So, this morning I was asked if I’m a vegan. The person doing the asking was our spin teacher – born in 1979, a dance major, adopts puppies on her vacation to save them from having to live in the wilds on whatever desert isle she’s visiting at the moment. You know her – somewhere in your life, she lurks, driving her jeep with all manner of “meat is murder” stickers plastered on every available surface.
And you also know that she’s about as thoughtful as a stoat, as she goes out and buys a Prius to replace that Jeep with, because she wants to do her part and all that. Never mind that replacing a 3-year-old jeep with a new vehicle means that she’s essentially contributing to the problem (hello, new aluminum needed for your hybrid), rather than helping to fix it.
Let me just say this now: if you’re not going to keep your car for a decade, it’s not going to save you any money to buy a hybrid. I’ve owned a cute little Honda Insight since December, 1999. I’ve spent around $1000 on gas for that car during that time, and figure I’ve saved around $2000 compared to what her Jeep would have needed. Now, the cost of buying a new vehicle? NOT going to be worth it, financially.
So, let’s recap: not financially beneficial to replace a perfectly good car with a new Hybrid; not environmentally beneficial to do so, either. If your car is totalled out and you have no choice but to buy a new vehicle? Hybrid all the way (well – one of the two fuel-efficient ones on the market, that is, ’cause they’re not all of them about saving fuel).
Am I a vegan? Mostly*. But do I advertise the fact? No. Why not? Well, if you have to ask, you just won’t get it.
*I eat honey (try making a nice oat-bread without it – I’ve been, and it’s no picnic) and drink milk (coffee). I also enjoy Salmon around a dozen times a year (sustainably fished, as all Pacific Salmon is, of course).
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Funny… not a vegan either, but close, and hadn’t really done it deliberately. One of my last holdouts is cottage cheese! That’s the one thing for which I haven’t yet found a comparable vegan alternative. And Nancy’s is so tasty, too.
The first question the ride chick asked that I heard was if you were on a raw-food diet. I was like, “Erg?”(And the Natalie visi-vegan thing — quel amusant!) Not that there’s anything wrong with a raw food thing, but …? Does Hybrid Car=Raw Food thing? Oh well… take it easy on the bubble headed ride coach. She’s trying SO HARD to be different and separate from other people (with her 99 thousand bumper stickers screeching out her Valid Opinions) that she doesn’t realize she’s just on the far left fringe of the herd, but she’s still right in step…
It’s hard not to be in the herd.
It’s a slightly different variant: Visi-Hybrid-Owner. They buy Hybird vehicles so that they can claim to be all into the environment, but don’t bother to do the research to figure out that what they’re doing is MORE HARM THAN GOOD.
Notice that I haven’t given little miss bubble-head my blog address?
I, too, cannot give up Nancy’s Cottage Cheese. Sigh.
Cheers for enabling the comments for us non-blogspotters.
It’s ‘the conversation’ I dread. The one that inevitably begins when you meet people for the first time over a meal and they feel like you must have a burning desire to share your beliefs in vegetarianism/veganism with the world when all you want to do is find something on the menu you can order and for them to shut up and order their damn steak without involving you in the process. Don’t lay your guilty conscience at my door person I’ve never met before. I’m not your priest and I don’t offer absolution with dessert.
The real trick would be to OFFER absolution … for a price. Heh heh.
I’m always amazed at the people who realize that they’ve been eating vegetarian or vegan and haven’t even noticed. I mean, bread? Vegan (unless you ascribe to the “honey is an animal product” line of thought, in which case: most is still vegan).