LAPD at it again...

The first big group bike ride I ever went on was a Midnight Ridazz ride in Los Angeles in 2006. There were about 1,300 riders (or so I was told), and it was one of the most amazing, exciting things I've ever done. It wasn't a protest per se. It was more about getting out on your bike with like minded people and having a good time. And, a good time is what we had - despite the LAPD helicopters flying overhead and patrol cars trying to herd us.

Since then, I have participated in more big group rides than I can easily count. They've been in more than a half-dozen cities and they have had varying contact with police and sheriff's deputies. Often, police are fairly chill, and when they are harassing us, they're quick to calm down when you stop and talk to them rationally for a moment.

But with more and more frequency, people are catching police officers, on video, violently and needlessly lashing out against cyclist who individually aren't doing anything out of the ordinary. Viewers of the rides see a cohesive group of people acting together in defiance, but the reality is that most of the riders hear nothing more than a meet-up time and location through a friend or on the internet. They show up to have fun on their bikes. Even less involved people join the ride as it snakes through city streets. There is so little cohesion that targeting random participants makes practically no sense.

This only happens because someone in power is threatened by bicyclist. If the police are the "arm of the law," who is the body, and what do they have to lose if you get out of your car and on to your bike?

Driving it home... or to one of your favorite cities.

The Gulf of Mexico is a random name of a random place most people will never care much about. Of the few people that have paid attention to it, even fewer have a good idea of how big it is. That is why this website is amazing.

Check it out. It will force you to realize just how big the Deepwater Horizon oil spill is. You can overlay an outline of the spill right on top of some of the worlds biggest cities to see how small they are by comparison.

Everybody Loves Oil

So, currently there is 5,000 barrels of crude oil spewing into the Gulf of Mexico a day. I hate to sound like every idiot in the media, but it's fair to call that calamitous. It realistically is a disaster of epic proportions. To give you a point of reference, the Exxon Valdez oil spill off the coast of Alaska in 1989 was approximately 250,000 barrels. This killed 100,000 seabirds, thousands of otters, hundreds of seals, and 22 orcas. It devastated the fishing economy of Cordova, Alaska so severely that many people in the town committed suicide, including the Mayor.
Since British Petroleum (BP) is estimating approximately three months to stop the leak, we are looking at around 500,000 barrels leaked into the Gulf before all this is over and done. Does that seem like a lot to anyone else?

As if all that weren't bad enough, BP and the U.S. Coast Guard are dumping thousands of gallons of toxic chemicals, called dispersants, into the Gulf to prevent the oil from reaching shore. I'd like this to be really clear. What they are dumping into the water is not cleaning it up. It is only making it sink to the ocean floor (where it can completely destroy all sea life there).
And, I hate to have to mention this, but sea food is barely edible as it is with all the mercury and PCBs already in the oceans without the powers that be dumping a third of the world's supply of dispersants into the Gulf of Mexico.

When do you draw the line here? What's more important - food or oil?

A lot of politicians are already starting to say, "Hey, this is terrible, but you don't stop doing something because you had an accident." That's true but illogical. They are trying to appeal to your sensibilities. Of course, I'm not going to stop riding my bicycle because I had an accident, but when I fall off of my bike, I don't devastate thousands of animals and negatively impact millions of human beings.

Why are politicians so concerned about your continued consumption of oil?

Oil extraction is dirty in every way possible - even when it's working properly. I spent a few years living in Southern California. When you go for a walk on the beach in some places, you go home with oil stuck to the bottom of your foot. When I say that it seems as though you'll never get it off, I'm not exaggerating. It's funny how that sort of thing gets left out of all the TV shows and movies glorifying California. When you see a sunset in a film, you never see the oil rigs just off the coast that the people of Santa Barbara or Ventura have to look at everyday.

Even most conservatives will admit the war in Iraq is over control of the oil reserves. It's not the first oil war, and I don't understand why politicians were so afraid to tell you what it was. You love oil. Through your actions, you prove that you love oil more than you love god and country.

Our dependency on oil is so ingrained that even the people who decide they are going to cut down on their personal consumption of it have no idea how to successfully do so. What good does a hybrid car do if you still buy a dozen different plastic bottles/wrappers/toys/electronics/household items a day? Plastic is made from oil. By buying that bottle of water instead of using the tap, you are enabling the system to continue to function. At least the guy driving the SUV is honest about his oil dependency.

Are you eating blueberries out of season? How much oil was burned to ship those berries from Chile for you to buy? You make decisions everyday that lead to oil spills and wars, but no one wants to take responsibility. You think that you'll just wait for someone else to make the changes for you and then you'll just buy into it. Look at the title of this blog, and think about what you think the world should look like. We've had it easy for a long time. It's time to role up our sleeves and make it happen.