I never get tired of watching the rush-hour drivers toiling in 3 lanes of traffic on 101.

Every day there is a sea of perplexedness, frustration and boredom stretching 40 miles, endless hands dangling out of their car windows or fingers drumming on the steering wheel.

I’ll admit, I’m a little smug, but then I’m habitually sitting on a bus or driving with a passenger and I’m in the relatively supersonic carpool lane. At least until I hit Redwood City.

One thing puzzles me about these drivers, more than almost any other puzzle of human behaviour I’ve ever encountered. Why the hell are they all there?

Commuting in the Bay Area is, let’s leave no doubt, a thoroughly dismal and distressing experience, and one which is necessary to a large number of people because of the very nature of the locale.

At the mouth of the Bay you have “the City”, San Francisco. This is where the majority of the fun is to be had. It’s where the best restaurants are, where the fun music venues and bars and clubs nestle happily in a network of streets which it’s actually possible to navigate on foot.

Most of the better jobs here, however, are in the South Bay towns, where space is cheaper; corporate taxes more lenient.

So whilst a lot of people do indeed live in the surrounding sprawl of Bay Area towns, a particular demographic (my demographic as it happens) is faced with a stark dilemma. You can live in the city and endure the commute, or you can live in the South Bay and die of boredom.

But with gas prices spiralling, and the 40 mile commute taking a lone car driver more than 2 hours on a bad day, why in hell do people travel alone?

I know that I’m fortunate – I work for one of the few companies large enough to lay on complimetary buses for their employees. I’m hugely grateful for that – it gives me a chance to relax, to catch up on work, or to write screeds like this in time that would otherwise be wasted.

But it’s not like there aren’t other commute alternatives. Caltrain runs through the entire South Bay; BART serves most of the East. And even if public transport doesn’t serve you well, how many people are honestly, hand-on-heart, in a situation where they are commuting on a route which isn’t largely (or wholly) shared by at least one neighbour?

I’m going to peg the answer at “a damn sight fewer than the poor miserable saps who are currently stuck at a standstill to my immediate right.”

It’s not that every single lone driver is in the wrong here. For various reasons, a small percentage of people will have occasional or regular reasons for needing to drive alone. But if we could convince the majority to double up in cars, to petition their employer for buses, to somehow forego the solo drive… how much better would life be? How much cleaner the air? How much faster the commute? How much less stressed the average commuter? “Quite a bit”, I’d guess.

So how can we convince these people to find a carpool buddy, or a bus, or a twice-weekly telecommute, or something?

Here’s where I piss off a lot of fellow commuters.

See, if we really want Bay Area commutes to improve we need to rethink freeways like 101. First off, extend carpool lanes for the entire length of the Bay Area. Then, remove the time restrictions – carpool is carpool 24/7. Finally, make the right-hand lane for buses and taxis only, and the lane next to that a “carpool”, leaving 2 lanes for sole drivers.

“But, but, that would make my commute impossible!”, you cry.

Exactly.

See, the interesting thing about “impossible” is that people generally find that, when forced, there are ways to make things “less impossible”. Ways like public transit or carpooling…

The item in question is a Lexus advertising campaign, whose tagline is…

A Strong Want is a Justifiable Need

Part of the problem with writing about this is that it’s so utterly horrible that it defies rational thought. Paul at eyeteeth probably chooses the best path in offering a picture of the offending ad with only a title offering commentary.

But after a few minutes, I realised that I could probably have some fun with the idea, so I dashed off a letter to Lexus’s “General Requests” email line, as follows…

Dear Sir/Madam,

I’m writing to commend Lexus on their recent billboard campaign featuring the slogan “A Strong Want is a Justifiable Need”. I was so compelled by this idea that I have adopted it as a new, all-encompassing personal philosophy.

Furthermore, I’m impressed that Lexus has seemingly taken it upon itself to fulfill the General Public’s “wants” which are, under this beautifully simple concept, automatically justifiable “needs”.

