight people becoming more overweight."

All of which prompts Kessler to ask, "What's been driving us to overeat?" (p. 5)

He answers his question with the title to chapter 3: "Sugar, Fat, and Salt Make Us Eat More Sugar, Fat, and Salt."

Obviously, the restaurant and processed food industries know this, and utilize this brain-altering formula to manipulate us into increasing our consumption, our nation's obesity epidemic -- and their profits and stock prices. The easiest way to boost a food's popularity, Kessler says, is to keep layering on more sugar, salt and fat -- sometimes all of them, as with sugar in the bun, and bacon and cheese topping off the prior ingredients.

Dr. Kessler draws an analogy to the tobacco industry's knowingly drawing young, "replacement smokers" (a "replacement" for the older smokers they kill off every year) into a lifetime of nicotine addiction -- thereby increasing the tobacco industry's profits. It is a story in which he also finds hope, insofar as a nation's view of tobacco ultimately shifted from cigarette smoking as "sexy and cool" to "a disgusting, anti-social, addictive habit that kills people." He suggests that similar progress in reducing obesity could follow a widespread realization that what I call "sweet grease, salty grease" is as disgusting and undesirable as cigarette smoke.

At the end of long and often frustrating days of dealing with a university bureaucracy, Dad used to stay up late at night writing, smoking and drinking coffee. As he told the story, he woke up one morning after such a night and realized he just didn't want another cigarette. That was it. And he never smoked again.

That's kind of what happened to me in altering my eating habits. Nothing dramatic. No doctor's warning. I kind of like to do scientific experiments on myself anyway, and it seemed worthwhile to test Kessler's theory to see what would happen if "sweet grease, salty grease" were eliminated from my diet.

What happened was that, over time, the weight slowly declined. There were no precise goals of weight to be lost per week, some ultimate ideal weight, or anything like that.

As a kid I used to actually make the sound of a kitchen sink disposal as I cleaned up everyone's plate after a meal. The notion of taking part of a restaurant meal home in a plastic box was an alien concept. People who did it were probably just showing off, I thought; going home to not only eat that food immediately but probably topping it off with a quart of ice cream as well. In spite of this capacity for consumption I didn't seem to gain much weight, probably because of sports and other the exercise.

So it was a unique experience to discover recently that following the elimination of the sweet and salty grease came a significant reduction in appetite. For the first time in my life I was unable or unwilling to finish a restaurant meal, got one of those plastic boxes, and actually made two additional meals out of it. What a concept!

In the world in which we live we are surrounded with cookies, cake, chips, french fries, ice cream, sugared drinks, and pizza. That's how we celebrate. It's how we "treat" our friends. It's in the advertising that flows over us. It's the "food" most readily at hand. And so long as our brains have been reprogrammed, and our bodies addicted, to require their sweet and salty grease it's a real problem.

Formerly, the solutions to that problem had been but two: (1) Give in to desire, and continue upward toward the BMI ("body mass index") of "30" that is the lower edge of obesity. (2) Keep a stiff, and closed, upper lip; feel the desire to consume the sweet and salty grease, but resist it with enormous powers of will and the resentment produced by a sense of deprivation. (Usually this approach only lasts for the duration of the "diet," following which the old consumption habits return.)

Now it turns out there is a third option. (3) By eliminating the sweet and salty grease from one's diet, and its impact on our brain, there is only a relatively short period of perceived deprivation; for some three or four days, for others a week or two. But following that, the very desire to consume those ingredients slowly disappears and is finally, seemingly, gone -- at least for me. Three meals a day of single, moderate servings, seem adequate, without the constant munching on something throughout the day. Without any sense of deprivation, the new eating habits seem natural, fully adequate and rewarding.

Twenty pounds lighter, there's more energy, sounder sleep, seemingly less stress, and no desire to revert to the old eating habits. There will probably be more weight loss, not because that's a goal but because it seems to happen naturally -- until and unless a former high school football weight is reached and to lose any more would be unhealthy.

Do you know the country song with the line, "that's my story and I'm sticking to it"? Well, this is my story, and I hope I'm sticking to it. But whether I do so or not I thought this might be one blog entry about "what I ate for breakfast" that just might be of actual use to others.
_______________
* Why do I put this blog ID at the top of the entry, when you know full well what blog you're reading? Because there are a number of Internet sites that, for whatever reason, simply take the blog entries of others and reproduce them as their own without crediting the source. I don't mind the flattering attention, but would appreciate acknowledgment as the source, even if I have to embed it myself. -- Nicholas Johnson

# # #

Biking's Many Benefits

For the Week of May 10, 2009; posted May 9, 2009, 5:30 p.m.; May 11, 2009, 6:45 a.m.; May 13, 2009, 7:30 a.m.; May 14, 2009, 5:00 p.m.

Bike for Life
Bike to Work Week
(brought to you by FromDC2Iowa.blogspot.com*)
It's "Bike to Work Week," Rob Daniel, "Organizers Push Bike to Work Week," Iowa City Press-Citizen, May 9, 2009, p. 3, and time for me to pedal my annual spiel for the wheel.

[And see also, Rachel Gallegos, "Bicyclists Take It to the Streets," Iowa City Press-Citizen, May 11, 2009, p. 3A; Mike Kilen, "7 tips for enjoyable biking to work," Des Moines Register, May 11, 2009; and "Why I Ride My Bicycle," Iowa City Press-Citizen, May 11, 2009, p. 7A ("Seven Iowa City area women write about why they ride their bikes to work and their riding experiences as we kick off Bike to Work Week." Those seven biking authors are: Susan Beckett, Wendy Brown, Erin Fleck, Diana Harris, Karen Kubby, Feather Lacy and Mary Lohse Shepherd); Rob Daniel, "Biker Beats Car, Bus in Annual Bike to Work Race," Iowa City Press-Citizen, May 12, 2009; Editorial, "Working Toward a Bike-Friendly Community," Iowa City Press-Citizen, May 13, 2009, p. A13 ("One step in the right direction is the Metro Bicycle Master Plan recently produced by the JCCOG Regional Trails and Bicycling Committee"); ; Brian Loring, "The Advantages of Biking," Iowa City Press-Citizen, May 13, 2009, p. A18 ("With so many bicycle owners but so little bike riding in the United States, there is great potential to increase the role that bicycles play in daily commutes and other frequent trips"); Editorial, "Public Bike System Would Unclutter Downtown and be Eco-Friendly," The Daily Iowan, May 14, 2009, p. A6; Rob Daniel, "Biking, Walking to School Nets Rewards," Iowa City Press-Citizen, May 14, 2009, p. A3.]

