When the World Runs Out of Oil, This Rider Will Still Be Able to Roll

When he was younger, Paul Niquette said he wondered about such things as where God came from, how money started and “what happens when we run out of something?”

It was the last question that bothered him the most.

So for a number of years now, he’s been telling anyone who will listen that the world is running out of oil. “Like it or not, nobody ever said the world’s supply of petroleum would last forever,” the 53-year-old Irvine resident said. “It’s running out. It’s a non-replenishable resource.”

Niquette likes to say there are people alive today whose grandchildren will not drive cars because there will be no petroleum, although he admits he gets arguments on that.

He said people will have to change their life style and return to the times when bicycles were the mode of travel. “That’s the way the Chinese people travel now,” he noted.

But Niquette said he usually gets an argument on everything he says about the subject. “People don’t like hearing about gas lines and the fact that maybe there won’t be any gas for their cars,” he said.

Because of the tough time he has persuading people about shrinking petroleum resources, Niquette is lecturing more about bicycles these days. He also happens to have a collection of them dating back to 1861. “It’s easier to talk to people about bicycles because most have expended energy on them,” he said.

Niquette calls himself a futurist who believes there is little that is certain about the future except, of course, that there will be no petroleum. He manages to slip that thought in during his lectures on bicycles.

Niquette, a business executive, has given up driving a car and has pedaled a bike to work for the past five years. “It’s a lot easier telling people that I belong to the post-petroleum era when they know I don’t drive a car,” he admitted, although he said he does fly a private airplane.

And he says it is just more fun talking about the collection of 15 antique bicycles stored in his living and dining rooms. In fact, he jokes about finally finding a wife who would let him keep the bikes in the living room. “This is my third marriage,” he added.

His knowledge of bicycles from their very beginning is included in his book, “A Certain Bicyclist,” which he calls an offbeat guide to the post-petroleum age.

Besides riding the bicycles for pleasure, Niquette takes the bikes to festivals and community events to show them off.

“My husband is a bit eccentric,” said Beverly Niquette, 46, his wife of eight years, who collects Art Deco furniture, old toasters and dons old-fashioned clothes when she and her husband show or take the bikes out for a spin.

“I never collected anything before I married him,” she said.

On July 28, 1975, nine babies were born at Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian in Newport Beach. Every year since then, the five boys and four girls have celebrated their birthdays together.

One of the mothers, Sylvia Peterson of Huntington Beach, who created the Hoag Buddies group, said the mothers have became friends and continue to exchange helpful hints and advice on child-rearing at the annual party.

In the beginning, Peterson said, she felt a closeness with each of the mothers and babies and thought, “Wouldn’t it be wonderful to see these babies and mothers every year?”

What is surprising to the parents, said Peterson, is the remarkable similarity in personality, interests and dispositions of the children, although they only see each other once a year.

“The mothers never cease to be amazed year after year at the children’s likeness,” she said.

Those children in the group who still live in Orange County are Jennifer Abell, Genevieve Dominguez and Nicole Peterson, all of Huntington Beach; Melanie Gregg of Costa Mesa; Roger Armstrong of Irvine; Steven Borquist of Fountain Valley; Michael Klingler of Garden Grove, and Cole McLaughlin of Tustin.

The ninth child, Robert Wisecarver, lives in Oregon.

Acknowledgments----San Clemente electrologist Jayne Rhodes of San Juan Capistrano was appointed to the seven-member state Board of Cosmetology by Gov. George Deukmejian. She is a former hairdresser and manicurist.