Small Car Poodle Syndrome: Correllation?

Does This Make You Feel Powerful?

Really small cars do something to most people. Drivers push them twice as hard as a normal sized sedan. Maybe its poodle syndrome applied to the highway. Maybe its rage against a world that puts you in a car half the size of the typical SUV that can crush you in a single bad swerve. In tiny cars, drivers scream by me on the highway like suicidal Cafe Racers going to Meet God, in person.
Whatever the cause, I would never buy a used Mini Cooper, a used Honda Civic Hatchback, or a used Smart. The owners race them as fast as they can go, with their small engines pushed to the limit, red lining all the time. The Smart runs a motorcycle engine, 600cc. Potentially good fuel economy due to the size, but I always see those in the fast lane doing 80 mph. That may be fun, but it can't be good for engine life or fuel economy.

Edward is Edward.

 I'm told that pretty much all 49cc scooters are pushed like this too. WOT means Wide Open Throttle, run at redline (if there is one), all the time. They're more fun that way, apparently. I've never done that, but I'm reasonably stable. You buy a used car or scooter that's smaller displacement than it should be, factor in your engine replacement cost to your offer. I suspect most sellers will be disappointed, but word gets around how the Smart and the Fiat 500 are utterly thrashed by their owners.

When I think about fuel economy, I know the math favors lighter vehicles with smaller engines, because less weight takes less energy to move around. Its pretty basic physics.

Must...feel...SAFE!!!

 

Getting past the stupidity of people who insist on "safety" in life are the sorts I plan to smirk at when they starve to death "for safety" because they can't get to work without fueling up their SUV.

Anasazi means "ancient enemy" in Navajo.

The Southwest is filled with ruins and skeletons of people who refused to adapt to reality. I don't feel sorry for those folk. We all make our choices.

This is less fun than it looks. 

Rain is coming today. Bicycling or scootering in rain would not be a choice I'd enjoy. A roof over your head so you arrive warm is always preferred.

Articulated, Electric, Computer Controlled.

Lucky for us, the Japanese are already working on it. While the Dutch "Carver" has since gone out of business, the Japanese have built concept narrow-cars that lean. These have some potential, actually.

Narrow, but room for groceries in the back.

The VW 1L is actually getting 240 mpg running diesel, though I do hope they'll lower the price. It looks weird and small but I suspect its reasonably practical in the real world, despite being an upgraded 1930's Messerschmitt mini-car.

Because racing is the right answer.

Sadly, the BMW C1 stopped production in 2003.

There's also scooters with front windshield and roof and two rear wheels that make for a taller and more agile version of the Tuktuk. Its a bit safer too, though a lack of doors would be annoying with a wet winter crosswind.

Sure, you can wear a business suit in this, but won't you be miserably cold by the time you get there in your worsted wool? I'm sorry, but this vehicle either needs doors or a better dressed rider. The two front wheels make braking much safer, though so this is likely a winning design, overall. I think we should expect more things like this because they're cheap to make, get you to work on a small fraction of the fuel you used to use, and will reduce our dependence on Foreign Oil. This would work with domestic fuel production, including biodiesel or electric.

Now, if the folks riding these can just avoid the Smart car's Poodle Syndrome of hyper-aggressive driving...

The Electric Car's Achilles Heel

The big advantage of the electric car is that it can take electricity from any source and turn it into the ability to deliver you to and from work, to school, to the doctor or grocery store. It doesn't use fossil fuels, at least not directly. Whether the power grid gets its energy from hydroelectric dams, solar panels, nuclear power, or wind turbines it doesn't matter to the electric car. Once the population have electric vehicles, they just need to maintain them, not replace them like the neverending supply chain of current gasoline powered cars. This is the big advantage. Any electric source can become the motion needed to maintain our economy and accustomed lifestyle.

You can already buy an electric bike and an electric scooter, but they have limited range and speed. Electric motorcycles win drag races, if that's what they're setup for, but the big limiting factor in electric cars, as shown on Top Gear in Season 16, is limited range and long recharge time. This is because they use lithium ion batteries, currently the best available to science and industry. Lithium ion batteries power your laptop and cellular phone. As you know, within a few hours they're discharged and die. They get hot if they're used hard, and when they get hot, when they're recharged again they're not quite as good. They wear out. They aren't really the right answer, but they're the only answer we have. For now.

The big disadvantage, these days, is the electric car is both much more expensive than a gasoline powered version of the same range, and its can only go a modest distance before needing recharge, which isn't fast or common either.

Work is being done to make that easier and faster, but the battery materials used, mostly lithium, are rare earths, meaning we either pay whatever the mine owners charge or we take it by force. And that means another war. Bolivia is prepared for both outcomes, having Lithium brines under their great western Andean desert salt flats, the same one you saw in the recent James Bond movie "Quantum of Solace".

Turns out there's lithium brines draining out of a volcanic field in Nevada too, but the Lithium crystals mined from the Urals are pretty much done. Those power most cellphones today. The Bolivians know what they've got. They will sell it dearly, in a bidding war between us, China, and India. They know that they might get invaded by the loser, or if the price runs too high. They're willing to risk it because they don't have much to lose and everything to gain. After all, Cocaine just doesn't pay like it used to. Worse yet, the total lithium deposits on earth are enough to power about 2 million cars with very modest range. If you try to build more you get these instead:

Or you revert to the above electrics and a bunch of old timers running cobbled together Tuktuks like this:

What it takes to get around the problems of Lithium is an entirely new battery technology. A battery that runs on no rare earth elements. A battery that can be mass produced and everyone on earth can have one, even the poorest farmer in India.

We don't have this yet. Not even theoretically. If or when it's discovered, tested, perfected, and rushed to market to replace the Lithium Ion batteries now in cars and cellphones and laptops it will change the world, because with a working scalable battery the need to be polite to the Middle East ENDS. And when the Middle East stops being important, when it stops being funded, all those Jihad wars suddenly look very silly, and the EU and USA just back off and let them fume alone. The oil full of sulfur just turns back into toxic waste, suitable for fertilizer or plastic manufacturing but not much else. Our international interests will then be in food, rather than securing ever-decreasing supplies of energy. A new age of peace.

No more resource wars over power supply. Water supply is separate issue, but one that cheap energy can resolve through sea water desalination on every coastline, pumping inland with those same solar powered batteries, making agriculture possible in most places. We'll have enough to eat, everywhere that people live. Suddenly getting along can happen. We don't have to kill everyone we meet anymore. We still have to contend with the mess we made everywhere we've gone, all the enemies we've made, but in time and generations that will mellow. So keep your fingers crossed and hope some chemist finds a way to make a battery that will replace lithium with common ingredients. Change the world, not with empty words but technology that matters.

Edging Into The Future, One Small Wheel At A Time

On Saturday, in this fancy neighborhood of mostly retired rich white people we found an advertised Vespa at a local garage sale, just around the corner. We were curious to see if it was a real one. It was. A fuel injected, 150cc model, suitable for a rider and girlfriend/wife on the back, able to pull the hills. It was the LXV150 in grey for $3800.

Nice looking. It was metallic gray, no racks, and a slightly fancier seat. Mostly vintage looks with the slightly rounded curves and chrome accents found in all Italian vehicles today. Italian cars are modeled on women, apparently. With a fast Ferarri or Lamborghini that seems possible, but with a short squat Fiat 500? Make of that what you will. The Vespa is designed to suit people who are used to a Camry or Accord. Easy to control, automatic transmission, reliable brakes and starter. My big problem with the scooter wasn't the worn leather seat that needed replacement. Nor was it the size, which was built for a grown American man. It wasn't small at all. It would fit me. My big problem is that Vespas are overpriced.

My earlier rant to Honda in a prior week remains true for Vespa too: Vespa charges too much for their scooters in America. If they sold them for merely 10x cost ($1600) they'd sell millions of them here. Instead they sell for $5000 or so, and only rich people buy them. As a pure utility transportation machine, for travel around town, its too much money.

I still want a Vespa equivalent. The Piaggio Fly 150 is $2900 new. Not EFI like the Vespa but a lot lighter too. Five minutes of warmup time is what it will take to make proper use of the machine. I still think that's too much, and for $1550 it would be a reasonable price for what it is: transportation you don't have to pedal. I may pay it anyway. Its practical, otherwise. A reliable engine strong enough for the hills, and tires big enough to survive the potholes if I'm not riding like a fool.

A pity the Scarabeo 200 isn't cheaper. That would be a decent machine for up here, too. Its an Italian copy of the Honda Wave.

Which is an upgraded version of the Honda SuperCub.

You can see the similar design right? The Italians have the gall to pretend their design came first, when they're a copy of a copy. The SuperCub has been around since 1958.
Like the Italians, the Pacific Islanders/Rim (Japanese, Thais, Vietnamese, Indonesians) have good perspective on scooters and underbones motorcycles, recognizing the need for suspension and bigger wheels to deal with crappier roads.

I recommend watching this one with the sound muted, as the song is annoying. Pay attention to the scenery instead: the road disappears. It gets overgrown. It loses sections to the nearby stream, which has washed parts of it away. Road Decay is a real problem, and something I ponder when I'm riding on them slow enough to see every bump, crack, and ripple. When your combined tire-contact patches are the same area as the palm of one hand, you worry about grip. You should. Lack of grip when you need it can kill you. Especially up here where there's so much gravel and sand on the corners of every road, and at the exit of every driveway. Judge that wrong and you die. Or get badly hurt and spend thousands on doctor bills. A safe bike is safe because the tires have enough grip, the brakes work well, and rider is paying attention and not going too fast. Slow is smooth, smooth is safe. Arriving alive is winning. Besides, you see more when you're going slow.

I liked the Vespa, but not for $3800. If it were $1500, I'd have bought it. If it were a fake Vespa and $400 with a CA license plate, I'd have bought it, even with a blown engine. Building a new one would have been a fun project, and this being California, even the winter takes vacation here. Could do shop stuff on rainy days, and ride it between the storms. I don't think that the maintenance requirements of a scooter are a negative. My bicycle needs maintenance too. Lube the chain, add air to the tires. Wipe off the dust and tighten the brake cable. These aren't hard things to do. A scooter just adds an engine and better brakes to the mix, and takes out the pedals. There are many manufacturers of scooter besides Vespa. The big Italian conglomerate sells a decent machine, but in my opinion it is too much money.

The California Air Resources Board (CARB) gets to decide what bikes are legal in California. They ban bikes because their paint color changed and the manufacturer refuses to submit a bike for destructive testing (destroy it). I don't blame manufacturers for refusing. CARB needs to take a more rational approach to their certification process. Paint color isn't relevant to its pollution index. They also need to allow bikes like the Wave and the SuperCub into California to compete with the effete and overpriced Italian bikes, which are built in the same offshore, non-union Chinese factories as their less expensive competitors. They need to get out of the way. If the Governor were actually progressive instead of just TALK, he could order the CARB to let these in, order CARB to be progressive. Get them out of the way.

Sometimes progress feels like taking a step back. Scooters are one of those times. We'll all be riding them if we want to work, because all jobs are going to Minimum Wage, and Minimum Wage only pays for enough gas to run a scooter, not an SUV. I imagine a future where bicycle shops and hardware stores and car lots all sell scooters, and nobody bats an eye when you go past. You will be able to buy tires and rings and spare parts and two-stroke oil an aisle over from the house paint or lawn seed. Its the future. Look good and hard at it. It is coming no matter what you think.

Fall Colors Soup

As you may know, the seasons changed here over the course of a few days from Indian Summer (heat) to very sudden cold and rain. There's been snow in the high and not-so-high country. We're still drying out and putting plants and outdoor furniture away. Its sweater and soup season. I've got the sweaters. I'm making the soups.

Earlier in the week I made Clam Chowder, which was awesome.

Today I took my elderly Mother to the grocery store and bought ingredients for winter squash soup. Unfortunately, I am not interested in paying $3.85 for a can of pumpkin, so I opted for yams, onions, and mushrooms instead. This will work just fine. I also bought a handful of cashews because that's the thing to do, these days, adding random nuts to soup. I guess I'm a fan of random nuts.

Fall Colors Soup
Ingredients:
2 yams
3 onions
4 carrots
3 sticks of celery
1 Tbs of olive oil
14-16 oz. of crimini mushrooms
1 lb. bunch of red chard
24 oz. of chicken broth
1 lb. package of turkey link sausage

I start my soups with the French Trinity. I've covered that before. Onion, celery, carrot, in a covered pot on low heat for 10 minutes to sweat the goodness into broth instead of letting it escape and filling your house with tear gas. I love onions, but treat them with respect. Cut the ends off, then along the grain a couple layers deep, and peel the resulting onion skin and what LOOKS LIKE (but isn't) good layer of onion. That layer tastes like leather and will never cook down, so toss it. Onions are CHEAP. Take the resulting onion and cut down the middle longways, rinse both halves. Now you can cross cut partway, parallel, then take your knife and work it clockwise through the layers, giving you little wedges of finely cut onion that won't give you tears. If you do it right, this is easy. I have a lot of practice.

Add your cut up celery and carrot, cut into reasonable chunks. This soup will simmer for around 45-60 minutes, so big chunks will cook down over time. We don't want STEW but soup so half an inch is probably best. Cover and steam over low heat with olive oil for the requisite 10 minutes for the Sweat process to work. While this is happening, cut up the yams, including cutting off the skins. Those are distracting in this kind of soup. Yam skins are good on yam fries or yam chips, but in soft foods not so much. Off they go, toss them. Cut up mushrooms for maximum flavor absorption, and cut up red chard.

Cut up turkey link sausage into 3/4 inch chunks, like meatballs, using kitchen shears. They're not just for cutting herbs from the garden or the wings off a roasted hen. You can do useful things like this too. Add the veggies and sausage and cover with the lid over low heat to simmer for most of an hour, stirring every 15 minutes or so and to make sure its not boiling over.

Note the above recipe is low fat. You can "correct" this by serving it with crisp bread and butter. It is also mildly flavored. You can adjust that by the type of sausage you use, or with the addition of either a small dash of chili powder, hot sauce or more seasoned sausage such as Chorizo or Hot Italian Sausage. A splash of beer will do good things to this as well, since the hops are a favored soup seasoning from centuries past. If you object to the meat used, you can replace it with TVP or tofu or kidney beans or beef or chicken or even milder seafoods like mussels or bits of fish such as tilapia or catfish or the various kinds of cod or snapper. This soup would make a nice side dish to braised salmon, for instance, or slow cooked beef. Ox tail would do wonderful things to this soup, if you swapped the chicken broth for beef. You could also use marinated and chopped thin-cut beef usually used in those sizzling platters so briefly popular at Chevy's. A pinch of cumin would work nicely in this soup, as would fresh ground black pepper. If it ends up too spicy, you can usually cool this down with a dollop of sour cream when serving.

I plan to serve mine with sourdough bread and butter. This would also go well with fresh baked biscuits or with corn bread hot out of the frying pan, a recipe I shall be including soon.

Ironically, despite the intention of creating a soup suitable to warm you up on a cold winter day... its 70'F outside and very pleasant so I have the window open and just finished a lovely walk in the clear sunny Sierra air.

Bicycles

I'm a bicycle fan. I've been into them since I was 8 or so, when I first learned to ride without training wheels. I couldn't go very far, as my neighborhood wasn't that big. You could do laps to get tired, but it hardly amounted to much. There was no satisfaction. Later, when I upgraded from a basic banana seat bike to a 10 speed, the height of high technology back in the 70's, with handlebar brakes (front AND rear) rather than pedal brake (rear only), I started to get into the maintenance side of things. Dad showed me about tire pressures and how to true the wheels and how to adjust the brakes so they both worked well, and how to lube the bearings. It was good stuff for a pre-teen kid to get into.

When I got older, and braver, I started to bike out onto the actual road, carefully because everybody went at highway speeds (55 mph) and you could get killed out there. I learned to bike up a certain mountain road, and saw many things I had never seen before in my small neighborhood.

I eventually grew too large for the bike frame and upgraded to my Dad's fancy racing 12 speed. 12 gears, with clips-pedals. It was cutting edge. The frame was refined. The shifters were on the forward downtube. It felt like I was in "Breaking Away". "Refund. REFUND!!"

I had to raise the seat way up because my legs are a lot longer than my Dad's legs. I learned to take advantage of the twitchiness of the race bike. I learned to ride it in traffic to college. That was fun. Terrifying fun. In and out of traffic. There's a madness of youth, particularly where exercise is involved. I can totally understand how a 20-yo can kill himself at 140 mph on a motorcycle. Your reaction times are faster than everyone else. You breathe in and out and see EVERYTHING around you. A twitch here, a twist there, and you are an immortal, right up until you misjudge a corner and fly flat into a tree or off an embankment and find out whether there's a God or not, for real. I never did any of those things. I did pass cars on the right, in the bike lane, and get yelled at, either encouragement or "get off da rode!" from a more serious jackass once. Mostly encouragement. Passing cars at stoplights is hilarious, btw. Especially when you do it 3 times in a row.

In college I took this racing bike on tour, in Napa Valley from Calistoga down to Saint Helena, wine tasting a month before my 21st. I was such a rebel! I got a little tipsy on a 101'F day and biked back up Silverado trail in the heat shortly after running out of water. If you've never drunk wine, its very dehydrating. Delicious, but dehydrating. Noah drank wine. So did Sampson. So did a lot of biblical figures. God forgives a great deal for wine drinking. So did Bacchus, god of Wine. It was a one-day trip and I'd never done that before. I had a good time, and bonded with my new classmates in Geology. Good people. I still think so.

At the end of college, I put down my hard earned at Costco and bought myself a mountain bike for $209 including tax. 21 speeds. I couldn't believe it. A bike I could pedal up ANY hill, no matter how steep. It was an inch small vertically, but that just made it more agile. No suspension, mind you. A hard-tail steel frame. No bouncing forks. This is a SERIOUS bike for experienced riders only, none of this frou-frou suspension nonsense for beginners. Your body is the suspension: "What are your legs? Springs. Steel springs. What are they gonna do? Hurl me down the track!" Sorry, Gallipoli flashback.

I rode that bike all over a mountain with cobblestones, literal cobblestones that were quarried for the streets of San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake, all over its dirt roads and past lakes and though forest groves. I learned to dodge and jump those rocks. I learned to ride in wet and dry, mostly dry because it didn't have disc brakes. Now, being older and wiser, I would get a full suspension with front disc brakes. That bike was great on the gravel and dirt, though. I could hop a curb and not fall down. 26 inch wheels, knobby tires. Good times.

After moving up into the mountains, there's precious few places worth riding it. This really isn't a very parklike place despite all the trees. They're doing something about this, of course. The Immigrant Trail parkway will eventually offer some great riding opportunities. I am looking forward to the trails opening for that.

When I returned to the Bay Area I put slick tires on my mountain bike and curved handlebars. It became a commuter and I gained about 5 mph with the tires. It went from buzzy to smooth. I added a fender and rack too. A good call, though the rack deserves some bungie cords. The fender is nice though. Its elegant, how I did it, looks like it belongs there.

When I look at my bike today, I see a few areas for improvement but essentially I have something that looks good enough to buy. I'd love to add built in lights, with charging that only runs when I'm NOT pedaling so its not slowing me down and will mostly work when going downhill. That would be a cute trick, actually. I should look into making that happen. It is my love of bicycles which makes me think seriously about scooters.

I've only been on a scooter once and REALLY LIKED IT. It was the worst ever made too, an Indian Bajaj underbone scooter, with an upgraded 70cc gutless oil smoking engine and barely 2 horsepower, top speed of 28 mph wide open throttle. It was still wonderful fun. I can see something a bit better being popular here. 125cc, better suspension, able to pull up a hill and actually stop when you pull on the brake lever. One of those. There's a used bike shop, with no scooters. There's a new motorcycle and scooter shop for Honda over by the supermarket. I haven't dealt with them yet. Might buy from them, once I have a job and a motorcycle license. I can see the Piaggio Fly 150 being my kind of machine.

Enough to do the job, climb up the local roads and not fall over in a pothole. Reliable engine strong enough to pull a hill without you needing to hop off and push. A working headlight. Room under the seat to store your helmet. That kind of thing.

This is the step up from my old salad days of trying not to be run over on my 10 speed on that mountain road. All so I could turn around from the top and hit 50 mph down a really steep spot through a redwood grove. I was such a fool. There is a separate God for drunks and children, so they say. Might be something to that.

Kalifornia

I am born and raised in California. I'm from the northern part of the state, north of San Francisco. I grew up in the Wine Country, surrounded by cattle ranches, vineyards, and some dairies. This made for steak and red wine and good cheese as standards, locally. We were also close enough to the coast that fresh fish was really fresh, and our restaurants served such good food that the ratio of restaurants to people is the highest in the world. One for every 40 people, I believe it was. Most of my neighbors, growing up, went out to eat 3-4 nights a week. That's a huge percentage of your income, eating out. Good food too.

That level of good food and good wine has attracted local and foreign tourists. People come here to have a good time, see the sights, spend money, go home fat and happy. This is positive. California is all about the tourism and agriculture.

Those not contributing to either tourism or agriculture in some positive way aren't really helping the state prosper. We talk up our Tech industry, but its falling apart. I was just part of it, and I have seen it from the inside. We continue to lose jobs to India and China. Not because they make better products, because they really don't, but because they're cheaper and it offers bigger profits for investors, which seems to be all those big companies like Apple really care about. In that context, I can't say I'm surprised if they each announce they're leaving California. Jobs flee California as fast as they can go. This is not a technical golden land. Its just another place. A cold and rocky coastline with natural air conditioning is all well and good, but its not inherently smarter than anywhere else.

In the end, we're back to Tourism and Agriculture. That's the Real California. Beach Boys songs are just advertising jingles. Hamburgers remind you to visit Los Angeles. Disneyland is the happiest place on Earth. Movies got their start here, and drive the bold and beautiful to Hollywood, keeping restaurants staffed with actors and actresses waiting for a chance at their big shot.This is what California is about. Bringing in paying customers. The real California is about The Money.

Wizards' Chowder

I am making clam chowder right now. I just finished chopping up all the veggies and its simmering in clam broth. I learned this recipe from a pro chef, 30 years ago.

Start with bacon, 2 slices, cut into 1 inch pieces. Cook until the fat renders out.

Add onion, chopped reasonably small for max flavor. Add celery and carrot, cut thinner to cook faster. Stir, cover with a lid over low heat and sweat in the pot for 10 minutes. This maxes the flavor of the French Trinity for later.

Add red potatoes cut small, half inch cubes. The surface starch will thicken the broth as it cooks down. Add a stick of butter. This will cook in and flavor the thus far low-fat dish. Chowder isn't supposed to be low fat. Add a bottle of clam juice. Open 3 cans of chopped clams. Pour juice into pot. Set drained clams aside. This should be just enough liquid to cover the veggies.

Add marjoram sprigs (1-3) and thyme if you have some. Simmer with the lid on for 45 minutes or until potatoes soft. Don't salt until its simmered down. Pepper can be added then but taste first. The flavor will change during that time.

Add clams just before serving, as hot broth will cook them instantly. Adding them too soon will result in something that tastes like fishy chewing gum.That is called "fail" and should be avoided.

This is called Wizards' Chowder because it is subtle and slow to anger, and contains no milk or cream (half and half) so it can't curdle, thanks to the potato starch thickening it instead. And you're a wizard if you can produce this level of quality with the basic ingredients. Can you be a wizard like me?

Apple Pie

My elderly relatives came to visit my parental units, in whose sewing room I now abide thanks to a small Kenyan's fiscal policies destroying all hope. The relatives in question are both old and frail, being slightly older than my own parents. I remember them when they were younger, my current age, and loud and pompous, being raised in Orange County back when it was the bastion of Walt Disney and the Beach Boys and Ronald McDonald. They got to enjoy the peace and prosperity of Postwar America before it was ruined by the Baby Boomers.

My folks, knowing Dad's brother was coming, directed me to prepare a cheese plate. I was artistic. I'd already put champagne (Brut. How decadent at $4.50/btl!) in the fridge a couple days before so that was handled. Crackers on another plate. Some greek olives in the middle of the cheeses. Skip the veggies nobody eats. Prawns and sauce from the grocery store, still frozen but at least they were cooked and deveined.

The two parentals made an apple pie. I will not admit to helping much because I didn't. I hate making pie crust. I've got 37 years of cooking experience (including pies) and I still hate it. The balance requirements for the flour, moisture, and oil and then the sticky outcome and dealing with waxed paper are miserable to me. If I ever remarry my wife will have to be expert at pie crust because I hate dealing with it. Mom got some oil crust together, despite her own struggles with ingredients running out, etc. Dad managed the apples, possessing one of those amazing antique (thus it actually works) automatic peeler-slicers which operates by hand crank. They used the right apples. They didn't sugar it too much. I managed the baking and coated the top with cinnamon sugar, something I prepare in bulk and keep for various needs. I gave the pie another 5 minutes more than required so the crust was golden brown. All baked goods deserve a slight healthy tan.

It was heavenly. Just the right balance of sugar, the tartness of granny smith apples, the faint but not overwhelming flavors of cinnamon and cloves. No goo because the apples don't cook down, just soften.

Between the pie baking and the pie eating, there were cheeses and shrimps and the aforementioned Brut Champagne, then I chaufferred them all in my car to the local Italian restaurant for dinner. I should note that every town, no matter where in America above a minimum size, has a Chinese restaurant and an Italian restaurant. And unfortunate town also has a Mexican restaurant. Chinese food is something different and makes good takeout, usually operated by the local asian or mexican, in maximum cynicism by all parties and loaded with MSG. MSG isn't as bad for you as you think. Not compared to the aspirin you thoughtlessly consume, or the fake sugar in your diet cola. Those are real horrors of modern living. And that's saying nothing of being downstream of women on birth control pills, since those DON'T process out of water anymore than Ritalin or happy pills for the elderly. Small wonder the East Bay is nuts. Their water is massively contaminated. Anyway, towns get an Italian place because people can vary the clothing and go from family restaurant to date-night at the same place, and tips for italian waiters are much higher, and they serve wine with a nice high markup and the preps of the food, being higher in labor, also result in lower material costs and higher prices. This makes them profitable so they stick around. If you wanted to own a restaurant, that's the kind to own. If you wanted to invest in one, that's the kind to invest in. Just make sure there's fat bonuses for the managers and head chef so they're financially motivated to keep the patrons coming in.

The local Italian joint is in the old part of town, and their parking lot is on a narrow one-way street tucked into a courtyard that used to stable horses. I found good parking and we had a nice time. The parents split meatloaf. The uncle and aunt split a lasagne. I had chicken Marsala, which was tasty and I found a recipe to make it, including the additions I tasted in my sauce, which included cream, sugar, and possibly a hint of maple syrup of all things. I haven't had marsala wine so it might be from that. The chicken was nicely tenderized too, tasted like Butterball solution. This dish would work even better with turkey, btw. The mushroom and wine flavors and fats would help many game meats to be delicious. It should be bird though. Might be able to work this trick on pork or veal or venison however. The tenderization trick will need to be properly applied, possibly with ground papaya seeds. My dish also included garlic mashed potatoes, which is NOT traditional but excellent companion to the mushrooms and steamed veggies. I really enjoyed it and have leftovers for later today.

My feelings about cooking are kinda like being in a Hong Kong Martial Arts picture. I've been learning and mastering cooking since I was 4 years old. Its a lifelong thing, so intrinsic to myself I don't even think about it like a hobby. Its a big part of me. My former coworkers doubted this, as most of them were not competent people at living, most living with their parents or overly specialized or reliant on a spouse or future spouse or parent to do all their cooking. I'm not Asian so some of the gaps between our cultures are huge. Perhaps they just don't talk about it. Whatever the reason, I rarely witnessed any of my coworkers bringing in food that was hand-made. Mostly they brought fast food or leftovers from restaurants. Perhaps eating junk restaurant food was their dream? They certainly seemed to spend the bulk of their paychecks on that and Smartphone data plans. And trips to Vegas, apparently. Vegas is not for me. I would go there if I were on the way to the Sky Islands north of town. Those interest me, but I've got the whole Sierras for that so its not actually that important. Someday I'll be cured and I can backpack the Pacific Crest Trail to celebrate.

After the feasting, the skies cleared and half a moon stared down. There was a cold wind and I'm glad I retrieved my winter coat and my undershirts. This morning, we have heavy gusting winds, rain, and snow levels are just a mile up the hill, and maybe 500-1000 feet up. Its a proper winter storm. Exactly the sort of thing you prepare for with hearty foods. And pie.

Roast Beef

Yesterday, owing to the Parental Units (who are both quite elderly) going out for a wild night of partying with other elderly folk until the wee hours of the evening (9:05 PM, gasp!), I opted to bake a pot roast of beef in their oven. It was awesome. I have a lot of practice with this sort of thing so I'll keep it short. 

3 lbs sirloin roast.
Marinade in Worchestershire (wooster!) sauce overnight.
Chop roughly the following: red potatoes (2), onions (2), stalk of celery, carrot (1). Add a dash of olive oil to the bottom of a big cast iron pan or dutch oven. Place beef on top so sauce drippings go onto veggies and flavor them. Place into 350'F oven and bake for around 50 minutes/lbs, or in this case about 2.5 hours or until meat thermometer shows beef is done. Not rare, not medium rare. Done. Why? Because in a chunk of meat like this, medium rare will be rare and largely inedible and capable of generating food poisoning if eaten later.

Why so few veggies? Because they only really taste good hot the first time. Reheating pot roast veggies tends to just leave you with yucky mush and you push that around the plate till you toss it. Kinda like cold french fries. Nothing you do will make those good again. I don't even recommend these for soup, since the Wooster sauce isn't often a good one for soups other than pumpkin/squash cream soup.

The difference between the above mostly-dry roast and a full on pot roast is whether you add a couple cups of water or beef stock to the pot or not. Water or stock will cause the meat to wet-cook and will cook faster, possibly going tough unless cooked extra long to make up for it. Omit the liquid and the dry roast will take a bit longer due to lack of steam but the beef flavor will be more intense and the veggies risk burning a bit. They won't be soft, at least.

Serve the above with a loaf of brown and serve sourdough (10 minutes in the same oven works fine for a crisp crust and hot interior. Serve with butter). Also serve with either a Zinfandel or a better Cabernet Sauvignon. Cheap cab is not very good. Cheap zin is often better flavor with beef so if you're on a budget, go with the Zin. If you have even more money, a good Pinot Noir would work well, or you could go with merlot, which tends to be a bit bland, imho. Don't bother with any of these if you're outside California right now. All the wine on sale was carried in uninsulated trucks so its gotten too hot and the esters were destroyed, ruined, cooked, burnt is the proper industry term. Those wines are worthless for anything but coq au vin or lapine au vin. Don't drink them. In spring, the trucks will be shipping cool wines that aren't ruined so you can safely buy again. I'm sorry if you don't like that. I was in a position to know.

I also recommend dark beers for this kind of food. I'm fond of stout, ale, and porter, which is a combination of the two. Lager is good for hot dogs or burgers or ribs, but roast beef is more flavorful so stronger beers are okay, and enhance the flavor of the beef.

If my relatives weren't visiting in a couple hours I'd be buying ingredients to make Clam Chowder, as rains are coming and the high today is 55'F, at most. Its good soup weather. And weather for sweaters and thick socks. Doesn't that make you want chowder?

A Governor's Job

Yesterday I went up to Donner Pass for a hike.

Interstate 80 goes through Donner Pass, one of the higher passes in the Sierras. Freeway traffic lumbers up the grades and then races down the far side at 75 mph.

To the East, quite a ways off, is Reno. In the West, quite a ways off, is Sacramento. The Sierra themselves are around 70 miles wide and hundreds of miles long. They are an effective wall that divides California from the Great Basin states (Nevada, Idaho, Wyoming, eastern Oregon, and Utah). The mountains stop the rains from falling once they pass the crest since the descending air warms on the way down, which usually stops precipitation. It's very obvious by the lack of trees as you move East from Donner Pass.

One of the problems with California is that you have to have a speedy freeway capable car to get anywhere in this state. When the Interstate Highway System was built under Eisenhower, fresh from leading WW2's victory over Hitler's Nazi Germany and Tojo's Japan, Imminent Domain took precedence over the previous roads, many of them just cut off in favor of the interstate system being built. American Autobahns, really, based on the Nazi ones. They don't talk about THAT but they should. The new system was fast and let easy motoring become the dominant culture in America, enabling White Flight away from the ruined urban cores full of poor black people for clean white suburbs with onramps and freeways to rush you past those ruins and right to your office. Take that, Liberalism! If you were right, there would be no White Flight. Obviously, you were wrong.
Google Maps of Kingvale, CA including Hwy 40
But there was a catch. The new roads often orphaned the older highways, when new bridges for the freeway system left dead ends for the prior roads, as there was either no funding or no physical ROOM to build a replacement.
Hwy 40 Just Ends Here
In the Sierras, there was an old Donner Pass road called Hwy 40, which goes quite a ways from Sacramento to the East coast, but in the Sierras only in fits and starts. A governor with some sense of responsibility would petition the federal govt for funds to pay for reconnecting these old roads. Why bother? Because Freeways have minimum speeds. People on Bicycles or scooters or slow cars are not allowed there. It would be nice if Hwy 40 were fully connected up such that an ambitious bicyclist or slightly less ambitious Scooterist could climb the pass without ever setting tire (or foot) on the Freeway, just putter along at 20-35 mph on old Highway 40. The Yuba River flows alongside, tittering birds and whistling pines. Its really lovely this time of year. The top of Donner Pass for Highway 40 runs South a mile or two, past a number of ski resorts like Sugar Bowl and a series of alpine meadows and shallow lakes that freeze solid in the winter. These are worth seeing in Fall, because the alders are golden this time of year and its stunning.

Donner Pass Slideshow Fall 2012

A responsible governor would insure that the streams are planted with trout, that the highways connect at a lower speed, that the tourists have reason to come to the mountains and spend their money rather than race past to drop coins in One Armed Bandits in Reno. There are ways to do this without bankrupting the state, and cutting funds to inner city monsters is a good place to start. Think harder about California's real industries: agriculture and tourism. That's what matters, and what needs to be encouraged. Filmmakers might make more movies here if it were still practical in the high country instead of a place you rush through to get somewhere else. Making it practical means returning the slow roads. As Governor, this is one of your jobs. Use the bully pulpit and restore our parks to at least as good as they were in the 1970's. That's not so much to ask.

The Trouble with Presidents

The Presidential Debate is on tonight. Both candidates are saying they did this or did that or will do this or will do that. Know what? Neither has the authority to do a fraction of what they're claiming. Most is done by Congress. All they can do is sign it into law, likely MONTHS later. They're taking credit for things done by other people. The little Kenyan keeps blathering about renewable energy, the same day that A123 battery company declared bankruptcy. The same battery company that was supposed to supply batteries for the Chevy Volt and free America from the Tyranny of Oil. So much for that. Romney and Obama are both full of crap about energy, but they might not know it. You can throw as much money at it as you want, but the outcome is this: we got the easy oil already. Only the expensive and lousy stuff is left. Their advisors don't tell them that.

This is how they think:

America is largely ignorant of the problems with Fossil Fuels. It runs out. It is running out. It has been running out since 1970, when America had to import it. Since 1980, OPEC has been consistently lying about their reserves. They're in the last 7% now, not the last 49% like they claim. They're a couple or three years away from shutdown, thus the ever rising price of oil and production cuts enable them to keep the game going. That's the reality. Its not about "speculators". That's a Con.

Its a nice claim to think that more drilling and more processing of existing energy sources in the Domestic USA will help us get free from foreign oil. Good luck. Renewables aren't easy. They're expensive. Very expensive. They're time consuming and require maintenance or rare earth elements to work, and they're worth stealing or risk breakage. There's good reason they aren't popular already. If they were good, they'd have been in use since 1970. Not so much. Most of the Altamont Wind Turbines are down at any given time. I've driven the pass many times. That's the ugly truth. There's a lot that can go wrong with them, and frequently DOES.

Someday, if science and chemistry allows, there may be a battery that everyone can have and is cheap to make and contains no rare earth elements. That will solve the energy crisis, because it will effectively replace a tank of gasoline. Until this magical battery is invented, when the oil runs out, we're walking. Smart people will bicycle. In time we'll recover far enough to have scooters. But that's about as good as it gets. Pedal into the future. You don't get a choice. Not really. Presidents don't get votes by telling us to suck it up. They get votes telling us what we want to hear: that lying about throwing money at oil drilling and coal will fix it, will enable us to keep Easy Motoring well into the future. That life won't change anymore. Sorry. It just not that easy. I hope you look good in spandex bicycle clothes. I don't.

The Case For and Against Biotechnology Today

In the long run, there are two remaining technologies yet to mature. One is high energy quantum physics. The other is biotechnology. Biotechnology is the science of creating, modifying, and controlling DNA. We already have the ability to synthesize modest DNA strands. Unfortunately, we don't know what they do without testing. Predictive analysis is not there yet.

33,000 years ago, humans had domesticated the wolf into the dog by selective breeding of the tamer ones away from the feral (rip your face off and eat you) wolves. They've been our animal partners of the hunting camp ever since. They helped us guard our herds of goats and sheep and cattle, which we ALSO domesticated by selective breeding. Selective breeding is a kind of primitive but effective DNA engineering. When someone complains about bioengineered food being unlabelled, they'd better know we've been doing it since the Stone age.

10,300 years ago Humans found a wild grass in Southern Turkey and Northern Syria and spent several generations of selective breeding to create the most important cereal grain: wheat. In a human lifetime crop yields massively increased and agriculture with stable housing changed human life forever. For the first time we could stay in one place and have more than enough to eat. We could have crafts and increasingly complex societies. We developed our first known real civilization, Ur, thanks to Wheat created by Selective Breeding techniques and the use of civil engineering to form aqueducts and irrigation in what is now Iraq.

200 years ago, Charles Darwin took what he'd personally observed in Pigeon breeding and wrote about it, creating the hypothesis (later Theory of) Evolution. Darwin was a devoutly religious man and believed God created Evolution so his creation could change, so life would flourish everywhere. Simultaneously, the foundations of Geology were being worked out. Many sciences were moving from occult imaginings to rational science in this period of Enlightenment, a period which is technically still going on today.

Modern Biotechnology is all about the testing of nearly random DNA strands to see what they do. We don't yet have the ability to predict the exact consequence of expression via DNA, RNA, and various Proteins on different types of Cells in Human or Animal subjects/patients. This is unfortunate, however science moves forward on documented failures and successes. The trouble is, we happen to be in a contracting energy economy, with major transition ongoing. Our civilization is built on Cheap Energy, and Cheap is being replaced by Expensive. This hitch in our git-along means we don't have the resources for high paying basic science, such as that required to move Biotechnology forward. The industry is contracting until energy gets cheap enough that Basic Science, a luxury in the best of times, can be paid for again. This is a fundamental problem.

There's currently money for biotech to make renewable energy. It is being done, too. There are serious companies working with algae that produce biodiesel (fuel) as a waste product. The best ones use closed systems so production rates can be controlled rather than suffer from the typical exponential function problem. This directly helps with the Cheap Energy problem. The trouble is the best current method costs $33/gal for biodiesel. That's not Cheap Energy.

There's money for biotech to cure cancer and certain high dollar value diseases, but only if payment for said cures is sufficient to both cover costs of R&D AND big profits. Orphan drugs are worthless to the industry. So really, there isn't much money for this. This is a Luxury. Dead people have Heirs and Foundations to pay research scientists. Not curing cancer pays better than curing it.

There's money for biotech to modify crops to deal with crop diseases like Wheat Rust and the various molds that attack grain crops. There's money to create vaccines to protect chickens (worlds most popular source of protein) from avian flu. There's money to decrease dependency on external soil amendments to crops and increase their crop yield. Reducing crop costs means crops are cheaper to produce and thus sell for less money. Super-rice, super-soybeans, nitrogen fixing nodule corn, for example. Someday there will be money to recover Phosphorus from the sea bottom below the Mississippi alluvial fan. Bio-organisms to grab plastic particles out of the sea water and remove them from the food chain, stick them together and drop to the sea bottom where they stop harming the sea life. There's money in improving fish immune systems to protect them from parasites so they can be domesticated and grown for hungry city markets and restaurants by offshore barge fish farms. Biotech is already doing these things because there's money to pay for it, and big agriculture thinks beyond tomorrow or next week. They're serious businessmen with plans to stay in business year after year. Big Agriculture is the real future of Biotechnology.

A pity that the Greek and Spanish financial crises are killing investment in Luxury science like basic research in Biotech. Contraction in industries happens. Its part of the ebb and flow of economics. Biotech will recover, but the current crop of scientists are going to have to adapt their thinking to PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS over basic science, and learn to care about that over all else. They can no longer be satisfied with the slow pace of constant failure, and focus on results that pay dividends. This is where Biotech workers and researchers need to focus, and why their industry is collapsing.

Dear Honda

Honda Motor Company started out under a man who loved engines. Soichiro Honda was a brilliant and effusive man, apparently, and under his leadership Honda Motor Company grew from a motorized bicycle company to a world leading car company known for its quality and reliability.

Honda built the Cub and SuperCub bikes, the most popular single model of motorized transportation on Earth. They were cheap and you didn't have to pedal and the wheels were big enough to deal with crappy dirt roads across Asia. The shields kept the mud off.

Honda's next big achievement was a twin cylinder 360cc 4-stroke engine which gave them a modest motorcycle. Nothing fancy, but it worked most of the time.

Then Honda broke new ground and crushed Triumph's dominating 3-cylinder (triple) with an ultra-reliable inline 4-cylinder that became the new standard for the motorcycle industry, once they upgraded displacement to 750cc.

These are great things. That engine led to development of better engines for their small cars division, which eventually lead to the CVCC, the Civic. Later, the Honda Accord was designed on a similar inline-4 engine and added a couple more doors so it was a proper Sedan. A car so successful that Detroit is now a Post-Apocalyptic Ruin worthy of zombie flicks and First Person Shooter games, only with real bullets and a really high murder rate. Honda has flourished by being reliable, always starting, and meeting their market's needs.

Sadly, with his passing, their Motorcycle branch has drifted off, lost touch with riders. Almost like they're not trying anymore. Recently, last year, a new engine came out to replace the venerable 230 cc air cooled used for its cheapest bikes, the Rebel and Enduro.

The new 250cc EFI is a nice modular engine and they put it in their Ninja-competitor, the CBR250R. Its reviewed well, and its cheap, about $4500 with ABS. Its a good starter bike that's freeway capable and 75 mpg, with good available torque thanks to the single cylinder engine.

They have finally gotten around to putting it in the Enduro. The older 230cc was notoriously anemic and unable to do much at all, according to posts I've read about it from owners. Considering you can buy a Kawasaki KLR-650 with LOTS of torque and plenty of suspension for around $4K new, why bother with the old Honda? So I'm glad they've gone and updated this.

Here's where Honda is getting it wrong, however. They offer a few models of scooter for about double what they're worth. The Metropolitan is cute, but its Useless outside the flatlands of Davis or Sacramento. California has HILLS. Americans aren't going to pay $2K for a 49cc that isn't a Vespa. I'm sorry, we just won't. Its not transportation if it can't pull a hill at 35 mph. You (Honda) need to CUT  YOUR PRICES and bring over the better bikes. The Metropolitan with front disc brakes and a 110cc EFI engine? That would be interesting, and useful. That same bike with slightly bigger wheels (12"), same vintage styling (chrome pretty), but the 125cc EFI from the PCX? That would sell.

Bring over the EFI Supercub you're selling everywhere but here. You can compete legitimately with Vespa. And your parts are easier to get because its a quick and frequent trip across the Pacific. Load a crate on a containership bound for Alameda or Benecia. You can do it! California can't really use a 49cc bike. We need minimum 110cc. And that needs to be around $600 out the door. I know those bikes cost around $150 to make. Take a small cut in the profits and make it on volume. This is an EASY DECISION. The new Elite you want $3K for? That would sell at $1500. Remember how much gas you can buy for $1500. The scooter, with all its discomforts, needs to be a legitimate argument for fuel economy vs actual volume of gasoline.

The Ruckus? With only 49cc available what was the point? Put a 125cc EFI from the PCX in there so it can climb a hill. Mountain people want to use those. Try competing with Yamaha's Zuma directly instead of giving up. Did any of your engineers point that out? If they did, promote them and give them a raise. Yes Men kill companies dead. Promote your No-Men. They tend to be smarter and more courageous.

The Pacific Coast 800 was a legendary machine. There are blogs of amazing trips on those. The 800cc is a proper long running engine. What made it good was reliability and carrying capacity, built in luggage.

Your Silverwing is a good machine, but it costs as much as a small car. What was the thought process there? Does anyone even buy that when they could get a proper cruiser or highway bike? Drop the price by half and you'll be competing with the better Vespas for the Camry/Accord drivers crowd. Include the luggage free. Make it easy to carry the groceries home, or the laptop to work. A place to store a full face helmet in grownup American head size.

Now, the SH150i is a good idea priced out of the market. It's a scooter. At $4500 that's $2500 too much for what it is. For that kind of money, what's stopping you from putting the new 250cc EFI into an updated frame, like the SH150i so the engine is on the frame, it retains automatic transmission and the improved suspension, and sell it for $3400 so it competes with the Aprilia Sportcity 250. Meet your market. People with money and wanting comfort would consider that. Cut the price of the existing SH150i to $2000 and it would sell. You can put more Japanese people to work building that. It would be a viable scooter for SF Bay Area, climb those hills.

The more bikes on the road, the more people want to buy them and watch for them so the accident rate drops. The reason I'm so fussy about pricing of scooters is twofold.

1. Two men can lift a parked scooter into the back of a pickup truck and drive off with it. Stealing a scooter is going to be COMMON. Ergo, it has to be cheap to replace, and thus lowering its value for theft.

2. They're cheaper EVERYWHERE else, in every country but here. The same model in Mexico is a few hundred bucks, not a few thousand. I feel insulted. Scooters sold in America aren't better quality. We don't get parts more easily. They aren't fancier. That's just ripoff pricing.

People are poor in America. All our jobs went to China and India. Half of college graduates are unemployed and living with their parents. It used to be NONE. People are seriously considering parking their car and riding out in the weather, sacrificing safety for fuel costs. They won't buy it unless its cheap enough to make sense. And you can buy a lot of gas for the average $3K scooter. A $500 scooter is a better argument. A $1000 scooter with a better engine (125cc) makes way more sense.

Finally, you (Honda) need to seriously offer more of your models here. Give us the new SuperCub, with the Elite's 108cc EFI engine. Nobody sells that anymore. The Symba wasn't that great and is out of business here anyway. The EFI version you've got would be dandy for $1100. Can't cost more than $160 to make. The rest is shipping and profits. Keep the greed modest and your business will grow. Don't you want more customers?

Give us the updated 400SS. Its a beautiful bike but it needs a better engine than that 1970's air-head with the sloppy rings and tolerances. It doesn't need to be a torque monster. A 400 or 500cc would be fine with a discreet radiator and fake water/air cooling jacket. Harley did that. Fix the engine so it always starts instead of being worthy of multiple YouTube videos about starting it. Keep the 1960s looks of a standard UJM (Universal Japanese Motorcycle). Kawasaki couldn't sell their W650 because they hardly shipped any over and they priced it high compared to Harley. Misread their market. If Kawasaki had sold that for $5500 instead of $9600 it would have gained fans with cash to spend. Do better. The 400SS is beautiful in black with a little chrome. I've seen the videos once it was started. It would SELL as the big brother of the Rebel. Its enough for a finisher bike. Offer some performance parts so there's an upgrade path people would invest in. That gains you some additional profits. This is EASY STUFF. Don't your Marketing people tell you this?

Give us the Honda Wave 125cc, with 3-4 inches of suspension travel so it will work on our crappy roads. Sell it for scooter money, say $1800 and they'll sell well. The entire Midwest and Mountain region would look at that seriously as a rural vehicle and kid-college commuter. Compete with the other bikes in its class like the Sachs MadAss 125. Its a better and more refined version of the SuperCub. I know there's a ton of aftermarket parts. You could be selling those here, making MONEY from those parts. Authorized aftermarket gives you a percentage at your Dealerships. Train your Honda Mechanics at the car dealerships on bikes. One car bay is enough space for 3 bike repair stations. It adds up.

Put the 250cc EFI engine in  your Rebel and offer a Standard instead of just a starter-Cruiser. Call it the Hipster, if you want to be really coy. There are people buying up the old Honda 360 twins and fixing a few things, selling them used for $3K to hipsters in SF and San Jose.

That's a MARKET to exploit. Offer them a UJM Standard with the 250 EFI and you'll sell thousands a year on the West Coast alone. Compete with the Suzuki TU250X. They're very similar bikes otherwise. The TU has great reviews and people are enthusiastic because it does what the old UJM standard was supposed to do: it works. Its easy to ride. It doesn't make your behind ache. Your marketing idiots (please seppuku!) may be telling you that there's no market in America. They're wrong. There are millions of us adapting to higher unemployment, to part time jobs, to lower pay, to higher education debt. We're all getting poorer.

That little 250 EFI engine would make a good mini-truck motor, and if you have a dealer give a test ride to Western state governors (Washington, Idaho, Nevada, Oregon) you might be able to convince them to authorize their legal use on roads under Emergency Measures to deal with the ongoing fuel crisis. I think with those for repairmen and city services fleets there's potentially a lot of profits on volume and service contracts. Maybe that seems outside the scope of a car company, but when hasn't the Honda Civic been a bone of contention for the Big 3 of Detroit? If nothing else, a concept car with a small engine and ultralight materials would get people THINKING about it. If you build the engines or assemble the cars in America, it gets around the "made in America" requirement many cities and states have. You're already doing that with the Accord and Civic.

And tell those nice people at the Car branch to release the Diesel Accord already. If you wait too long, everyone will just buy the VW Jetta or Audi or Subaru Diesel and then where will you be? SOL. (sh17 outta Luck). Stop making excuses and start remembering what Soichiro said: You meet the nicest people riding on a Honda.


Sincerely,
The Heretic
Honda Car Owner

Transport Ladder

Most of you own cars and drive them. Here in the PRK (People's Republik of Kalifornia), cheap gasoline is $4.50/gal. That's the cheap stuff, too. The oil is running out, and people are cutting expenses like restaurants and trips to the movies, so restaurants and movie theaters are both going under. People are focusing on the simple and necessary. Simple is good.

At some point, the cost of gasoline will be so high that you (YOU!) will have to decide whether to move closer to your job or to get a job closer to where you live, and deal with either set of consequences. Many people are delaying that decision any way they can, including switching from a fuel-hungry SUV to a compact car, or going to carpool or public transit. I have found public transit to be very inconvenient, to the point of costing a couple hours each direction, which works out to 3-4 hours of lost wages per day compared to driving. Are you really saving that much gasoline compared to slower but more efficient personal transport? A used Geo Metro is a miserable car that gets around 45 mpg. It keeps the rain off.

What if that's not good enough, if the roads between you and the job are so bad the Metro won't do it? Well, there's Enduro motorcycles, with knobby tires and long travel suspensions. Long travel means how much the wheels go up and down to absorb bumps. If your roads are still paved, but you can see in the future they won't be, say 2-5 years from now, perhaps your answer is Geo Metro now, Enduro motorcycle in the future. In 2-5 years, what will gasoline cost?

You and I, here in the USA, are looking at a sort of energy apocalypse. It's not the end of the world, per se, just very unpleasant circumstances. Fuel is merely $4.50/gal now. It will be more in time. Regardless of who wins the presidential election in the coming weeks, gasoline prices will keep rising. If you lose your job, or the business goes under because too many people can't adjust to fuel prices rising too fast or it just stops making sense to work there when you're spending your whole paycheck on fuel to get there, well... things change in bigger ways, not smaller ones. At some point, deliveries to your local station drop off because people are buying less fuel because they have less money to buy fuel with, and they're working closer to home because commuting costs too much to afford anymore. That's a big change. At some point, gas stations will get deliveries then be out for the next 5-10 days. It has happened before, in the 1970's thanks to OPEC embargos.

So someday you'll find yourself with a 5-10 mile commute to your local minimum wage job and no gasoline for your Geo Metro. Hop on a bicycle. You have a bicycle right? I recently bought a full suspension mountain bike at a garage sale for $35. Turned out it was too small for me, but I expect I'll find something like it my size eventually at another sale. These things turn up. The bike was only $100 new, made for a teenager. The front shocks were actually just springs and pistons, not real shock absorbers. It did the job for bumps well enough, and should be less maintenance than a real suspension would. Imagine that for yourself. You really get your heart pumping riding a bike 5-10 miles. If it doesn't kill you, you'll get stronger and healthier, though if your job is physical labor it may be somewhat painful to get through then have to bike home another 5-10 miles.

This is where the scooter comes in. A 49cc 2-stroke scooter is around 3-6 HP, gets 100 mpg or so, and takes about 5 minutes to warm up. With a fully automatic (CVT) transmission, it comes with lights and turn signals, no pedals for you. No hard breathing required, though the engine is loud. Its twist and go throttle. Takes 5 minutes to learn to use one if you've ever ridden a bicycle. All of them are made in China, so don't get up in arms about Italian ones being better. They're all the same. The difference is you pay for warranty coverage with the Italian ones, and name brand markup. I can't stomach paying $4500 for a Vespa, no matter how cute they are. They're wrapped in plastic, not steel. They won't last any more than a Kymco (Taiwan) or other off-brand model.

The Kymco Agility 125 is the best deal in scooters today. 125cc will climb hills and $1900 (at the time of this writing) is a good price for a 4-stroke that's CARB (California Air Resources Board) legal.

Underbones based on upgraded and improved versions of the Honda Supercub sadly aren't sold in the PRK. You can get the Sachs MadAss 125cc from Germany for $3500 in a crate, of course. This is it here:

The big catch with a scooter is their suspensions handle around 2 inches of bump, and that's it. 3 inches you gotta pay another grand for. How big are your pot holes? Will a scooter throw you in traffic if you fail to dodge a pothole? This is worth thinking hard about. Because there's a better way.

A proper small bore motorcycle, in the 250cc range, come in around $1200-2000 used. It has probably been laid down, so will have scratches on the side. Maybe the plastic fairing (aerodynamics) will be cracked.

Ninja 250cc models are used for learning on. They get 70 mpg and will go up to 100 mph on the freeway if pushed. They've been around 25 years so the aftermarket parts are cheap and common. They will climb every mountain and most have 6 speeds and very good brakes. And they have 3-5 inches of bump absorption. You still want to dodge the holes, but the brakes on the bike are very good and the tires last better than any scooter.
Ninja 250 Review A little Ninja will get you through your commute, in leathers and full face helmet, in reasonable time. Don't take wild chances, and remember the combined tire contact patch is smaller than one tire of the Metro.

Just to put things into perspective. The Geo Metro is much more comfortable in the rain and snow, and while carpooling is a hassle, the combined 80 mpg (40 mpg x 2 people) with two people in the car is better than the solo 70 mpg of the bike. The Metro has a radio, but the bike has the ability to LEAN. Go with your pleasure there. Or your comfort. Its your choice.The Metro won't get you hot chix but it will probably get to you to work dry and safe.

I suspect we'll each find ourselves looking at our bicycles with a grimace someday in the next couple years, our former commute vehicle empty of gasoline and abandoned in the driveway under a tarp, dreaming of the day we get our scooter because it means we don't have to pedal to work and arrive exhausted.

You can, of course, buy a scooter now and learn to ride it. Get a job locally now, and save money on your commute immediately. You can even get in shape enough to not mind arriving tired on your bicycle. You can join the future. Or  you can continue commuting by car/SUV however far as long as you can and pay off those lingering debts before they become the defining feature of your life.