Everyone in Los Angeles has a ridiculous story about driving somewhere when two feet would have worked just as well. Mine features a celebrity. I once interviewed John Travolta at Paramount Pictures for an entertainment magazine, and when it came time for us to move from his trailer to the shooting location, a limo was summoned. Estimated distance of our chauffeured, temperature-controlled, Evian-sipping road trip: less than 25 yards.

This impulse is not so uncommon in Los Angeles. Friends of mine joined me at CicLAvia in June. It’s a recurring feel-good event that encourages walking, skating, strolling, scooting and biking through closed-off city streets normally blazing with car traffic. If you are a hipster from the Highland Park neighborhood in possession of a penny-farthing, this is your happiest day of the year.

“We drove two cars,” one of my friends said, arriving late and looking slightly bewildered. “We left one near the starting line and another near the finish.” I felt like saying, “People, this is Los Angeles: you only need one car for a pedestrian-friendly outing.”

This always sounds absurd to New Yorkers, but many Angelenos would sooner have their mug shots appear on TMZ than go a few steps without a motor vehicle. Here, we drive ourselves to jog, to bike, to attend spin class and to hike, and it’s not unusual for a dinner gathering of three couples to involve five or six cars. All of which contributes to how much we sit. When we are not sitting on the freeways, we are sitting at our computers, in meetings, at restaurants or in front of the TV. And by we, in this case I mean me, at least until recently.