This is an excerpt from "Bicycle Routes in Thurston County", published by Tezzer's Tours, which I haven't seen online and may be out of print, but thought I'd share a route that includes Tumwater Falls Park...one of my favorite places in the Olympia area:

When I'm out and about, I'm often on foot or on bike. Periodically, I'll get yelled at. "Get a car!" or "Grow up!" At least I think that's what they said... most often it's completely unintelligible. It seems like yelling out car windows is a popular pastime, especially on the Westside. For clarification, they're not yelling at my behavior - I'm a strict rule-follower.

Does anyone else have similar experiences, or am I just a magnet for the loud ones?

From AlterNet:

Last week in our nation's capital, the National Council for Science and the Environment (NCSE) held a climate change conference focused on solutions to the problem of human-induced climate change. And in Paris the head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which is sharing the Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore, held a press conference to discuss to discuss "the importance of lifestyle choices" in combating global warming.

Notably, all food at the NCSE conference was vegan, and there were table-top brochures with quotes from the U.N. report on the meat industry, discussed more below. And the IPCC head, Dr. Rajendra Pachauri declared, as the AFP sums it up, "Don't eat meat, ride a bike, and be a frugal shopper."

When people are overwhelmed by the idea of changing a lifestyle, or even a single habit, defensiveness and even denial can be the result. How would you help a friend learn to change the habits that are so ingrained in our culture...meat consumption, driving personal vehicles, consumerism...in a way that would seem less overwhelming and be less likely to produce a defensive response?

My take: