Diamond-Cut Life

My carpool-pals don’t just help me save gas money and carbon emissions, they also pass good information on to me. Thanks to my baseball-loving ‘pool, I’ve learned about Andrew Brown, the relief pitcher for the Oakland Athletics who uses his bicycle and BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) to get to the ballpark for home games. Susan Slusser reported.

There is so much I find interesting about Andrew Brown’s choice of how to get to work. For one thing, he had an appendectomy just a few weeks ago, yet is choosing a physically active style of commuting. I find that truly gutsy and athletic.

For another thing, Andrew Brown is a new father. Parents of young babies are notoriously pressed for time, yet Brown, again, is doing something other than the path of least resistance. I imagine he is good at time management.

In the financial arena, Brown can clearly afford to drive his own car or take a taxi, but chooses to ‘live below his means’ and use low-cost travel options instead. (I think I’ll start calling it ‘neopatriotism’ when Americans practice voluntary simplicity like this. It makes us stronger as citizens and as a nation when we are solvent, and weaker, even compromised, when we rack up consumer debt. But I digress.)

The most outstanding and relevant thing here, from the perspective of the Diamond-Cut Life, is that for every gallon of gasoline that Andrew Brown (or you or I) does not burn, 20 pounds of carbon dioxide are prevented from going into our fast-warming atmosphere. He’s giving baseball a good name. And being a role model for my theme week of Fun In The Time Global Warming. How many of us can follow his lead and commute this summer without driving alone?

Photo courtesy of Dinur Blum.

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