[And here are a couple additional links (among potentially hundreds) to biking resources: Bike Iowa (with links to many resources, including 68 Iowa bike clubs); Bike Cult; and for a couple places to get started in Iowa City, the 30th Century Bicycle; the Iowa City Bike Library; and World of Bikes.]

Think you can't do it? Click here to see why I answer your concerns with "Oh yes you can!"

Thirty-seven years ago I published a book titled, Test Pattern for Living. (Although long since out of print, it is still available for free downloading, and has maintained its own devoted cult following over the years.) The benefits of biking received an entire chapter in that book, and I have been extolling them ever since.

You see, the point is not that there is a single benefit from biking, but a lot of that benefit. The point is that there are so many multiple benefits from biking, each of which provides a lot of that benefit. They are spelled out in this blog entry, so I won't repeat them all here. But examples would include the sheer joy that comes from more oxygen in the brain, the beneficial reduction of obesity and heart attack risks, the greater speed of commuting and ease of parking, and the virtual elimination of expense (compared to operating a car) -- a not insignificant benefit at any time but especially during the current global economic collapse.

As a young boy, I started using a bike to deliver the Des Moines Register to my neighbors (a bike the Register enabled me to buy at a discount with my paper route money). Later, in the 1970s, I rode across the state in the RAGBRAI event with Donald Kaul for a number of years, reporting on it for National Public Radio. That three-speed RAGBRAI bike, with its rod brakes, still hangs in the garage these days. (I was told this museum piece was of a design originally created for the bicycles of postal delivery persons in India, and later for the bicycles that became the backbone of the Viet Cong's very effective transportation system during the war. "U.S. Army Transportation Museum," Wikipedia ("The museum has an extensive Vietnam War exhibit, including . . . bicycles used by the Viet Cong").)

Today my somewhat more modern (but still inexpensive) bicycle is mostly used for daily commuting, as well as exercise and recreation along some local trails. (For years I jogged almost every day as well -- in Washington, through the woods of Glover Park, just outside my door. The toll it took on my knees has eliminated that exercise option in recent years, but for some reason my knees seem to still like biking.)

As life has a way of coming full circle, this past year marked the publication of my son Gregory Johnson's book, Put Your Life on a Diet -- already in its second printing. Although it is compatible in theme with Test Pattern for Living, and also has a chapter on transportation advocating bicycles, it is otherwise unique, very much up-to-date, and grows out of his leadership with the "small house" movement -- as suggested by the book's sub-title: "Lessons Learned Living in 140 Square Feet." And see "Life Mobility Transportation Group - Bicycles, Electric Cars, and Greener Alternative Fuel Modes of Travel," on his ResourcesForLife.com Web site.

I've made no effort to update the bicycling chapter from my book, reproduced below.

The late 1960s and early 1970s were a different time from today. So you'll need to update the statistics if you want to use them. And the sentiments are very much 1970s' -- though the conclusions, social and ecological conditions haven't changed all that much.

It was a time of political and economic change, and one of my goals was to see if I could help contribute to a year in America in which there would be more bicycles sold than automobiles. (That goal was accomplished, as you'll see from a quote in what follows.)

In the 1970s there was also a good deal of artistic as well as other creative experimentation. It was represented in this book with the fact that the Foreword was sheet music (written by Mason Williams) and the chapters consisted of quotes on the even numbered (left hand) pages, and my text on the odd numbered (right hand) pages. As I described that feature in the Introduction,

[A]ny honest author will admit he has drawn heavily from the writings of others. I have emphasized this fact by the use of quotations from diverse sources . . . [One] reason I have emphasized the quotes is that my search involves the discovery of common themes . . .. When different people start saying the same thing -- when a blue-collar worker expresses frustrations similar to those of college students, when the teachings of Buddha are consistent with the insights of psychiatrists, or when ecologists echo the sentiments of poets -- I feel excitement. If you want, you can just read the quotes, and skip my text entirely -- or read it later.

In today's reproduction of the chapter the quotes are indented and blocked and my text goes to the margin. Page numbers are indicated as, e.g., # p. 110 #.

Antidote to Automobiles
[Test Pattern for Living, Chapter 7]
# p. 110 #

We might have to slow down a little or perhaps even sit quiet occasionally to develop better taste. One can't think very deeply at 70 miles an hour.
-C. E. Warne


My new pattern requires renting new cars at the airports as needed. I am progressively ceasing to own things, not on a political-schism basis, as for instance Henry George's ideology, but simply on a practical basis. Possession is becoming progressively burdensome and wasteful and therefore obsolete.
-R. Buckminster Fuller


When you drive a car, you drive a reflection of your self. And, in the case of the 1971 MGB, it's a reflection of someone very special.
-MG advertisement in Time

# p. 111 #

So far, we have approached alternate life styles almost in terms of hedonism: What feels best for you? What will remove the pain of living in a corporate state -- other than the drug life (whether alcohol, tranquilizers, or others) that only brings more ultimate pain? But what we so often discover is that the very products, activities, and attitudes that make you feel better also have significant social advantages: They use less of our nation's precious natural resources, they pollute less, they make less noise, they add to the pleasure of others, they enable each of us to live in a society in which we can grow in individual worth and fulfillment, they are more aesthetically pleasing, they make for better citizenship, and they are even more economical. Take bicycles, for example.