For quite some time now I have “wanted” to receive a sum of $1,000,000 without any obligation whatsoever, and I have to thank you for making me realise that this is not simply an abstract desire, but something to which I am entitled.

Since Lexus seemingly aims to provide for such reasonable requirements, I am therefore writing to ask that your company provide me with the aforementioned million dollars, thereby satisfying my current need.

I am particularly looking forward to spending a small portion of the sum on a Lexus hybrid.

You can contact me regarding the delivery of this “strong want”/”justifiable need”. I suggest that a direct wire transfer of the money would be the most efficient way of fulfilling my “need”. Banking details can be provided on request.

Again, thank you so much for leading the way in conflating desire and requirement into a brave new paradigm of personal satisfaction, and an exciting new chapter in the cherished American Dream.

I am sincerely looking forward to their reply. Perhaps you have a “strong want” of your own which the philanthropists at Lexus can help with? Whilst $1m might honestly be a bit of a tall order, there’s definite scope to play with this. Does anyone have a “strong want” small/cheap enough that Lexus can be talked into providing it?

At the centre of this plan is my “Meat List” – quite simply a list of all the meat-based dishes that I really like; the things I might miss if I turn my back on a carnivorous lifestyle forever.

The plan itself is quite simple – to eat as many of these dishes as I can over the next month or so, for two basic reasons. First, in the event that I do cross over to the Veg Side for good, I will have said a fond farewell to the things I’ve enjoyed in the past. Secondly, and more importantly, it gives me a real chance to work out honestly how much I actually enjoy being a meat-eater.

Phase 2 of the plan comes in January when I’ll stop eating meat again. And then comes the interesting part of the experiment. I’ll either find that after a couple of months I really can’t live without meat, or I’ll decide that I don’t miss either the meat, or the previously-explored ethical quandries it entails.

So without further ado, here (in no particular order) is the list in full:

• Proper English Fish’n'Chips (sorry guys – no matter how hard you try, America cannot provide this)
• A really good steak (I’m thinking Argentinian or Brazillian steakhouse)
• Calf’s Liver (Hopefully still on the menu at Carluccio’s in Islington)
• A good beef lasange
• Bacon Butties (“sandwiches” for any Americans in the audience)
• A full English fry-up (including black pudding and pigs’ kidneys)
• Bangers’n'mash
• Steak and Kidney Pie
• A ‘Double Double’ from In’n'out
• A proper English roast dinner (Christmas should see to that)
• A Chicken Tikka Masala
• Whitebait
• Oysters (May not be possible really – wrong season)
• Corned Beef Sandwiches (I know, eww, but they got me through childhood and student days)
• Peri-Peri Chicken (I’ve missed Nando’s quite a bit)
• Peking Duck
• BBQ Pork Ribs

There are many more items which could go on the list, but that pretty much covers my favourites.

And with that, I’m taking a sorely needed vacation back in Blighty. Coming up in the New Year – the no-doubt amusing story of my move 40 miles north, lightly sprinkled with meat-free shenanigans.

Merry Denominational Religious Celebration and a Gregorian New Year to you all.

That might seem like a strange sentiment given the content of this blog so far but here’s the thing: I’m not really a hippy; probably more of a pragmatic idealist. I know how I’d like the world to be, but I understand that it’s unlikely and I prefer focussing on what I can do right here and right now, rather than on the general state of humanity.

The problem with your real “I’m a world-changer me” nutters is that they pursue their beliefs about wrong and right with an almost religious fervour, thrusting leaflets into your face at Muni entrances and preaching every-which-where about the dangers of capitalism.

Each to their own, but as an opponent of the American christian right will tell you, religious fervour can be a dangerous thing. It changes people; wraps them up in the belief that they (or their god, be he Jehova or Karl Marx) are undebatably right. And when that happens, the truth starts to slip away into middle-distance. After all, what’s a little distortion or exaggeration when you’re supporting the adoption of the One True Way?

But it’s bloody annoying, especially when it comes from those hippies.

It’s annoying because I can easily come to the same basic conclusions which they do regarding issues like meat production. But I’m a software engineer – I want to make my decisions based on reasonably verifiable facts; preferably hard data – not hyperbole.

