A different world view...

Lately I've been fortunate that I've found a group of people who don't mind carpooling to events. They love the comraderie of traveling with someone else vs the freedom of having your own car when you need it. As I get more and more rides, the thing I notice is that even familiar streets look different from the passenger side. Restaurants that I've missed, trees that come out of nowhere. The same thing happens with my bicycle where I take alternate (read safer routes) and discover parts of my world that I didn't know. Driving is not just a mode of transportation it's a point of view.

Get Active, less Carbon!

Venture Capitalist Joi Ito has a great post about his Vegan Diet, his swimming regimen, and he talks about the energy he gets from being active. He makes an interesting note that mass transit over cabs has contributed to his sense of well being. His scaling back of animal protein (i.e. meat) has also contributed to his generally good spirits. Meat is a huge carbon contributor through deforestation (note I'm not a vegetarian, but I try to have a few meat free days a week. Going Carbon Free is hard, but we call all shoot for less carbon)

I've had the belief that automobiles more than diet has contributed to our obesity crisis, but that was just based on my personal obeservations living in Taiwan where my diet became "worse" but I still lost weight.

Styrofoam Society

Today, I'm definitely carbon free, nor am I microbe free that I've been fighting a cold that I picked from staying out late and dealing with the stress known as life. When I'm tired and stressed, I get lazy. I don't swim, I don't cook and that means I eat out. Today at lunch I had french fries in stryofoam, soup in styrofoam. I had Chinese take out in Styrofoam. It kills me, I know it has insulating properties and it's lighter to transport (it is after all mostly air) But my dinner container is going to last much longer than the nutritional value it provided.