I ride a bicycle -- not because I hate General Motors but haven't the courage to bomb an auto plant. I don't do it as a gesture of great stoicism and personal sacrifice. I am not even engaged, necessarily, in an act of political protest over that company's responsibility for most of the air pollution by tonnage in the United States. It's like finally giving up cigarettes. You just wake up one morning and realize you don't want to start the day with another automobile. Cigarette smoking is not a pleasure, it's a business. In the same way, you finally come to realize that you don't need General Motors, they need you. They need you to drive their cars for them. You are driving for Detroit and paying them to do it. Automobiles are just a part of your life that's over, that's all. No hard feelings. You've just moved on to something else. From now on you just use their buses, taxis, and rental cars when they suit your

# p. 112 #

The most natural form of locomotion, walking has been In use since before the Invention of the wheel and the discovery of fire. Reliable and totally non-polluting, it offers convenience -- no parking, no cost. Invigorating, it promotes health and gives you the chance to think.
-Paul Swatek


Automobiles insulate man not only from the environment but from human contact as well. They permit only most limited types of interaction, usually competitive, aggressive, and destructive. If people are to be brought together again, given a chance to get acquainted with each other and involved in nature, some fundamental solutions must be found to the problems posed by the automobile.
-Edward T. Hall

ANNOUNCER: Sidney spent Sundays shelling at the seashore. Then Sidney started digging the Mustang -- the great original . . .. Now Sidney's making waves all over. Last week he saved three bathing beauties. (And they all could swim better than Sidney!) Only Mustang makes it happen!
-a television commercial

# p. 113 #

convenience. You don't keep one for them that you have to house, feed and water, insure, and care for.

You ride a bicycle because it feels good. The air feels good on your body; even the rain feels good. The blood starts moving around your body, and pretty soon it gets to your head, and, glory be, your head feels good. You start noticing things. You look until you really see. You hear things, and smell smells, you never knew were there. You start whistling nice little original tunes to suit the moment. Words start getting caught in the web of poetry in your mind. And there's a nice feeling, too, in knowing you're doing a fundamental life thing for yourself: transportation. You got a little bit of your life back! And the thing you use is simple, functional, and relatively cheap. You want one that fits you and rides smoothly, but with proper care and a few parts it should last almost forever. Your satisfaction comes from within you, not from the envy or jealousy of others. (Although you are entitled to feel a little smug during rush hours, knowing you are also making better time than most of the people in cars.)

On those occasions when I am not able to cycle through the parks or along the canal -- because the paths are rough with ice or muddy from rain or melting snow -- bicycling enables me to keep closer to the street people: folks waiting for buses or to cross streets, street sweepers, policemen, school "patrols," men unloading trucks. Needless to say, you cannot claim any depth of understanding as a result of such momentary and chance encounters, but by the time I get to the office I do somehow have the sense that I have a much better feeling for the mood of the city that day than if I had come to my office in a chauffeur-driven government limou-

# p. 114 #

On a different speed scale, bicycles could move 2.8 times as many people per amount of space. If a bicycler can make 10 miles an hour, the car would have to exceed 28 mph to rack up more passenger miles on the same system of streets. But the New York City average speed for cars during rush hour is only 8.5 mph, 13 mph on the feeder roads. It's a fact that today in many cities you can make better time aboard a bicycle than in a car.
-Paul Swatek


Make your second car a bicycle.

Consider the advantages that the bicycle has to offer -- low cost, no pollution, and convenient to park.

For under $50 you can get a bicycle fitted with enough trimmings to make it practical for going shopping and carrying a small child. The cheapest car costs about thirty times that.

A bicycle is also inexpensive to operate, maintain, and insure.

Bicycles are quieter than any form of motorized transportation, produce no pollution, and use up no fuel.

A bicycle takes up about 1/30th the parking space of a car.

In city traffic today, the bicycle is often faster than the car or bus.

Bicycles give the rider the sort of healthy exercise that many Americans usually do not get.

Riding a bicycle makes it possible to get a better appreciation of a beautiful day, or a pleasant ride through the park.

. . . The New York Times quoted a 32-year-old millionaire who pedals up Fifth Avenue to social engagements in a dinner jacket as explaining, "It's much easier than fussing with a chauffeur."
-Paul Swatek

# p. 115 #

sine. Although I am willing to brave the traffic and exhaust, I am aware it is dangerous. I think bicycles ought to be accorded a preferred position in the city's transportation system. At the very least, they deserve an even break.

Notice that bicycle riding also has some significant social advantages over the automobile. Cars unnecessarily kill sixty thousand people every year, permanently maim another one hundred and seventy thousand, and injure three and a half million more. The automobile accounts for at least 60 percent of the total air pollution in the United States by tonnage -- as high as 85 percent in some urban areas -- and 91 percent of all carbon-monoxide pollution; it creates about nine hundred pounds of pollution for every person every year. One million acres of land are paved each year; there is now a mile of road for each square mile of land. The concrete used in our Interstate Highway System would build six sidewalks to the moon. Even so, everyone is familiar with the clogged streets and parking problems -- not to mention the unconscionable rates charged by the parking garages. Automobile transportation is the largest single consumer of the resources used in our nation's total annual output of energy. It is an economic drain on consumers -- in no way aided by auto companies that deliberately build bumpers weaker than they were fifty years ago in order to contribute to an unnecessary bumper-repair bill in excess of one billion dollars annually.

The bicycle is a model citizen, by comparison.

The bicycle does not kill or maim; it does not pollute; it does not deplete natural resources; it makes no noise; it takes a great deal less space; and it is very much cheaper. (You can buy a brand new bicycle for

# p. 116 #

Commuting by bicycle? Is this some kind of put-on? It may sound like a joke to motor-minded America, but in the rest of the world nobody is laughing. In countries that are willing to take it seriously, the bicycle [is] transportation. Switzerland, for example, which traditionally places a high value on peace of mind and purity of air, has more bicycles than automobiles. In Amsterdam -- a national capital with roughly the same population and climatic conditions as Washington, D.C. -- 150,000 people ride bikes to work every day. Hundreds of thousands more commute by bicycle in other European cities. The same is true in much of Africa and Asia.
-Thomas R. Reid, III


This year an estimated 10 million bicycles will be sold, compared to a projected 8.6 million new cars.
-Friends of the Earth

# p. 117 #

little more than what it costs to operate an automobile for two weeks.) Although the bicycle makes a direct assault on four great problems that plague the modern city -- traffic, noise, parking, and pollution -- urban planners have overlooked it in their search for solutions to the urban transportation crisis.