And it’s really hard to get those facts. I’ve read “statistics” which claim that an average meat eater’s diet uses 16 times as much grain in a year as a vegetarian one. Yes, feeding cows is wasteful, but those numbers push the limits of believability.

So I’ve had to spend some time searching for information on the environmental and ethical concerns surrounding meat production in order to find just a few sources which I feel I can trust. I’ve come down to just two. Bear in mind that these are “primary sources” whose overall agenda doesn’t seem tainted by wild-eyed “Socialist-Worker”-waving fervour, and whose basic premises and facts are verifiable via other sources.

Those two sources are the Beyond Beef campaign (who came under particularly close scrutiny given their ties to McSpotlight) and Erik Schlosser’s book “Fast Food Nation”, which is ultimately a surprisingly sober and balanced overview of the fast food market.

And based on those sources and the facts that I’m pretty sure about, here are three reasons why I’m increasingly struggling to enjoy a good steak.

These are mostly US-centric, but then, so are my domestic arangements these days.

1) Meat production is Environmentally damaging

• The annual beef consumption of an average American family of four requires more than 260 gallons of fuel and releases 2.5 tons of CO₂ into the atmosphere, as much as the average car over a six month period.
• The United States has lost one third of its topsoil. An estimated six of the seven billion tons of eroded soil is directly attributable to grazing and unsustainable methods of producing feed crops for cattle and other livestock.
• Cattle ranching is a primary cause of deforestation in Latin America. Since 1960, more than one quarter of all Central American forests have been razed to make pasture for cattle.
• The world’s 1.3 billion ruminant livestock emit approximately 60 million tons or 17 percent of the world’s total Methane emissions. One methane molecule traps 21 times as much solar heat as a molecule of CO₂

2) Meat production is a waste of  resources

• Nearly half of the earth’s landmass is used as pasture for cattle and other livestock.
• Nearly half of the total amount of water used annually in the U. S. goes to grow feed and provide drinking water for cattle and other livestock.
• Seventy percent of all U.S. grain — and one third of the world’s total grain harvest — is fed to cattle and other livestock.
• Asian adults consume between 300 and 400 pounds of grain a year. A middle-class American, by contrast, consumes over a ton of grain each year, 80 percent of it through eating cattle and other grain-fed livestock.

3) Meat production is unbelievably cruel
No, I’m not about to start going all PETA at this point. Frankly, I think PETA are an awful pantomime of an organisation, and I find it very hard to believe a single word they publish.

Whilst I touched on the issues of killing animals for food last time, I’m more concerned (from an ethical standpoint) with the way that the meat industry finds and uses its workers.

• Every year, 29 out of every 100 meat processing workers sustains a work-related injury or illness that requires treatment beyond first aid.
• Slaughterhouses typically recruit unskilled, recent immigrants many of whom are unfamiliar with U.S. labor laws, and/or unable to speak English and who are unlikely to file complaints about company policies or attempt to organize labor unions.
• In 2002, employees in meatpacking plants made, on average, 24 percent less than their counterparts in other factory jobs.

There are far more graphic descriptions of the day-to-day life of a meatpacker in places like “Fast Food Nation”. Let’s just say that the job they do for a pittance, in highly dangerous conditions, isn’t a pleasant one.

I should make it clear here – I really don’t want to put anyone else off meat, unless I’m inadvertantly helping them along to a conclusion they were already making for themselves. But the issues above (and countless more surrounding and intersecting with them) are what have driven me to consider vegetarianism for the first time in my life. And I should also point out that, had I never moved to the US, I might never have made this decision – whilst the meat industry in the UK isn’t all happy, fluffy farmsteads and ruddy-cheeked rural folk, it’s not quite the over-the-edge conveyor-o-cheap-protein which the US meat industry has become.

