Darin and I discussed where to go for Date Night. “I know, I know,” he said, “Pirates.”

“Actually, I’d rather see Who Killed the Electric Car?”

(Pause.) “Really? So would I.”

So we went. And when we walked out, Darin said, “I’m really beginning to hate cars.”

Who Killed the Electric Car? is the story of GM’s experiment with a car that ran on electricity, the EV-1. The people who made it, the people who drove it, and the people who regulated it in (and out) of existence. There are EV-1 fanatics, who begged and pleaded with GM to be allowed to keep their car, there are engineers who are working on making electric auto technology ever more fabulous, and there are the automotive/petroleum company spokesmen who simply ooze, well, slickness as they lie, and lie, and lie.

California, the largest market in the nation, passed a law saying a certain percentage of cars on California roads had to be zero emission by 2000. GM, which had developed an electric car, turned it into a consumer item, the EV-1. They were evidently hard to get, because GM didn’t want customers to have them: they wanted to fight the legislation instead. Eventually the California Air Resources Board (CARB) caved, seduced by the promise of hydrogen fuel cells, and GM (and the other auto makers, who’d jumped into the market) killed their electric cars. They didn’t just pull the leases and take the cars back, they crushed and shredded them, wanting to ensure that they never got out there again.

The film goes through a list of suspects in the murder—consumers, Big Auto, Big Oil, the consumers, CARB, hydrogen fuel cells (which, if you don’t already know, are a gigantic chimera that are going nowhere fast), batteries. And the answer is pretty much a Murder on the Orient Express solution (with the exception of one suspect, which hilariously gets a “Not Guilty”).

At the end there’s an upbeat, optimistic look at the future, with hybrids and plug-in hybrids that get 125 mpg and other technologies coming down the pike. Which, after the depressing movie we’d just watched, was a nice way to end it. (Not very realistic, of course: the answer to our problems is not more single-passenger vehicles, but a start at any rate.)

The bit from an old newsreel about how the discovery of new oil fields in Iraq will bring that nation so many good things was hilarious.

The movie overall is rougher than some other commercially released documentaries we’ve seen (such as An Inconvenient Truth) but it’s very entertaining and told me quite a few things I didn’t know, despite living in California. Definitely recommended.

I got rolling on my new Xtracycle last week.

I love my new bike.

It really is an SUB — it’s held everything that I’ve needed to load on it so far (a purse-backpack, a briefcase with my computer in it, four bags of groceries, and/or two kids), it handles just as well as the bike did beforehand, and it looks snazzy.

Today Sophia and I had a plan to bike to Stacks, a breakfast place in Campbell six miles away. She made it the first two miles, but then after a not-terrible spill wanted Darin to pick her up. I met up with Darin and the kids at the Campbell Farmers Market and then we had breakfast. After breakfast Simon wanted to go to the park near our house, so I said, “Okay, I’ll meet you there.” Sophia asked if she could come with me instead of in the car with Daddy.

Sure. Hop on. Put on your helmet. Hold on.

And off we went.

Despite the 90 degree heat, the sailing was fine down the Creek Trail to the park. I would say, “One, two, three,” and Sophia would sing out, “On your left!” to warn the unwary of our approach. Sophia says she much prefers riding on the bike to riding in the car. “You get fresh air, you can see people, you get wind in your face…”

A man who had his dog riding in a box strapped on the back of his bike stopped to ask me what kind of bike it was I had. “Oh, a Trek,” he said. “A Trek connected to an Xtracycle!” I told him, and then I gave him the song-and-dance about what it can carry (200 pounds) and how easy it is to get stuff (like a dog in a box) onto the rack.

I have taken the bike for food shopping a couple of times, always with Sophia, who now always wants to go along if a bike is involved. Strapping canvas bags into the Xtracycle’s Freeloader pockets is easy and fast, and the bike handles just fine with a full load.

As I get stronger with bike riding, I can see that I’m going to need my car less and less. I gotta remember the sunscreen next time though: I got baked today, and not in the fun “Oh, let’s drink some more tequila” type of way.

I bought a Peapod seat for Simon, but that hasn’t worked out so well — when he was in the seat, the bike’s handling got very difficult. He’s not thrilled with riding on the back without something to hang on to (other than the back of Mommy), so I’m installing a stoker stem and handlebars next week. Once those are on, I can see Simon happily sitting on back on the way to preschool.

Sophia has been an official two-wheeler since Tuesday—except she was riding the little toy bike she’s had since she was two (Darin calls it “the clown bike”), which didn’t exactly count. We kept encouraging her to try her “big” bike, the bike she got for her sixth birthday, but every time she got on it, she cried and said she was scared.

Yesterday she was riding on the clown bike and I once again idly asked, “Want to try your big bike?” “Okay!” she said, the way she has many, many times before. So I reluctantly dug it out of the shed (which is currently filled with varnish fumes, so being in there was unpleasant) and gave it to her. She walked it down to the street.

And took off.

She didn’t even need to start on the hill, which is how she got started on the clown bike. She just gave herself a push forward and started pedaling.

Now that she was using her big bike, she did not want to get off of it. After two hours I said she had to come in, because I was too tired to play traffic cop any more. (For a tiny street that could not serve as a thoroughfare by any remote stretch of the imagination, damn we get a lot of traffic.) She went out after dinner too.

First thing this morning she asked if she could bike after camp.

Now that she has her own wheels, we’re never going to see her again.

It’s not a good sign when Darin and I walk out of a theater rewriting the script.

I really wanted this to be good. I’ve wanted a fun popcorn movie that I could totally enjoy for a while, and I come away sorely disappointed all the time. That this film has gotten so many plaudits says more about the competition out there than about its own qualities, unfortunately.

This movie is ostensibly a sequel to Superman II, and it attempts to bash our heads in with that fact by quoting the original Superman. Repeatedly. Literally quoting them—Darin listed several lines that were straight out of that film (and, I guess, Superman II). And the story’s just not particularly interesting—Lex Luthor’s dastardly plan has to do with real estate… which is, of course, also right out of the first film.

To give you an idea of how weird this film is in terms of plot and characters, there’s a scene where Lois Lane, her cute little tot in tow, stumbles into Lex Luthor’s hideout. In the midst of Lois interviewing Lex about his secret plan, a Major Plot Revelation dawns on Lex about his captees. (If you haven’t figured out this particular plot element by this point in the movie, there’s no hope for you.) Imagine the hold over Superman this would give him! So what does Lex do?

He leaves Lois and company on the boat, ostensibly to drown. Not that he makes sure of that, mind you; he just assumes it. Or something.

Huh. Isn’t that in the List of Things an Evil Overlord Should Avoid Doing?

The movie is also hella along: they could have and should have trimmed at least a half hour from this flick. It has, as Darin put it, three endings.

Brandon Routh: never really appealed to me in all the pre-publicity, but he’s okay in this film. Also: cute.

Kevin Spacey: good in the few scenes he has, but he doesn’t really have all that much to do.

Kate Bosworth: oh, was she in this movie too? I didn’t think she was as bad as some reviewers have made out, but Pulitzer-prize winning journalist, I think not. (Of course, if Judy Miller can get one…)

There are definitely some good things in the movie—the sequence with the airplane and space shuttle is very exciting. (Although that’s our introduction to Lois, and it’s not a very mythic introduction.) But on the whole…I have no desire to see this flick again, and, not that I have the time or anything, but I really, really want a flick that I’d at least be tempted to see twice.