Blunts, Bitches and Bicycles

Shame on popular culture for your misinterpreting the title.

I meant not weed but cigar blunts. I meant not frivolous women but female dogs. And I meant not - actually, I meant bicycles literally.

Stick with me.

Several weeks ago I was in the parking lot next to Cassell Coliseum at Virginia Tech. Just before I shifted my sedan into D, a slight movement on the horizon caught my eye. I looked up to find a peculiar man. Well, his physical appearance wasn't odd: T-shirt tucked into shorts and shoes. Rather, his "accessories" were confounding.

In one hand, he nursed the tail end of a fat cigar. How fat? In his other hand was a leash attached to a dog no larger than the blunt.

Let's briefly recap this context. The parking lot is huge and nearly empty since it's summer. A man is inexplicably wandering said parking lot with a fun-sized pup while smoking a cigar that seems to have been lit back at sunrise.

Not long after I took this in, the man nonchalantly rocketed the cigar onto the ground and proceeded to tap-dance it deeper into the asphalt.

It was parking spot number 392.

Was that somehow symbolic? Maybe the man has marked 392 parking spaces with cigars over a period of time. Or maybe that's how many leaks his animal has taken in the lot (grass, I suppose, is overrated).

I shook my head briefly but then looked beyond this example to the larger picture. Parking lots are seriously enduring things.

Just consider one Saturday of Virginia Tech football tailgating: chili and nacho cheese falling from hot dogs, spilled beer, discrete (or not if drunk) urinations by a truck tire, oil from said truck, vomit from the aforementioned drunk.

It's pretty intense. And if pavement could speak, I suspect it would have a lot to say about our ignorance as a nation.

But I'll keep my thoughts micro; Blacksburg, specifically.

The amount of surface parking at Virginia Tech has always confounded me. I get that tailgating is awesome, but I don't find those handful of weekends validation enough.

In 2008, the Virginia Tech Office of Transportation conducted a survey of 1,713 students, faculty and staff in hopes of using the data to better inform future transportation initiatives.

According to the survey, 77 percent of respondents travel to and from campus via vehicle.

Seventy-seven percent.

Still, nearly 75 percent of the same respondents marked either "somewhat agree" or "strongly agree" when asked if, in general, there was too much traffic from cars on campus.

What a conundrum.

Thankfully, the answers - in many cases, not all - are insanely evident. Alternatives to driving are plentiful.

Our community is palpably compact. It's absurd to say otherwise.

Using the nifty website Map My Ride, I found the mileage for potential walking/bicycling routes from numerous popular student apartment complexes to campus. It was laughable how many hovered at or below one mile.

One mile.

According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, cycling 5 miles in 30 minutes or 4 miles in 15 minutes 5 times per week meets the current public health guidelines for physical activity. You could almost accomplish this just by cycling to and from campus each day.

How does one afford a bicycle? Forgo the $170 for a year-long commuter parking pass, and apply that cash to a bicycle. It's enough to buy or significantly cushion the cost of a new ride.

What about rain? Snow? (more often) Sloth? If you apply for the Bus, Bike & Walk program through Parking Services, you get 15 daily parking permits free. That's three straight weeks of parking if it's needed.

And that leads to the bus. Nearly $100 per year is infused into tuition costs for Blacksburg Transit. That in itself is a compelling reason to use it.

Blacksburg Transit has 11 routes that cover nearly every inch of Blacksburg and portions of Christiansburg. Most routes students need begin running at 7 a.m. and cycle every 10 to 20 minutes. If you can't plan around that consistency, transportation is the least of your life worries.

If walking, biking and busing somewhow fail to meet your needs and you must drive, there's carpooling.

Whether it's with classmates, roommates or a significant other, the carpooling parking pass is somewhat of a hidden gem. Two or more commuters can register their respective vehicles under one pass that currently costs $75 per year. Imagine a 4-person pass. That's less than $20 per person for the entire year, and you get to sing Miley Cyrus together on the way to school ("Don't you wish that you could be a fly on the wall?!") .

All of these options aren't exclusive. Walking, bicycling, busing and carpooling can be used interchangeably. Together, they likely have your needs covered. Every so often a car is necessary, surely (after all, I began this piece with me in a car), but be mindful of the decision.

But what would it change?

Construction is scheduled to begin this month on the Perry Street Parking Deck in the Prices Fork parking lot. It costs $18,000 to $20,000 per spot, so let's use it. But what if we left the remaining surface parking desolate? Idealistic, possibly (positively), but it could denote exciting opportunities. It could become green space.

Joys like the Drillfield and the Duck Pond need not be limited to the campus innards.

I'd much prefer to approach campus from Prices Fork and see Ultimate Frisbee, soccer and other recreation as opposed to vehicles scurrying like caged mice in a blacktop ocean.

I've heard rumors, though, of multiple parking decks around campus that eventually will surpass our current parking availability by thousands. I've subsequently heard several people celebrate this; a rejoicing with which I can't agree.

Ostensibly, it seems like the preservation of square footage and the possibility for new green space. And I suppose it does those things. But it also means the university supports hundreds of millions of dollars in loans with wild hikes in tuition, parking pass and parking ticket prices.

More is not merrier in this case. Remember the whole one mile phenomenon? We don't need five or six parking decks.

I can't help but think this isn't so much about the wise use of space and resources as it is the basic values of a generation.

If we can't bring ourselves to walk (or cycle, for crying out loud) four laps around a track, what kind of leaders will we be in the "real world"?

I'm on board with H.G. Wells when he once said, "When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race."