Driving the view.

I grow old I grow old I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

It's been a week and my back is still aching. However, the pills are helping me get by that. And now I see everything more clearly. Seriously, we're all just zeroes and ones.

I'm planning on getting back on my bike today (it's a Specialized, so don't get excited), because I'm getting sick of the walking from Adams Mogan to Foggy Bottom. Still, walking lets you notice things that you don't always see on a bike. For instance, I pay more attention to the flowers planted in Sonny Bono's park when I'm on foot. Also, I tend to notice the number of single-occupant cars passing by while I'm stopped at a corner. Most cars contain only the driver.

I try my best not to drive to or from work. First, it's too expensive to park. Second, I can get to work faster on my bike than in a car. Third, one principle of living in the city is that you shouldn't have to drive as part of your daily living.

This car culture of ours is hard to shake. We've basically built communities around the availability of cars and freeways, and even before that the automobile was enshrined in the American psyche as a necessary appendage. Fitzgerald's characters are always driving somewhere, getting in accidents. Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath wouldn't have been possible without the automobile. Kerouac's classic On the Road immortalizes cross-country automobile treks. American Grafitti provides an archetype of the "cruising" teenage scene.

The car is deeply ingrained in our sense of mobility and individuality -- in our cars we can go anywhere and we can do it alone. This may explain why so many people pick their noses while driving, as if no one could see them through the windshield. We see the car as an extension of our personalities: hence many balding middle-aged men suddenly acquire snappy little red roadsters. Likewise, car companies market to that attachment: "Not your father's oldsmobile" was one rallying cry that came too late to save the brand.

Our car is bland. It's a honda civic hybrid. It's slow to accelerate and it's smaller than our last car, but overall we're happy with it. It is, after all, a fine car for a man, a woman, and two children.