It is more than ironic that America can invest so much stock faith and rhetoric in the competitive marketplace of commerce and yet ignore the "marketplace of ideas" (to use a phrase by Mr. Justice Holmes) by tolerating the television monopoly that is used to merchandise Detroit's peculiar dreams of the appropriate automotive life style -- with all that life style's attendant social ills. My own commission, the Federal Communications Commission, has been instrumental in encouraging broadcasters' censoring off the airwaves the messages from ecology groups (like Friends of the Earth) that would cry out against the urban devastation being wrought by Detroit's automobiles. (The FCC decision, fortunately, has been substantially reversed by the U.S. Court of Appeals.) In perhaps one of the greatest advertising overkills of all time, we Americans are being grossly oversold an automotive product and life style (bigger, faster, sexier cars) that we neither need nor may really want, and that will surely eventually kill us with its exhaust by-products and lethargy-induced heart attacks, if it does not get us first in a crash. This may serve the corporate profits of the automotive, oil, steel, cement, and road-building industries, but it is shortchanging the American people.

There are other ways to get around.

# # #
You, too, can have a happy Bike to Work Week -- 52 weeks every year! Try it.

Think you can't do it? Here are some suggestions/answers/arguments that say, "Yes You Can!"

1. I'm just not in shape. Bikers come in all shapes and sizes -- physically and in terms of fitness. You can join them. Haven't biked during the last 20 years -- or ever? Start slowly. Don't go out and buy the most expensive one in the shop (even though a perfectly good new bike will only cost you roughly 1% of what a new car would cost). Rent, or borrow, a bike and take a ride around one city block in your neighborhood. Gradually extend your distance -- a half-mile, a mile (10 to 12 blocks), five miles -- over the course of a month. Doesn't it make you feel better? Isn't it kind of fun? Buy a used bike. Make sure it's properly adjusted to your size, and the tires are kept properly inflated -- and that you wear a helmet and follow some simple safety rules (see 6, below). Don't worry about the hills; they will seem to be much less steep with time. Until those leg muscles develop just get off the bike and walk it up the hills that are a little too difficult, even when you've geared down. And remember, there's no shame in walking; every biker has done it on some occasion; and besides they'll just think you had to get off because you have a flat tire.

2. It's too far to my job. What do you mean by "too far"? That it will take longer than you'd like? (It may actually save you time; see 4, below.) That you have to dress up for work and might dirty your clothes? (There are answers for that, too, in 5, below.) That you'd have to bike on unsafe streets? Yup, once again, see 6, below. Bear in mind, I'm talking about biking to work in Iowa-sized towns (up to and including Des Moines); I'm not advocating biking along Los Angeles' freeways from Pasadena to Santa Monica every morning.

3. There are a lot of things for which I need a car. (a) I'm not suggesting you not have access to a car when you truly need one, only that you probably truly need one less often than you think. (b) If you and your partner have more than one car you might be able to share one, and cut your costs in half. Or maybe rent one over occasional weekends for heavy shopping, or trips out of town. (c) The average person expends 1500 hours a year for their car: [1] the hours you must work to earn the money for car payments, repairs, insurance, licensing and fees, gas and oil, [2] driving to, waiting for, going back to pick up your car, and other time consuming efforts associated with those tasks, and [3] the hours you spend actually driving the car for your own purposes. The average distance driven is 7500 miles per year. At 1500 hundred hours, and 7500 miles, that's an average of 5 miles per hour -- a good brisk walking speed, and much, much slower than what you can do on a bike. (d) Many of those "needs" you fulfill with your car may not really be "needs." (e) You'd be amazed how much you can carry with a bike. [1] Small and medium-size objects can be put in a jacket pocket; or, if they won't fit there, in one of the various-sized baskets available for bicycles. [2] Regularly have larger loads? Groceries? Laundry to the laundromat? There are reasonably priced bicycle trailers that are lightweight and easy to pull that quickly snap into and out of their connectors.

4. I don't have the time. Put aside the fact that you're only getting 5 mph out of your car (see 3(c), above). Assume that wasn't true and that the only time required by your car was the time spent getting from one place to another. Traveling by bike is, worst case, not significantly slower than a car, and often actually faster. [See, Rob Daniel, "Biker Beats Car, Bus in Annual Bike to Work Race," Iowa City Press-Citizen, May 12, 2009.] Why is that? Bikes' advantages, among others, include the combination of (a) being able jump on your bike and go (without opening the garage, warming up the car, backing out of the drive, getting into traffic), (b) bike trails (with no stop lights), sidewalks and bike lanes (faster than sitting in rush hour traffic), and (c) being able to pull up and park right outside the door of your destination (rather than having to look for a parking place or drive round and round in a parking garage).

5. I need to dress for work. (a) Do you really? Midwestern workplaces are much more casual than those on the East or West Coast -- and more casual than any were in the 1950s. (b) I knew a multi-millionaire in Manhattan who used to bike, in black tie, to formal events. I see men in suits biking in Iowa City. Clearly it is possible to do. (c) There are alternatives. Combine your biking with a stop off at a gym; shower, and keep your good clothes, there. I've often found myself working in buildings that have showers in the restrooms. Many people who walk to work wear one pair of walking shoes while walking and carry (or keep at the office) another pair they wear at work; you might be able to carry, or keep at the office, the clothes you need there.

6. I just wouldn't feel safe. You're less likely to be seriously hurt moving around town on a bike than in a car. OK, I know the data can be debated for hours without reaching agreement. The point is that, with some minimal precautions -- just as with driving, walking, boating, or any other activity -- you're safe on a bike. "Car emissions kill 30,000 people and car collisions kill 46,000 each year in the U.S. . . . 725, 629, 665, 732, and 693 cyclists died per year in 2004, 2003, 2002, 2001, and 2000 respectively." Bicycle Almanac. Those are pretty good comparative odds. Actually, most bike accidents are the result of ignoring some of those simple safety practices: biking against, instead of with, traffic; running red lights; biking without a helmet; riding too fast, or going in and out of traffic; biking at night without a headlight and flashing rear red light -- and, of course, OWI. If you're going to ride on sidewalks a bell is a courtesy as much as a safety device.

