Al Gore should be proud of me: I’ve reduced the number of internal-combustion engines in my life to two.

As recently as three years ago, I had eight gas-powered engines to operate and maintain. At the time, I considered every one of them essential, but in fact I had fallen prey to engine creep. I’d come to believe that every challenge could be met with a new gas motor.

We started with two cars, one for me and one for the missus. Fair enough. We had different jobs and public transportation was spotty. Then we bought a house, and a lawn mower was required. There’s three engines. Later, we bought another home on an acre lot in the country, and that’s when my engine needs exploded. I purchased a riding mower because the yard was so much bigger, but kept the push mower so that I could trim grass around bushes and under trees. I also bought a weed trimmer because there was waaay too much edging to do by hand, and a blower to clean up after edger. Those last two were available in electric models, but the longest extension cord available couldn’t stretch everywhere I needed to trim and blow. So both were gas-powered.

That spiked my gas-engine total to six. Then one September night, Hurricane Fran blew through North Carolina, leaving three trees down in my yard (one of which brought my power line to the ground with it). Suddenly, I needed a chain saw. That made seven.

Nine days passed before the power was restored at my house, a stretch of time during which life was pioneer-primitive — largely because we used well water, and if we didn’t have power then water wasn’t getting pumped into the house. We endured, but when another hurricane three years later left us powerless again, and with the anticipated Y2K disaster scenario approaching, I decided we needed a generator. By that point, I was in full survivalist mode. The rest of you fools might have been at risk from a worldwide computer glitch, but I was off the grid, baby.

That made eight gasoline engines. I needed three separate fuel containers for the varying required mixtures of gas and oil. (Four containers if you count the kerosense for my old-school heater.)

Without realizing it, I’d become a major consumer of fuel. I probably showed up on ExxonMobil’s balance sheet in the “asset” column. I needed to power down, but it took me a couple of years — and a move to a new home with a smaller yard — before I succeeded in reducing the number of engines significantly. But even with those steps forward, there was a big step back. In 2005, I bought a motorcycle.

At the time, I put a good face on that purchase by convincing myself (and hoping to convince anyone else who’d listen) that it was a fuel-saving measure. After all, motorcycles use less fuel than cars. But it’s only a savings when you ride the motorcycle to destinations for which you’d typically otherwise use the car. In my case, I rode the motorcycle to work maybe three times. Every other occasion, I was joyriding around on weekends, burning gas just to feel the wind in my face. I could have accomplished that by sitting in front of an electric fan.

So I sold the motorcycle this past weekend. Now I’m down to a car and a small lawnmower. If all goes to plan and yard work is no longer part of my routine, the number of internal-combustion engines in my life eventually will be down to one: my car.

I might even be able to afford a driver by that time. Al, are you still looking for work?

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