"$92 a /month/? What?" The car insurance was something a little over $400 a year last I knew. "And what's with this monthly bill? When did that happen?"

Apparently the insurance company - Peerless of South Portland - decided on their own to make the change. For my convenience. And we'd missed a payment while my office manager was off for July teaching swimming lessons. Monthly - so they could tack on large "monthly finance charges". Monthly - without a bill or a phone call; they assumed they could directly debit my checking account.

Fat chance.

I'd just been reading an in depth article on student loans and how that system has been restructured to scam students. About how a $90k loan ballooned overnight into $490k when the student couldn't get financing for the final year because the loan program ran out.

I'd just been reading about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and how bailing them out will loot the taxpayers anywhere from $1 to $7 trillion - potentially doubling the national debt. All so their wealthy investors - the banks, the hedge funds, the pensions and the Chinese and British - get the money. From us.

For the wealthy investors, the more the looting the more successful the bailout.

That's where ENRON and MCI went wrong: they didn't own Washington twice over like Fannie and Freddie did. This administration required Fannie and Freddie to overextend and crash. Then it bailed them out with taxpayer money. Mission Accomplished. ENRON and MCI had to settle for wiping out their stockholders; they couldn't get to the taxpayers.

I'd just been reading how since 1970 the profits made in this country have come from the privatization of the public sector - pensions, public assets, water, forests.

"We can think of this growth as being driven as much from mining (rather than maintaining) social capital as it has from mining the earth. [futurescenarios.org]"

"No doubt so the insurance company can close out my policy and raise the rates," I figured. "No notice. No mail. No bill. Increased monthly fees."

I was hearing the Ethan Miller song:

"And if it weren't cruel enough then the government comes

Giving handouts to rich folks and taxing our crumbs

We pay them to shaft us then give us the line

How it's all in our interest, this organized crime."

"Lisa, what about the house?" I asked my office manager. "It was a consolidated policy. Did they cancel that too?"

"Now you've got me worried," she said.

An insurance policy for a 1999 Honda Civic 2 door.

• Moon roof.

• Fold down back seats to fit large items.
• $1000 a year for insurance.
• $2000 for amortization.
• $1500 a year and up for gas.
• Another $500 for maintenance and repairs.

An inexpensive car all told, but still $5000. Not including the $1200 for snow plowing last winter. Forget about the carbon emissions, the ice caps and the polar bears.

That Honda is bigger than it looks. Too big.

What if I ditch the car? $5000 a year. $100 a week. More time on my bike. I could afford a better bike. Gaia might smile.

What if I didn't plow the driveway? I could move the mailbox to the other side of the road, next to Jim and Daphne's. I could scoop out a little place by the road so friends could visit. Winter would be long.

"For that $1200," David says, "get a hoop house and stick it by the road where you can drive into it."

There would be no propane deliveries in the winter. I'd have to stretch the 200 gallons for the cook stove and shower to last until snow melted. But with no one visiting, I'd need no showers. I'd be eating soups and grains cooked on the wood stove.

It would help to fix the solar hot water system. It needs only a few hose clamps and some better roof tie downs.

"If I consider my life honestly," Architect Chris Alexander writes, "I see that it is governed by a certain very small number of patterns of events which I take part in over and over again. Being in bed, having a shower, having breakfast in the kitchen, sitting in my study writing, walking in the garden. [peakoilblues]"

Driving, driving, driving.

Tony Boffa's Wednesday evenings. Writer's Group and a beer at Milliways Thursday evenings. Most everything else I try to schedule around biking hours. In the summer.

I told my friend Jean that I was going to try a month without a car. I was thinking of it as an experiment. I was thinking of the $5 to $10 thousand a year a car costs. I was thinking try it when it's easy and stretch out that first month. Easy enough in the summer.

"Hey Cyclemainia, I've been riding back and forth between Gray and Portland on this Giant road bike. What would you use for that in the winter?"

"How about a car?"

It was obvious that putting studded tires on my old Trek mountain bike - appropriate for winter in Boston, Cambridge or Portland - wouldn't make for good commuting north of Portland.

Jean thought it was a matter of principle. She told me of Walker John, who twenty years ago would walk from job to job on different farms around Hancock County. I can't hitchhike she said - or borrow a car - because that is simply displacing ownership of the vehicle and it would not be true to principle.

The carbon emissions, the ice caps and the polar bears.

Even if I stretch out the first month, even if I drive only once a month, I don't much change the $5 to $10 thousand a year that goes into my car. Marginal changes won't do. I save nothing until I shift paradigms entirely. My life patterns remain governed by the car until I get rid of it entirely.

I should not be driving. I do not want to drive. I do not want my car. I want to get rid of it.

"Hell, Jean, this is an experiment. To see what I'll learn. Maybe I can get my son to guitar lessons on the bus. There is a bus in Falmouth goes to Elm St. And I know there is one runs up Main St in Westbrook by Tony Boffa's music school."

"Good luck getting him to take the bus," she said. I was thinking how it altered the meaning of "taking my son to guitar lessons". How would I get from Gray to Falmouth to pick him up and how would I get back? In the dark. In winter. Or would Dad abandon is Dad role and no longer take his son to those lessons? Love miles, Monbiot writes, are the hardest to give up.

Gray, Maine doesn't have publicos. Gray, Maine doesn't have Zipcars. Forget about a bus. Forget about bringing back the Interurban. Dollars and cents, a shared car or even a taxi would be cheaper.

Staying home the cheapest still. But that's a different world.

###

Flashing red light UPDATE: Driving home that that night on Rt 9 through Cumberland - precisely at the most dangerous point of curves and dips - I passed a cyclist. He was dressed for the rain in yellow rain gear and shorts. 10:30pm.