7. What would I do on days that aren't perfect biking weather? What if it's a bitter cold winter day? Or a real summer scorcher? Or it's raining? Hey, nobody's taking attendance; you want to skip a day, skip a day. But once it becomes a habit you may end up doing what a lot of bikers do: ride your bike every day -- unless it's a safety issue. I never bike in tornadoes; if you wouldn't be safe in a car you probably aren't safe on a bike. It's conceivable fog or rain would be so thick as to impair vision. And when roads are so icy that cars can't stay on them bikes probably can't either. As for cold, the folks who are really cold in winter are the ones standing and shivering at a bus stop, or scraping the ice off their windshield. Biking helps keep you warm. Besides, cold weather is easy to deal with; we midwesterners call it "layering" -- the colder it gets the more layers of clothing you put on (paying special attention to feet, hands, head and face). I once walked across Iowa City in 100 below wind chill weather just to see what it would feel like; it was as comfortable as any other temperature for which I've been adequately dressed. Heat's another matter. There's no limit to how much additional clothes you can put on in the winter, but there are limits to how much you can take off in the summer (though you wouldn't know it to see some summertime bikers). So why do 7000-10,000 bicyclists from Iowa and around the world take a week out of their lives, and pay the costs, to ride across the entire state of Iowa during the peak of summer heat in July? Because it's just that much fun to do. And the heat? If you're moving along at 15 mph or so, and sweating, you have the equivalent of the comfort of a fan blowing on you and evaporating that moisture. You'll be a lot more comfortable that the folks sitting in their lawn chairs along the route. (But you do have to remember to keep taking liquids and electrolites.) Rain? You're not going to carry an umbrella while biking, but there are lots of rain gear outfits to choose from that will keep you warm and dry. (Just remember to keep your bike chain oiled to avoid rust.)

Any other reasons why you say "I can't" to which I can respond, "Oh, yes you can"? Just put a comment on this blog entry and I'll try to give you an answer.
_______________

* Why do I put this blog ID at the top of the entry, when you know full well what blog you're reading? Because there are a number of Internet sites that, for whatever reason, simply take the blog entries of others and reproduce them as their own without crediting the source. I don't mind the flattering attention, but would appreciate acknowledgment as the source -- even if I have to embed it myself. -- Nicholas Johnson

# # #

Bike for Life

May 13, 2008,9:05 a.m.

Bike for Life
Bike to Work Week
Thirty-six years ago I published a book titled, Test Pattern for Living. (Although long since out of print, it is still available for free downloading, and has maintained its own devoted cult following over the years.)

Bicycling has remained a major part of my life ever since, as a young boy, I started using a bike to deliver the Des Moines Register to my neighbors (a bike the Register enabled me to buy at a discount with my paper route money). Later, in the 1970s, I rode across the state in the RAGBRAI event with Donald Kaul for a number of years, reporting on it for National Public Radio. Today my bicycle is mostly used for commuting and some local trails for exercise and recreation.

So it was natural that any book called Test Pattern for Living would have a chapter on bicycling. And, this being "Bike to Work Week" and all, it seemed appropriate to dust it off and run it in the blog this week.

As life has a way of coming full circle, next month we will be celebrating the publication of my son Gregory Johnson's book, Put Your Life on a Diet -- already in its second printing. Although it is compatible in theme, and also has a chapter on transportation advocating bicycles, it is otherwise unique, very much up-to-date, and grows out of his leadership with the "small house" movement -- as suggested by the book's sub-title: "Lessons Learned Living in 140 Square Feet."

I've made no effort to update the chapter from my book, reproduced below. The late 1960s and early 1970s were a different time from today. So you'll need to update the statistics if you want to use them. And the sentiments are very much 1970s' -- though the conclusions, social and ecological conditions haven't changed all that much. It was a time of political and economic change, and one of my goals was to see if I could help contribute to a year in America in which there would be more bicycles sold than automobiles. (We did it, as you'll see from a quote in what follows.) In the 1970s there was also a good deal of artistic (as well as other) experimentation. It was represented in this book with the fact that the Foreword was sheet music (by Mason Williams) and the chapters consisted of quotes on the even numbered (left hand) pages, and my text on the odd numbered (right hand) pages. As I described that feature in the Introduction,

[A]ny honest author will admit he has drawn heavily from the writings of others. I have emphasized this fact by the use of quotations from diverse sources . . . [One] reason I have emphasized the quotes is that my search involves the discovery of common themes . . .. When different people start saying the same thing -- when a blue-collar worker expresses frustrations similar to those of college students, when the teachings of Buddha are consistent with the insights of psychiatrists, or when ecologists echo the sentiments of poets -- I feel excitement. If you want, you can just read the quotes, and skip my text entirely -- or read it later.

In today's reproduction of the chapter the quotes are indented and blocked and my text goes to the margin. Page numbers are indicated as, e.g., # p. 110 #.

Antidote to Automobiles [Chapter 7]
# p. 110 #

We might have to slow down a little or perhaps even sit quiet occasionally to develop better taste. One can't think very deeply at 70 miles an hour.
-C. E. Warne


My new pattern requires renting new cars at the airports as needed. I am progressively ceasing to own things, not on a political-schism basis, as for instance Henry George's ideology, but simply on a practical basis. Possession is becoming progressively burdensome and wasteful and therefore obsolete.
-R. Buckminster Fuller


When you drive a car, you drive a reflection of your self. And, in the case of the 1971 MGB, it's a reflection of someone very special.
-MG advertisement in Time

# p. 111 #

So far, we have approached alternate life styles almost in terms of hedonism: What feels best for you? What will remove the pain of living in a corporate state -- other than the drug life (whether alcohol, tranquilizers, or others) that only brings more ultimate pain? But what we so often discover is that the very products, activities, and attitudes that make you feel better also have significant social advantages: They use less of our nation's precious natural resources, they pollute less, they make less noise, they add to the pleasure of others, they enable each of us to live in a society in which we can grow in individual worth and fulfillment, they are more aesthetically pleasing, they make for better citizenship, and they are even more economical. Take bicycles, for example.