Finally, whilst a lot of the reasoning quoted above focuses on red-meat (particularly beef) production, there are similar (if less severe) issues with production of almost any other kind of meat. Now, I could switch to only buying meat from verifiable, organic small-farm sources, I’m sure. But honestly, it wouldn’t be long before the more factory-farmed sources started slipping back in, whether in restaurant meals, or in “picking up a quick meal at Safeways, ‘cos it’s right there.”

Next time on “I’m not a hippy, I just play one on Yahoo! 360″ we’ll look at how an omnivore turns into a herbivore, and what he decides to do before he gets there.

“Could you become a vegetarian?”

It’s a topic of conversation which has come up with friends from time to time over the years, especially, say, in the middle of a steak dinner. And my answer has always been “no”, followed by various reasons (not quite excuses, but close) for that being the case.

But I’ve been examining some of those reasons recently.

1) “I could never live without steak. or Bacon.”
All well and good. I do really like good steak. But to say that I couldn’t live without it is rather overstating the case, quite simply because I’ve never tried. It’s an untested hypothesis, and I can’t really keep saying it without backing it up with hard proof. “I tried living without steak and couldn’t” – now there’s a position worth having.

As for bacon, well, the fact of the matter is that I’ve been forced to (more or less) live without bacon since I moved to the US, because Americans don’t understand what good bacon is (hint: there’s a picture at the top of this post). Americans think that this crap can pass for bacon. Poor fools.

Proper, European-style back bacon is well nigh impossible to get Stateside. Supermarkets have never seen such a thing, and even quality butchers are often sorely lacking. The only reliable source I’ve found is the Rain Tree Cafe in San Francisco, who do a very agreeable Irish Breakfast with proper bacon. But my visits there are few and far between. And “bacon butties” (look it up) are right out.

2) “Hitler was a vegetarian”
Okay, I’ve never actually used that as a serious argument. Maybe, just a couple of times, it’s proved highly effective in winding up overly-preachy “meat is murder” types who think they’ve single-handedly saved the Universe by going vegan.

I’m a bad man.

3) “We’re omnivores. We’re supposed to eat meat.”
It’s very true that we’re omnivores – we have the multi-purpose teeth and the digestive system for it. But the argument is disingenous all the same, because the human being as an animal is not built to be a predator. Take away our low cunning and our opposable thumbs and you’re basically looking at some fairly appealing prey. Our “claws”, such as they are, are brittle and badly adapted to violent confrontation. And our jaw musculature is not designed to deliver a killing bite.

Nor are our brains wired in a predatory fashion. Housecats, even after millenia of domestication, still have that killing insinct. Present them with a fast-moving object smaller than they are, be it a bird or a piece of string, and they will pounce and stab with their claws. Very few of us, on the other hand, sit in the garden of a summer and feel an irrepressible urge to pin a bird down and rip its throat out.

We’re scavangers at heart, taking what food is available, and that’s why we’re omnivores – it broadens the potential avenues of sustenance, whether they be a recently deceased mammouth, a tree full of berries or a box of Krispy Kreme donuts.

Only we’re not scavengers any more, because with our low cunning and our opposable thumbs we developed agriculture and supermarkets. We no longer have to eat what we find; we can choose. And we have the ability to choose only plant matter for sustenance.

4) “If you’re going to eat meat, you should be prepared to kill an animal yourself”
The implication of this statement, of course, being that I would be prepared to do such a thing. Only I’ve never actually put myself in a position where that’s the case. Not through any highly active avoidance – it’s just that the situation has never arisen and I’ve never sought it out.

And honestly, thinking about this now, I’m not sure that I could do it. I’m not particularly squeamish, but I just don’t believe strongly enough that humans actually have the right to take other creatures’ lives with impunity. And if that creature is, say, a 200 pound pig which is screaming its lungs out, I have a feeling that compassion would come before pork chops.

Which puts me in the awkward position of being a bit of a hypocrite, and leads me to effectively argue myself into vegetarianism.

Whoops.

All of which is to say that I don’t have any concrete arguments which should stop me from eschewing meat. Ultimately, it comes down to this: which is more important to me; the enjoyment I derive from certain meats, or the moral and enviromental reasons against meat production and consumption, which I’m becoming ever more aware of and concerned about?

