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H.G. Wells: ‘When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race’ 

John Howard*: ‘The bicycle is a curious vehicle.  Its passenger is its engine.’

Now that we have moved to a central enough location, and are not living in the southern suburbs of Sydney as some good friends have taunted, we can finally make a move to sell our car on ebay.  This has been our plan for some time, and since deciding that, we have have purchased over time a cycle-esqe vehicle for each member of our family of five.

And we are part way to proving it viable.  In the week since moving here, the car has sat out the front of the house and not moved.  We ain’t even contemplated using it.  And we ain’t needed to.  Tomorrow is an exception, when Lou needs to make the near-day-trip out to our old place to collect some last things and to let the cleaners in.

So it’s time see it go.  A little work and tidying up and it’s off to the virtual auction house.

The bikes are a strange mix.  A mountain bike for me (I would have gone for a road bike, but I’m afraid it wouldn’t handle my bold girth) and what they call a ‘comfort bike’ for Lou.  Jay has a nifty ‘one-wheeler’ that snaps onto the back of my bike (where he at least thinks he is helping push us along), and Tilly lives it up in Luxury in her ‘Croozer’ which is like a fancy pram-trailer cross-breed that Lou drags behind her. 

I feel a little for Elly who gets to ride a ‘real’ bike – a two wheel, eight speed bike that she has to power by herself.  She’s quite lucky, really, to have such a fancy bike at her age, but try and convince her of that.  In an effort to, during her asking passionately why we are selling our car, I come up with the following reasons:

• In an age where near-everyone is aware of environmental issues facing us, most of us turn a blind eye for the sake of our comfort.  We aren’t going to be a family that does that.  Even if we can’t really make a difference by ourselves, at least we’ll try not to contribute to the problem.  I believe that’s a Godly stand, and I’ll be sharing more on that later.  I pointed Elly to the Melbourne skyline, and the brown haze spoke for itself
• Driving a car is expensive business.  We are endeavouring to simplify our lifestyle and learn to live on less.  Our money can do much more effective things than literally go up in smoke.
• It has always amused me that we spend our money and our lives trying to avoid hard work and then find ourselves needing to work hard anyway as well as spending more money at the gym just to stay fit and healthy.  Does this sound sane?  We’re cutting out the middle man.

She seemed convinced.  Just need to convince myself.  Thank God for public transport.

* For the benefit of all Australians, not either of these two John Howards:

but this one, an International cycling champion from the US of A;

Along the same vein, these two fellas are also John Howard…

      … but I’m sure you didn’t need to know that.