I ride a bicycle -- not because I hate General Motors but haven't the courage to bomb an auto plant. I don't do it as a gesture of great stoicism and personal sacrifice. I am not even engaged, necessarily, in an act of political protest over that company's responsibility for most of the air pollution by tonnage in the United States. It's like finally giving up cigarettes. You just wake up one morning and realize you don't want to start the day with another automobile. Cigarette smoking is not a pleasure, it's a business. In the same way, you finally come to realize that you don't need General Motors, they need you. They need you to drive their cars for them. You are driving for Detroit and paying them to do it. Automobiles are just a part of your life that's over, that's all. No hard feelings. You've just moved on to something else. From now on you just use their buses, taxis, and rental cars when they suit your

# p. 112 #

The most natural form of locomotion, walking has been In use since before the Invention of the wheel and the discovery of fire. Reliable and totally non-polluting, it offers convenience -- no parking, no cost. Invigorating, it promotes health and gives you the chance to think.
-Paul Swatek


Automobiles insulate man not only from the environment but from human contact as well. They permit only most limited types of interaction, usually competitive, aggressive, and destructive. If people are to be brought together again, given a chance to get acquainted with each other and involved in nature, some fundamental solutions must be found to the problems posed by the automobile.
-Edward T. Hall

ANNOUNCER: Sidney spent Sundays shelling at the seashore. Then Sidney started digging the Mustang -- the great original . . .. Now Sidney's making waves all over. Last week he saved three bathing beauties. (And they all could swim better than Sidney!) Only Mustang makes it happen!
-a television commercial

# p. 113 #

convenience. You don't keep one for them that you have to house, feed and water, insure, and care for.

You ride a bicycle because it feels good. The air feels good on your body; even the rain feels good. The blood starts moving around your body, and pretty soon it gets to your head, and, glory be, your head feels good. You start noticing things. You look until you really see. You hear things, and smell smells, you never knew were there. You start whistling nice little original tunes to suit the moment. Words start getting caught in the web of poetry in your mind. And there's a nice feeling, too, in knowing you're doing a fundamental life thing for yourself: transportation. You got a little bit of your life back! And the thing you use is simple, functional, and relatively cheap. You want one that fits you and rides smoothly, but with proper care and a few parts it should last almost forever. Your satisfaction comes from within you, not from the envy or jealousy of others. (Although you are entitled to feel a little smug during rush hours, knowing you are also making better time than most of the people in cars.)

On those occasions when I am not able to cycle through the parks or along the canal -- because the paths are rough with ice or muddy from rain or melting snow -- bicycling enables me to keep closer to the street people: folks waiting for buses or to cross streets, street sweepers, policemen, school "patrols," men unloading trucks. Needless to say, you cannot claim any depth of understanding as a result of such momentary and chance encounters, but by the time I get to the office I do somehow have the sense that I have a much better feeling for the mood of the city that day than if I had come to my office in a chauffeur-driven government limou-

# p. 114 #

On a different speed scale, bicycles could move 2.8 times as many people per amount of space. If a bicycler can make 10 miles an hour, the car would have to exceed 28 mph to rack up more passenger miles on the same system of streets. But the New York City average speed for cars during rush hour is only 8.5 mph, 13 mph on the feeder roads. It's a fact that today in many cities you can make better time aboard a bicycle than in a car.
-Paul Swatek


Make your second car a bicycle.

Consider the advantages that the bicycle has to offer -- low cost, no pollution, and convenient to park.

For under $50 you can get a bicycle fitted with enough trimmings to make it practical for going shopping and carrying a small child. The cheapest car costs about thirty times that.

A bicycle is also inexpensive to operate, maintain, and insure.

Bicycles are quieter than any form of motorized transportation, produce no pollution, and use up no fuel.

A bicycle takes up about 1/30th the parking space of a car.

In city traffic today, the bicycle is often faster than the car or bus.

Bicycles give the rider the sort of healthy exercise that many Americans usually do not get.

Riding a bicycle makes it possible to get a better appreciation of a beautiful day, or a pleasant ride through the park.

. . . The New York Times quoted a 32-year-old millionaire who pedals up Fifth Avenue to social engagements in a dinner jacket as explaining, "It's much easier than fussing with a chauffeur."
-Paul Swatek

# p. 115 #

sine. Although I am willing to brave the traffic and exhaust, I am aware it is dangerous. I think bicycles ought to be accorded a preferred position in the city's transportation system. At the very least, they deserve an even break.

Notice that bicycle riding also has some significant social advantages over the automobile. Cars unnecessarily kill sixty thousand people every year, permanently maim another one hundred and seventy thousand, and injure three and a half million more. The automobile accounts for at least 60 percent of the total air pollution in the United States by tonnage -- as high as 85 percent in some urban areas -- and 91 percent of all carbon-monoxide pollution; it creates about nine hundred pounds of pollution for every person every year. One million acres of land are paved each year; there is now a mile of road for each square mile of land. The concrete used in our Interstate Highway System would build six sidewalks to the moon. Even so, everyone is familiar with the clogged streets and parking problems -- not to mention the unconscionable rates charged by the parking garages. Automobile transportation is the largest single consumer of the resources used in our nation's total annual output of energy. It is an economic drain on consumers -- in no way aided by auto companies that deliberately build bumpers weaker than they were fifty years ago in order to contribute to an unnecessary bumper-repair bill in excess of one billion dollars annually.

The bicycle is a model citizen, by comparison.

The bicycle does not kill or maim; it does not pollute; it does not deplete natural resources; it makes no noise; it takes a great deal less space; and it is very much cheaper. (You can buy a brand new bicycle for

# p. 116 #

Commuting by bicycle? Is this some kind of put-on? It may sound like a joke to motor-minded America, but in the rest of the world nobody is laughing. In countries that are willing to take it seriously, the bicycle [is] transportation. Switzerland, for example, which traditionally places a high value on peace of mind and purity of air, has more bicycles than automobiles. In Amsterdam -- a national capital with roughly the same population and climatic conditions as Washington, D.C. -- 150,000 people ride bikes to work every day. Hundreds of thousands more commute by bicycle in other European cities. The same is true in much of Africa and Asia.
-Thomas R. Reid, III


This year an estimated 10 million bicycles will be sold, compared to a projected 8.6 million new cars.
-Friends of the Earth

# p. 117 #

little more than what it costs to operate an automobile for two weeks.) Although the bicycle makes a direct assault on four great problems that plague the modern city -- traffic, noise, parking, and pollution -- urban planners have overlooked it in their search for solutions to the urban transportation crisis.