I can’t fully answer that question until I’ve explored those issues in a little more depth. But that’s a job for another day.

Factory farmed, treated with anti-biotics and growth hormones, it’s not even really meat. And when it’s added to a pasta sauce or risotto, made up into a stew, minced into flash-fried burgers  or roughly cubed and wrapped in tortillas, it becomes little more than “generic protein” – something to bulk up a meal without adding anything much in the way of flavour and texture.

As for buying meat in American  supermarkets… Chicken doesn’t look like chicken. Bleached white and sandwiched in plastic, it looks like the stuff of vat-grown nightmares. Beef is a weird colour too, as though the Meat Fairy came along in the night and painted it an unnatural crimson. Everything is… just a little wrong.

That’s not to say that there aren’t great pleasures to be had from meat. Purchased from organic sources, good butchers and quality-driven restaurants, a top-notch steak or a perfect slice of calves’ liver; a non-intensively reared chicken (carefully roasted)  or a thick rasher of back bacon have the power to bring intense, mind-blowing pleasure to the diner.

I love good meat. I just don’t get to eat it very often.

Which is why I’ve developed a periodic vegetarian habit. Nothing big, really, but once in a while I consciously go a week or so without eating anything containing bits of animals. It’s a truly interesting experience, because it forces you to look at everyday restaurant menus through new eyes, and it also forces you to move away from the typical “meat+veg+veg” schtick which infects so many meal compositions. And here’s the thing – I actually feel better – more alert and more energetic – when I’m not sucking down cubed, processed bits of some poorly-treated farmyard beast.

And yes, part of what has prompted this post is the fact that I’m currently 5 days into one of my meat-free odysseys. This one was prompted by the fact that, just slightly hungover after last Saturday’s Yahoo! Year End Party, I snuck into a McDonalds for a couple of cheeseburgers and immediately felt heartily ill.

But anyway (to bring this all back to one of the major themes I seem to cover on 360 – sustainability), I’ve been thinking and reading about the environmental (and associated ethical) issues surrounding meat production recently, and various things have come to a head to make me consider seriously, for the first time in my life, whether I should think about making meat-free eating a little more permanent.

Which leaves you all free to have a good laugh at just how much of a West Coast Hippy I’m becoming these days.

More details on my meaty ethical musings and future plans regarding them will follow…

Perhaps the biggest problem to solve – how to get hold of provisions.

Now, if I live in the city (and have more disposable income that isn’t tied up in car costs) then I’ll probably eat out more – I’ll have a vast array of restaurants at my disposal, and money to spend in them. But I really like cooking, and I want to be able to actually live in my apartment, not just use it as a place to store my stuff and occasionally sleep.

Without a car, the option of going to a place like Trader Joe’s once a week and stocking up on everything is out of the window. I have to assume that I can only ever buy what I can reasonably carry home on foot, public transport or the bike (see previous posts on sustainability and cycling…)

So I’m pretty interested in the idea of Planet Organics, who can arrange a weekly delivery of fresh fruits, vegetables etc. right to your apartment. They even have an insured service where you provide them with a key and their delivery driver drops the goods off inside your flat. I love the idea of coming home once a week to a box of fresh goodies waiting on the kitchen counter.

So that would quite simply take care of enough basic ingredients to make interesting meals. And with the basics taken care of, it’ll be easier to pop to a store on foot occasionally to stock up on flour, rice, milk and whatever else I might need.

Drinks are perhaps more of a problem, cos they’re heavy. Sure, the odd six-pack from an off-licence is easy to carry home, but what about my beloved European beers? No more stocking up by the case-load at Bevmo… Although they do deliver from their website, so maybe an occasional order of my favourites will be manageable if I can fit it in with working from home…

I am intrigued by one last option, though, which Reinhard mentioned in a comment when I first mentioned ditching the car. City Carshare is a membership scheme where, for $10 per month, $4 per hour and 44¢ per mile you can pick up a car at any of their city-wide locations, use it for something like, say, a shopping run, and then return it to the place you found it.

