№46 What Happened to My Principles?
I think I have principles and then I sell out under the slightest provocation.
I want to live car-free and did for six months when I was 28 and living in Los Angeles. When I tell people this, they’re impressed because it meant biking great distances to get anywhere. Truth was, I was jobless at the time and had nowhere to go. As soon as I got a job and needed to take the 10 downtown but instead spent a few hours biking Venice Boulevard, I bought a used Honda Accord.
Now I want to get my kids on bikes, even if just for fun. We hardly ever ride though, because when drivers in Miami see a woman towing kids in a bike trailer with safety flags, they speed up to pass as fast as possible. Now my kids are 10 and 15 and still their new bikes sit in the garage barely used.
I want my kids to care about the environment, but I’ve showed them no outdoor appreciation. I wanted to pitch tents in the Everglades, but my Venezuelan wife had an American dream to take the kids in an RV. Once we did a road trip around South Florida. We parked in a few campgrounds with a smattering of trees and slept in our rented, air-conditioned RV.
I want my children to grow up with a sense of civic duty, but we hardly ever do volunteer work. Once, we volunteered at Ronald McDonald House. It was Christmas time and we were there to pass out…