It is more than ironic that America can invest so much stock faith and rhetoric in the competitive marketplace of commerce and yet ignore the "marketplace of ideas" (to use a phrase by Mr. Justice Holmes) by tolerating the television monopoly that is used to merchandise Detroit's peculiar dreams of the appropriate automotive life style -- with all that life style's attendant social ills. My own commission, the Federal Communications Commission, has been instrumental in encouraging broadcasters' censoring off the airwaves the messages from ecology groups (like Friends of the Earth) that would cry out against the urban devastation being wrought by Detroit's automobiles. (The FCC decision, fortunately, has been substantially reversed by the U.S. Court of Appeals.) In perhaps one of the greatest advertising overkills of all time, we Americans are being grossly oversold an automotive product and life style (bigger, faster, sexier cars) that we neither need nor may really want, and that will surely eventually kill us with its exhaust by-products and lethargy-induced heart attacks, if it does not get us first in a crash. This may serve the corporate profits of the automotive, oil, steel, cement, and road-building industries, but it is shortchanging the American people.

There are other ways to get around.

# # #

You, too, can have a happy Bike to Work Week -- 52 weeks every year! Try it.

Benefits & Joys of Bicycling

July 15, 2007, 11:45 a.m.

Note: If there is any reason why you might want to know this, within the past 24 hours [from the morning of July 16] someone has kindly translated the following into German.

Bicycling: Introduction

Thirty-six years ago, caught up in the environmental movement of that time and enjoying my 15 minutes of fame, I decided to see if I could contribute to creating a year in which more bicycles than automobiles would be sold in America. (The goal was achieved.)

I had reported somewhere (somewhere I can't now find on the Internet) that the average automobile driver invests 1500 hours a year in their automobile. That includes the driving, visits to the gas pump, mechanic, motor vehicle and driver's licensing agencies -- and the hours it takes to earn the money to pay for the vehicle, gas and oil, repairs, insurance, taxes and licensing. At that time the average driving distance was 7500 miles a year. Thus, I argued you were only making 5 miles an hour with this arrangement -- a speed you could have walked in the same time once in good condition. Clearly, the reduced cost, and increased speed, of bicycling make it the benefit-cost "best buy."

Bicycling is very much in the news these days as well. We had "Bike to Work Week," "Live Earth" caused some reflection about the impact of internal combustion engines (and the pedal power alternative), and next week will be the 35th year that a population of bicyclists (larger than most Iowa towns, including some they pass through) will traverse the State of Iowa from the Missouri to the Mississippi River in an annual event called "RAGBRAI."

All told, I thought it might be interesting to some readers to see for the first time (or re-read) a brief example of what I was writing about bicycling 35 years ago.

The joys of bicycling became a major part of an article I wrote for the Saturday Review of Literature at that time. Nichiolas Johnson, "Test Pattern for Living," Saturday Review, May 29, 1971, p. 12. A year later it had become a book by the same name, Nicholas Johnson, Test Patter for Living (New York: Bantam, 1972) (available in full text from one of my Web sites).

Being the early 1970s and all, the Introduction was sheet music and each page of text (the odd numbered pages) was juxtaposed with a page of quotes (on the even numbered pages) related to the text. The bicycling material from the Saturday Review became Chapter 7, "Antidote to Automobiles." (Should anyone care, the pagination from the book is retained, as immediately below with "# p. 110#.")

Here it is, beginning with the first, even-numbered, page of quotes:

Antidote to Automobiles

# p. 110 #

We might have to slow down a little or perhaps even sit quiet occasionally to develop better taste. One can't think very deeply at 70 miles an hour.
-C. E. Warne


My new pattern requires renting new cars at the airports as needed. I am progressively ceasing to own things, not on a political-schism basis, as for instance Henry George's ideology, but simply on a practical basis. Possession is becoming progressively burdensome and wasteful and therefore obsolete.
-R. Buckminster Fuller


When you drive a car, you drive a reflection of your self. And, in the case of the 1971 MGB, it's a reflection of someone very special.
-MG advertisement in Time

# # #

# p. 111 #

So far, we have approached alternate life styles almost in terms of hedonism: What feels best for you? What will remove the pain of living in a corporate state -- other than the drug life (whether alcohol, tranquilizers, or others) that only brings more ultimate pain? But what we so often discover is that the very products, activities, and attitudes that make you feel better also have significant social advantages: They use less of our nation's precious natural resources, they pollute less, they make less noise, they add to the pleasure of others, they enable each of us to live in a society in which we can grow in individual worth and fulfillment, they are more aesthetically pleasing, they make for better citizenship, and they are even more economical. Take bicycles, for example.

I ride a bicycle -- not because I hate General Motors but haven't the courage to bomb an auto plant. I don't do it as a gesture of great stoicism and personal sacrifice. I am not even engaged, necessarily, in an act of political protest over that company's responsibility for most of the air pollution by tonnage in the United States. It's like finally giving up cigarettes. You just wake up one morning and realize you don't want to start the day with another automobile. Cigarette smoking is not a pleasure, it's a business. In the same way, you finally come to realize that you don't need General Motors, they need you. They need you to drive their cars for them. You are driving for Detroit and paying them to do it. Automobiles are just a part of your life that's over, that's all. No hard feelings. You've just moved on to something else. From now on you just use their buses, taxis, and rental cars when they suit your

# p. 112 #

The most natural form of locomotion, walking has been In use since before the Invention of the wheel and the discovery of fire. Reliable and totally non-polluting, it offers convenience -- no parking, no cost. Invigorating, it promotes health and gives you the chance to think.
-Paul Swatek


Automobiles insulate man not only from the environment but from human contact as well. They permit only most limited types of interaction, usually competitive, aggressive, and destructive. If people are to be brought together again, given a chance to get acquainted with each other and involved in nature, some fundamental solutions must be found to the problems posed by the automobile.
-Edward T. Hall


ANNOUNCER: Sidney spent Sundays shelling at the seashore. Then Sidney started digging the Mustang -- the great original . . .. Now Sidney's making waves all over. Last week he saved three bathing beauties. (And they all could swim better than Sidney!) Only Mustang makes it happen!
-a television commercial

# p. 113 #

convenience. You don't keep one for them that you have to house, feed and water, insure, and care for.

