Our 8:15 Friday morning exercise instructor had a breathless announcement for us and we hadn't even commenced to move. A recent addition to our area, he had finally purchased a car, meaning freedom, not being beholden to the large amounts of time necessary to plan for public transit. And this muscular fellow told us of tired arms from carrying groceries to and from the bus. Well, no, I know I do my fair share of driving.

What driving means to my schedule was illustrated that very morning. It's two and a half miles one way to the health club and I often bicycle there during the week. It's a flat ride, and the famed winds from the north are the biggest fitness boosters for the return trip. However, I usually have a community band practice a long seven miles basically eastward. There's a commuter train a mile the other way from home that leaves about 9, and ends up maybe a half mile from the practice site. That ride is more expensive than the more logical (and time planning recommended) bus and the next train back is not for an hour or more after practice. Fitness class would lose, and by the way the clubs to which I belong offer barely anything Friday afternoons; of course, that's not the only way to fitness.

For the time being I am swinging by the parental home a few days a week to check mail, bring in the refuse cans and water. A logical time to do that is after band practice. That's about seven miles, varying by a freeway shot or various stair casing surface streets. Advantage: car.

Now we get to the big self indulgence. At the end of a nice long freeway "boomerang" are a pair of stores in my sights. There are similar ones closer to home, and indeed close to the health club for bicycle's sake, but these have bigger selections. The self-check-out grocery store is much better with day old mark downs. What if I saved the gas and just bought these items at cost closer to home? On the day of the example, my usual freeway on ramp was under renovation so I felt even more "fingered" about personal strategy, especially as the surface streets gave me more examples of the nickels and dimes gleefully piling up on long-domineering gas prices.

The stores yielded their treasures, and in the case of the grocery one there have been labor disputes. At the same one for this post on another trip I walked by some petitioning employees, as did many. Today, what do I see? No petitioners, but by the exit handy waster receptacles marked for the disposal of union literature. It's America, it's the "capital" world.

And those "cute" people in other countries are getting away from the push carts and bicycles in exponential numbers. Bon apetit.