Editor's Note: This is a recurring feature in which comedian and admitted horrible person Alex Blagg documents his attempts at becoming a slightly better individual.
I am a person who puts most of his effort into strenuously avoiding activities that demand effort. So I do not like to move, physically, even when life occasionally requires that I go places. This is why I am grateful for the advent of the automobile, a machine that takes all the taxing physical labor out of travel by allowing one to sit in a reasonably relaxed position, in a climate-controlled environment, listening to Satellite radio, while being lifted and carried from point A to point Burger King. It must be how the Burger Pharaohs felt.
I am also grateful for living in Los Angeles, a city whose size and sprawl pretty much dictates a relatively guilt-free “car culture” (as opposed to New York, with its ridiculously efficient public transit system that always made me feel a vague sense of shame for tooling around town on four fuel-powered wheels). No, we lazy Angelenos never feel the social stigma of car travel, even when we do something as decadent as driving less than two hundred yards (literally) to buy an emergency half-pint of Ben & Jerry Half-Baked fro-yo from the neighborhood grocery in our panicked post-Burger King demand for sweetness.
The Problem With This:
Gas Prices. Peak Oil. Foreign Wars. Climate Change: Take your pick. From the time when Pharaohs were being hoisted about by their slaves, to ghost-riding my Volkswagen whip around L.A.’s strip malls, our modes of transportation require the energy of other resources to make them go.
In the 125 years since we started depending on oil to provide the vast majority of our various energy needs, we’ve burned through half of the world’s oil reserves (which took 300 million years to create). Today the United States transportation sector is still 97 percent dependent on these dwindling oil supplies.
Pretty cool, guy who’s driving 400 yards for fro-yo!
How I Tried (Was Forced) to Be Better:
A few weeks ago, while playing video games at around 1:45 a.m. (like all responsible adults do), I heard a loud explosion outside of my house. When I went to investigate, I discovered that a drunk driver had flipped his car (he was okay, other than the whole DUI thing)... by hitting and totaling my beloved whip.
Since the process of researching, locating and purchasing a new car seemed even more strenuous and daunting than not being able to go places conveniently, I decided to see what life would be like without a car for at least a week, up until whenever the overall inconvenience of the situation motivated me to go get another one.
Findings and Observations:
— Public transportation in LA wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it would be. Like most ex-New Yorkers, I am a total subway snob; so before my sudden lack of a car, I privately felt that the L.A. Metro system was a horrible and pointless way to get places (an assumption based entirely on my imagination of what this mode of travel entailed, which was mostly stuff I remembered from the movie Speed). In reality, I found L.A. bus travel to be helpful (due in no small part to many of the handy tools and resources on their website), efficient, and entertaining. What it lacked in scary bomb-driven demands to drive at high speeds was certainly made up for in great people-watching, and the pleasant experience of getting to read while going places (just like in New York!)
— Despite my utopian description of driving at the beginning of this article, there were many things about car travel that I found myself not missing at all: the infuriating helplessness of L.A. traffic, the constant stopping for and acquiring of expensive gas, the ridiculous danger of trying to use my iPhone's GPS navigation while operating a moving vehicle, and having no legitimate excuse for failing to attend undesirable social events, just to name a few.
— Many of the trips I want to take are not only unnecessary, but actually bad ideas. When you take away the convenience of a car, before going anywhere you are forced to ask yourself, “Is this really necessary?” And maybe it’s just me, but I found that the answer to that question was “No” approximately 80 percent of the time. Granted, I’m lazy and don’t do much, but not having a car has so far discouraged me from at least 10 misguided journeys to various food purveyors, retail stores and bars. Kind of an odd method for saving money and losing weight, but I’ll take it.
— You see so much more when walking or biking. Between the odd home decorative choices of my neighbors, interesting nearby places I never knew existed, and the small moments of understated beauty that only seem to happen when I’m unencumbered by glass windows, life all around me feels magnified in direct proportion to the slowness with which I move through it. If you pay attention, most of the time it’s even more entertaining than NPR.
Conclusion:
I know there are many people, in Los Angeles and elsewhere, who get by just fine without a car. Unfortunately, I don’t think I am capable of being one of those people forever. So I’m going to get another whip soon, but in the spirit of being better (and okay, saving money), I’ve decided that my next whip will be a hybrid. And before I hop into it to cruise down to the Burger King, I think I’ll be slightly more aware of what I’m doing, where I’m going, and why it can sometimes be worthwhile to take the road less driven.
Alex Blagg is a writer and comedian in Los Angeles. Most recently he created the satirical website BajillionHits.Biz, for which The Daily Beast called him the "Stephen Colbert of New Media." Prior to that, he was the founding Editor-in-Chief of MSN's Wonderwall.com, won two Webby Awards for his work running Vh1's "Best Week Ever" blog, and was included in The Huffington Post's list of "50 Funny People You Should Be Following On Twitter." He is truly a horrible person.
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