You ride a bicycle because it feels good. The air feels good on your body; even the rain feels good. The blood starts moving around your body, and pretty soon it gets to your head, and, glory be, your head feels good. You start noticing things. You look until you really see. You hear things, and smell smells, you never knew were there. You start whistling nice little original tunes to suit the moment. Words start getting caught in the web of poetry in your mind. And there's a nice feeling, too, in knowing you're doing a fundamental life thing for yourself: transportation. You got a little bit of your life back! And the thing you use is simple, functional, and relatively cheap. You want one that fits you and rides smoothly, but with proper care and a few parts it should last almost forever. Your satisfaction comes from within you, not from the envy or jealousy of others. (Although you are entitled to feel a little smug during rush hours, knowing you are also making better time than most of the people in cars.)

On those occasions when I am not able to cycle through the parks or along the canal -- because the paths are rough with ice or muddy from rain or melting snow -- bicycling enables me to keep closer to the street people: folks waiting for buses or to cross streets, street sweepers, policemen, school "patrols," men unloading trucks. Needless to say, you cannot claim any depth of understanding as a result of such momentary and chance encounters, but by the time I get to the office I do somehow have the sense that I have a much better feeling for the mood of the city that day than if I had come to my office in a chauffeur-driven government limou-

# p. 114 #

On a different speed scale, bicycles could move 2.8 times as many people per amount of space. If a bicycler can make 10 miles an hour, the car would have to exceed 28 mph to rack up more passenger miles on the same system of streets. But the New York City average speed for cars during rush hour is only 8.5 mph, 13 mph on the feeder roads. It's a fact that today in many cities you can make better time aboard a bicycle than in a car.
-Paul Swatek


Make your second car a bicycle.

Consider the advantages that the bicycle has to offer -- low cost, no pollution, and convenient to park.

For under $50 you can get a bicycle fitted with enough trimmings to make it practical for going shopping and carrying a small child. The cheapest car costs about thirty times that.

A bicycle is also inexpensive to operate, maintain, and insure.

Bicycles are quieter than any form of motorized transportation, produce no pollution, and use up no fuel.

A bicycle takes up about 1/30th the parking space of a car.

In city traffic today, the bicycle is often faster than the car or bus.

Bicycles give the rider the sort of healthy exercise that many Americans usually do not get.

Riding a bicycle makes it possible to get a better appreciation of a beautiful day, or a pleasant ride through the park.

. . . The New York Times quoted a 32-year-old millionaire who pedals up Fifth Avenue to social engagements in a dinner jacket as explaining, "It's much easier than fussing with a chauffeur."
-Paul Swatek

# p. 115 #

sine. Although I am willing to brave the traffic and exhaust, I am aware it is dangerous. I think bicycles ought to be accorded a preferred position in the city's transportation system. At the very least, they deserve an even break.

Notice that bicycle riding also has some significant social advantages over the automobile. Cars unnecessarily kill sixty thousand people every year, permanently maim another one hundred and seventy thousand, and injure three and a half million more. The automobile accounts for at least 60 percent of the total air pollution in the United States by tonnage -- as high as 85 percent in some urban areas -- and 91 percent of all carbon-monoxide pollution; it creates about nine hundred pounds of pollution for every person every year. One million acres of land are paved each year; there is now a mile of road for each square mile of land. The concrete used in our Interstate Highway System would build six sidewalks to the moon. Even so, everyone is familiar with the clogged streets and parking problems -- not to mention the unconscionable rates charged by the parking garages. Automobile transportation is the largest single consumer of the resources used in our nation's total annual output of energy. It is an economic drain on consumers -- in no way aided by auto companies that deliberately build bumpers weaker than they were fifty years ago in order to contribute to an unnecessary bumper-repair bill in excess of one billion dollars annually.

The bicycle is a model citizen, by comparison.

The bicycle does not kill or maim; it does not pollute; it does not deplete natural resources; it makes no noise; it takes a great deal less space; and it is very much cheaper. (You can buy a brand new bicycle for

# p. 116 #

Commuting by bicycle? Is this some kind of put-on? It may sound like a joke to motor-minded America, but in the rest of the world nobody is laughing. In countries that are willing to take it seriously, the bicycle [is] transportation. Switzerland, for example, which traditionally places a high value on peace of mind and purity of air, has more bicycles than automobiles. In Amsterdam -- a national capital with roughly the same population and climatic conditions as Washington, D.C. -- 150,000 people ride bikes to work every day. Hundreds of thousands more commute by bicycle in other European cities. The same is true in much of Africa and Asia.
-Thomas R. Reid, III


This year an estimated 10 million bicycles will be sold, compared to a projected 8.6 million new cars.
-Friends of the Earth

# p. 117 #

little more than what it costs to operate an automobile for two weeks.) Although the bicycle makes a direct assault on four great problems that plague the modern city -- traffic, noise, parking, and pollution -- urban planners have overlooked it in their search for solutions to the urban transportation crisis.

It is more than ironic that America can invest so much stock faith and rhetoric in the competitive marketplace of commerce and yet ignore the "marketplace of ideas" (to use a phrase by Mr. Justice Holmes) by tolerating the television monopoly that is used to merchandise Detroit's peculiar dreams of the appropriate automotive life style -- with all that life style's attendant social ills. My own commission, the Federal Communications Commission, has been instrumental in encouraging broadcasters' censoring off the airwaves the messages from ecology groups (like Friends of the Earth) that would cry out against the urban devastation being wrought by Detroit's automobiles. (The FCC decision, fortunately, has been substantially reversed by the U.S. Court of Appeals.) In perhaps one of the greatest advertising overkills of all time, we Americans are being grossly oversold an automotive product and life style (bigger, faster, sexier cars) that we neither need nor may really want, and that will surely eventually kill us with its exhaust by-products and lethargy-induced heart attacks, if it does not get us first in a crash. This may serve the corporate profits of the automotive, oil, steel, cement, and road-building industries, but it is shortchanging the American people.

There are other ways to get around.

# # #

It's nice to see such thinking coming back in style a little over a generation later. Now if only we could substitute a system of public financing of elections for our "best legislators money can buy" they, too, could act upon such common sense and solve our multiple problems simultaneously: wars for oil in the Middle East, with their attendant disproportionate share of the federal budget, global warming, heart disease and obesity.

# # #