Our enduring love affair with gasoline is problematic, to say the least. In a world with volatile gas prices, air pollution, carbon-induced climate change, questionable long-term access to foreign oil, and a surge of huge gas-guzzling vehicles taking over the roads, there's one lingering question on my mind:

What are we going to do about it? How are we going to shift away from a car-based transportation structure that requires burning fossil fuels?

More specifically, how can you move from point A to point B without driving? How do you use sports to Beat Gasoline?

I'll tell you what I do. I ride my bike everywhere. I walk. I hitch piggy-back rides from friends. I dance down the street, and climb trees, and balance precariously along abandoned train tracks. I rely on human power as my primary form of transportation. I fuel my vehicle with fruits, veggies, and sometimes nachos.

Yet there are so many more human-powered travel options. You can use skateboards or roller blades. You can move with a scooter, snowshoes, a unicycle, or a pogo stick. You can travel by horseback or kayak. You have the freedom to go car-free, and you can get there using your own muscles. 

A few years ago, I rode my bicycle all the way from Portland, Maine to Portland, Oregon in about eight weeks. Trust me, it can be done, and you can have a total blast getting to where you need to be without the constraint of cars, insurance, auto maintenance, speed limits, drivers' licenses, gasoline...

[Right: A pic of me riding through Montana in July. Man, it felt great to traverse the country on two wheels. Well, three wheels if you count my yellow trailer, Bob.]

I know you all have some great ideas about how to use sports to Beat Gasoline. Here's your chance to show the world how it's done by entering the Beat Gasoline contest.

That's right, we're offering some cool prizes—like Global Giving dollars and Nike kicks—to the best video and photo submissions that illustrate how you play instead of burning gas. So bust out that camcorder, film a short video, submit it to www.beatgasoline.com, and show others how we can use sports to Beat Gasoline.

Another plane crashed this morning, this time in Amsterdam. We've seen lots of airplane mishaps in the news lately, from the deadly incident whereby a commuter plane collided with a New York residence last week, to the recent "light" plane crashes in California and Australia, to the miraculously non-fatal surprise landing of Flight 1549 in the Hudson River last month.

Despite its long-standing relationship with a ruthless killer known as gravity, air travel is still statistically safer than automotive travel. Arguably, from the perspective of human safety we'd actually be better off reducing the safety precautions required for commercial airlines. By cutting security budgets and minimizing safety measures on flights, airlines would save money and theoretically pass some of that savings on to consumers. If this reduces the cost of flying, more people will make the decision to fly rather than drive. And as we all know, fewer cars on the road means fewer auto-related fatalities. The argument stands that the slight increase in air-travel fatalities would be more than offset by the reduction of injuries and deaths on roads and highways. It's an interesting argument, albeit a politically unpopular one.

Still, I have a tendency to daydream about other methods of getting off the ground. What if we could avoid the commercial airlines and the road/highway system altogether?

In the 1970s, Dr. Paul B. MacCready invented the first functional human-powered flying machine, named the Gossamer Condor (which would also be a totally sweet band name, in my opinion). It's a lot like cycling in the sky, under a canopy of lightweight materials and a massive wingspan. The next version of MacCready's machine—the Gossamer Albatross—successfully crossed the English Channel on a combination of mechanically sound construction, wind, and athleticism.

So cool. I think I'll bypass the 747 and rely more on hamstrings and quadriceps for my next flight.

Below: segment from a documentary featuring the flight of the Gossamer Condor.

More history can be found in Chris Roper's online book, Human Powered Flying.