Trash

        I do some of my best thinking riding on my bike. The hike up Highland Bowl is another place that I can think. I am not sure which one is better, but the bowl hike will be in a few weeks. i am riding now.
        I have been riding in Asheville. My two rides are the Parkway, and River Road. Asheville is by far the worse place I ride. The roads are bad, and the car drivers oblivious to bicycles. There is trash all over the side of the road, and there is tire puncture material in the road. Asheville as a meca for East Coast outdoors people sucks for bicycles. Fortunately kayakers and hikers can get away from the trash both human and waste. Too bad: there is great music, great food, and great atmosphere in Asheville. There are also clueless people.
        Budweiser leads in the number and amount of trash I see on the side of the road. McDonald is probably second. i see some Pepsi and of course Coke. Then there is just general crap. Why do people throw all that trash out their car windows? Is it ignorance? Is it spite? Is it rebellion? Its much worse in Asheville than Colorado or Michigan. The Duchess thinks its all those tourists, I am not so sure.
        There is a bottle law in Michigan. That means that the purchaser of any bottle of beer , or Coke has to pay a deposit, and that deposit is refunded when the bottle is returned. It keeps bottles off the side of the road, or creates an opportunity for enterprising kids. I remember before the bottle law; there were bottles and cans needlessly thrown out on the side of the road. Trash too! Today you see some trash, less than before the bottle law; and no bottles. Nice, but a pain in the ass for the consumer who is paying the price for the “trash practice” of a few individuals.
        Bottle laws are good laws, in that they help keep communities cleaner and more pleasant. They are bad laws, in that they are expensive work arounds for a root problem that is not prevalent everywhere. Colorado has no bottle law, yet they do not have the trash problem to cause one. They have other problems like coal mining and oil drilling to fuck up the environment. These are all little microcosms of the polluted and climate warming world we live in. It take one person to throw that used up bag of MacDonald’s out the window.... and another and another before in too short a time we are living in a garbage pit. It takes one person to drive a hummer, and another and another before we are so addicted to oil that we are not only heating up our climate, but are creating terrorist suppliers who are jealous of our callousness, but happy to profit by it. Do we not know that our own creed and selfishness is like fuel to the mind of a terrorist?
        Maybe we should hold the creators of the original product accountable for their disposal. Imagine if a bag of trash from MacDonald’s was found on the side of the road that they were fined 1 thousand dollars. What would MacDonald’s do? They might educate their clientele. They might create packaging that was so completely biodegradable that it would be gone in a matter of days. They might raise prices. Budweiser; what are people doing driving their cars and drinking a Bud?
        You never hear about how we subsidize the alcohol industry. The use and abuse of alcohol is one of the biggest health problems in this country. The lives that are ruined and families that are destroyed by this drug alone is enough to question its usefulness. But we are a free country and we have a right to do to ourselves whatever we want. The problem is that we are not doing it just to ourselves, and we are trashing our highways and byways with beer cans. Yet we provide the industry with all the rights and privileges of a business like it was actually beneficial to our communities. Tax deductions for alcohol... I can hear the tea party now! Just kidding!
        Maybe all these fines can balance the budget without taxing the hell out of everyone, but the rich. Why do the Republicans want to keep the tax cuts on those who earn over 250k per year? We are talking 4%? On 2%? What are they thinking? I guess the fact that 98% of their donations are from that 2% might have something to do with it. Money drives politics. Can money be at the root of our trash problem? Are we sloppy, messy, wasteful Americans because we have too much money? Is money the root of all evil? Easy for me to say.
        We spend much more than we earn. I heard on the news today that for every dollars the government spends it has to borrow over 35 cents. But we cant say no. We throw out trash, we spend more than we make we drink ourselves into oblivion and we want to legalize marijuana. Are these points of date connected?
        Whether all this is good thinking I will leave to the reader. It is clear at the time. But the space between the thought, and the keys is too long to keep its perfect flavor. In fact, there is probably a micro second that is too much time.
        Tomorrow I think I will ride on my trainer indoors.