A Service of The Arrow              Saturday October 15, 2000

    COLTON BARTON - Arrow Staff

    Have your pockets seemed a bit lighter lately? It’s probably because of the rise in gas prices in the U.S. But this rise makes it especially hard for people like Bruce Riley, who teaches English at Flathead in the morning, then teaches welding at the Vo-Ag in the afternoon. His vehicle of choice for commuting is a 10-cylinder Dodge pick-up that gets 16 miles per gallon.

    But instead of getting mad, he got even against high gas prices– with pedal power. He has given up the warmth and comfort of driving his nice big Dodge, and has taken on the cold, windy roads of the Flathead Valley on his 21 speed Schwinn Impact, .

    "I would rather suffer the cold than suffer the gas prices, and not go hunting. Because one of the main reasons I am doing this is because I like to hunt. And I hunt all the way down in Townsend, Montana. I figured that that if I ride my bike, I save 50$ every week and a half."

    Now Riley only teaches three periods at the high school and then heads for the Vo-Ag center. So he then has to hop on his bike and ride the three miles again to his house but instead of stopping there he has to ride another mile to the Vo-Ag center where he teaches for the remainder of the day. And once school is out he has to hop on his bike again and head back a mile to his house. This is quite a bit of riding to do especially for how cold it has been lately.

    "The government needs to loosen up and start oil exploration. And we also have a lot of wells that are capped. We need to quit playing politics because the government has released reserve oil to make the Democratic Party to look good."

    But politics aside, Riley said there is one huge benefit of this stunt.

    "Do you know the mileage on it? Food."

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