It’s appealing because the membership cost is so low, and the concept is perfect, provided you live within reasonable distance of a carshare location.

So a combination of these solutions should serve me well, and save me money. All of a sudden, I feel better about selling the car again.

The people who founded the city of San Francisco must have been insane.

“Hey, where shall we start up a new city, then?”

“How about up here on these really steep, hard to build on hills? In an earthquake zone.”

“Hey, it’s really foggy up here too. Awesome idea. “

I guess the 21st Century equivalent of these nutters would be, erm, people who choose not to have a car in the city, and get around by bike instead.

Yes indeed, I’m apparently off my rocker.

But I’ve always enjoyed cycling – it’s a good way to get exercise whilst going somewhere (and infinitely more satisfying than using gym machines, which makes me feel like a pet hamster). In London it gave me a good deal of freedom, the only downside being the loss of 2 lights, a wheel, a saddle and 3 bike locks to thieves. I’m hoping (ever the optimist) that more security bolts and less thieving scum will render that less of a problem in SF.

And with the news this week that 90% of men in America will become fat, 25% of them obese, it seems like a wise plan to start incorporating more exercise into my day-to-day routine, way before I hit the full ravages of middle-age spread. So ultimately, those hills may be a benefit – I’ll be tiredbut slim.

The bike is an important part of my moving plans, because it will ultimately inform a lot of my day-to-day decisions. From small grocery shops (easier on a bike with paniers than on foot/public transport) to my commute alternatives, and where I end up living, the ability to get around on two self-powered wheels will be important.

And from what I gather, biking in San Francisco has enjoyed something of a boost over the past ten years or so, from dangerous pastime of social pariahs to a celebrated lifestyle choice. Like most things in this particular city…

…and it appears that there’s an active community of likeminded two-wheeled nutters out there. I look forward to joining them.

I want to talk briefly about sustainability because it’s one of the motivations behind my “leave the car behind and live in the city” plans. Excuse the apparently irrelevant opening example.

I love San Pellegrino sparkling water. I know, every time I open a bottle of the stuff, that I’m essentially being suckered by slick marketing – chubby, friendly bottles with their sophisticated light blue labels. Neverthless, I have a fondness for the stuff for a couple of reasons.

Let’s face it, a bottle of Evian tastes the same as a bottle of Calistoga, which tastes the same as a bottle of Dasani, and for that matter the water out of the kitchen tap. Sparkling water is a slightly different beast however – individual methods of carbonation can lead to a markedly different texture and taste, and San Pellegrino is perfect – big, bold bubbles which burst on the tongue and leave a slightly salty aftertaste.

It’s also a matter of memory for me. San Pelle always takes me back to long, hung-over weekend lunches in Carluccio’s on Upper Street in Islington, chatting with my friend Max over a divine plate of fegato or a perfect lasagne and downing bottles of the stuff in order to ward off dehydration.

Even so, every time I open a bottle of San Pellegrino here in California I feel a pang of guilt. Because however well this particular company might carbonate their spring-water, it’s still water. Water which has been shipped 5,000 miles along with its heavy bottle, all the way to these shores. Shores where we have municipal water supplies and springs of our own.

And frankly, it’s a waste of resources.

So despite the memories and my fondness for the stuff there’ll be no more San Pellegrino for me in California. I am, in fact, drinking my last bottle as I write this. Think of it as a fond farewell.

Calistoga will make a suitable and far more local substitute.

Sparkling water is a specific example, but more generally I’m trying to increase the sustainability of my food purchases where possible. Already I try to buy fruit and veg from farmers’ markets, and I was very happy to see the canteen at work experiementing with a “local food” day where they cooked dishes whose ingredients had been sourced within a 150-mile radius of campus.

I’ll talk more in the future about shopping sustainably in San Francisco (particularly without a car to haul large grocery loads home with), but first I should probably make my entirely selfish exceptions-to-the rule clear.

1.) Beer

America has some good breweries. I like Anchor Steam and Fat Tire (I’ve written about the subject before.) Nevertheless, you guys still have a lot to learn. And up against the genius of British brewers like Young’s, Fullers or Black Sheep and Belgians like Westmalle, Chimay or Huyghe the culture is sorely lacking. So I’ll still buy imported beer.

Yes, it’s heavy liquid in heavy bottles being shipped thousands of miles. But, tree-hugging hippy that I am, I’ll see a few field voles kick the bucket before you take away my favourite alcoholic brews. Everyone has their limits.

2.) Cheese

My love for cheese cannot be over-stated. From a childhood addiction to strong cheddar sandwiches through to my adulthood, eating things which make most people retch, I have always adored cheese. And again, whilst America is gaining some fine artisanal cheese-makers, you can’t compete with some of the European classics. Besides, the thought of years without Colston Bassett Stilton sounds like a prison sentence. Where I can get good, more local alternatives I will. But you’ll take away my imported cheese when you pry it off my cold, dead cheese-knife.

As for everything else – fruit and vegetables in particular, I’ll be buying as locally as possible. Peoples’ ideas on their favourite vendors and sources are more than welcome.

There’s a flipside to my decision to move to SF, a sacrifice which I don’t absolutely have to make, but probably should.

That sacrifice is my car.

I fell in love with her, and for some reason coined the name “Betsie”, the instant I saw her on the lot almost exactly a week after I landed in San Francisco. I’ve always had a thing for Jeep Wranglers – they just look so effortlessly confident and yet somehow quaint… almost cute.

And given that I’d moved here to experience America, what better way than in an all-American car?

She was everything I could have hoped for. Without any doubt, she’s the most enjoyable car I’ve ever driven, particularly on a scorching Californian day, zipping along with the top down.

But she’s expensive. In part, that’s because I didn’t get the best finance deal when I bought her, because I couldn’t. I didn’t exist at the time – no records in computers, no social security number. I hoped that a car finance plan was the best way to put myself on the map, credit history-wise. It worked too, as my first “You’re pre-approved for a credit card!” junk mail last week can attest.

Even if I refinanced now, the sum of insurance, taxes, parking, gas and finance payments will probably be around $800/month. $800/month I could be saving, or spending on having fun.

There’s also another irritating downside to owning a Wrangler – they get pretty crappy gas mileage (the EPA reckons 14mpg city/18mpg highway, although my records suggest closer to 16/21 – still crap). This annoys me, because they’re amazing, fun cars to drive, and I refuse to believe that Jeep couldn’t improve that mileage significantly if they spent a little time on it. They are possibly making some headway on this, with the Gladiator concept pick-up which runs on diesel (a good alternative once sulphur content regulations tighten up in 2006), and would get gas mileage significantly north of 20mpg. Still crap, but better.

So why do they have to ruin it with ridiculous ideas like the Jeep Hurricane? An off-roader with two 5.7-litre engines? How in hell is that useful to anyone without their own private oil refinery? And let’s not dwell on the irony of the chosen name, given this summer’s debate about whether the storm season is a symptom of global warming…

Of course, gas prices are rising (even if they’re still 1/3rd of what they are back in the UK), and the increasing cost-per-mile of driving is a concern. Actually, though, the thought of the pollution I’m creating by driving a gas-guzzler bothers me more than the cost to my pocket. I can juggle my finances. I’m not sure the planet’s doing so well with all our CO2 emissions.

And since I probably drive more between Sunnyvale and SF on weekends/evenings than anywhere else and Yahoo! provides good commute alternatives, I won’t need a car nearly as much when up in the city. For the times when I do there’s always rentals, which at probably $300/week, only when I need it, is a cheaper (and greener) option.

I’m still wavering on the decision (because, really, I love this car), but I think that selling her and paying off the finance contract with the proceeds (should be more-or-less break-even) is probably the right thing to do. The painful thing, but the right thing.

Which leaves me with three major tasks:

1. Working out the details of selling her for the most money I can get.
2. Making sure I enjoy my last few months driving her.
3. Planning a feasible car-free life in the city.

Wish me luck…