Oh my Bleeding Heart

Holy gas prices! It cost me almost 80 bucks to fill up my old pickup truck! It's a good thing I don't drive it much.
I started (barely) a little spring cleaning and I found a t-shirt from college with a screening of a Polar Bear on the front and a mountain range on the back with this written underneath it;

If future generations are to remember us more with gratitude than with sorrow, we must achieve more than just the miracles of technology. We must also leave them a glimpse of the world as it was created, not just as it looked when we got through with it. - Lyndon Johnson.




I also had some time to channel surf and stopped on the Nature channel with a documentary hosted by Matt Damon talking about the health of the oceans fisheries and their effects on those animals and people that depend on them. The closing message was "the oceans are not quite dying yet but they are very sick."

And then there is this billboard I've seen lately about global warming that has 2 check boxes. [] Fight global warming. [] Do absolutely nothing. Wow, talk about an ultimatum. I must admit that I did pause to think about it and It made me feel compelled to make a choice. Am I against it or not? Seems like a simple choice. Right?

Who has time for this? I'm working about 50 hours a week. I train 15-20 hours a week. I try and sleep 56 hours a week. And then there's commuting time, meal times, chores, etc. I have precious few minutes left to deal with global issues. Give me a break. I gotta keep working just for gas money.

I admit I can be a bleeding heart about things that are important to me. And this may sound a bit political but this is how I feel right now; I can either be a member of a heroic generation that began to fix, preserve, and save the earth or I can be vilified for knowing what I should have done but just didn't do it.
And so here is the moment I feel faced with a choice. Dang this is hard.
Looking back at some of the life changing choices I've made; After high school, I went to college instead of bike touring the US.
After college, I worked for a year being paid only a stipend but I lived in the middle of a research reserve with dolphins, deer and panthers as regular backyard visitors... priceless.
I was accepted to a police academy for special agent training but I chose to be a biologist instead. Minor physical disabilities and genetics kept me from being an elite athlete but I chose not to quit and keep competing as a really good (or so I keep telling myself) middle-of-the-packer.
I can't save the world...by myself, but I do choose to do what my abilities will allow me to and hopefully be a hero to someone, anyone, sometime, I hope. Even if it's only to my gullible nephews who think I'm the greatest uncle in the world. Don't we all secretly want to be a hero? I sure would love to have a super power so I could save the oceans, save the earth, save outer space, save me from myself.
Wait a minute! I don't need no stinking super power! I'm a reasonably healthy adult with bikes to ride, organic food to eat, volunteering, lights to turn off, less driving to do, more ride sharing, less babbling on and on. I can do all kinds of things that will help the planet heal. Or I can pay a "guilty fee" to some organization as atonement.
But, I need my spare change for race entry fees. Or...I can do absolutely nothing. I think my answer is obvious but not only the words that make up my answer, I will do ACTIONS. Having dialog isn't DOING anything. I gotta get off my #$$ and fix that dripping faucet.