Sailing on High Mountain Lakes

Decades ago I was a boy scout. We didn't have sex, as we were GOOD BOYS, so there was no debate about Gay boy scouts. This was before it came out that the founder was a Paedophile, btw. Despite that, as GOOD BOYS we camped and hiked and whittled wood with pocket knives. Nobody got stabbed. We had hatchets and built fires that didn't go out of control because we knew how to put them out properly. We could pitch a tent, and that was a thing you slept inside because we were GOOD BOYS, not inner city rape gangs. I went to several different summer camps, but the one I liked best was about 25 miles from here, up off Highway 20.

Chubb Lake had little sailboats to learn how to sail in, called a Laser. I got my merit badge in a Laser, which is a type of small 12 foot long sailboat in that little lake. I learned today that the Laser is an actual Olympic qualified boat. How cool is that? The secret to making a sailboat work is they are dirt slow and won't sink even if you flip them over. You have to get them half on their side to get much speed, and that's barely 18-20 mph. It feels faster because you're at an angle.

About a mile to the northwest is Spaulding Lake, which is considerably larger in a valley surrounded by granite, pine trees, and stunning views. Its below I-80, with its access off of Highway 20. The power plant there provides light and A/C power here, as well as primary water supply.

Lake Spaulding has some serious potential for lake sailing. And fishing. Its above most of the gold mining so there's no poisonous Mercury in the water. You can eat the fish in there. So it is worth catching them. There should be plenty of trout. You sail to a good spot, drop a line over and see if you get a bite. I like Bass, and Trout. Sailboats, small ones, are light weight. Some can be put on your car roof, they are so light. The Pico is interesting that way, but I'd want to try one before I bought one. They're about $3K new. The Pico doesn't require a trailer like the full sized Laser sailboat does. As I'm likely to use it solo, having something I can lift by myself is important.

In the wide area that isn't exactly flat on the plateau around Truckee, which is an old logging town north of Lake Tahoe and is a major ski resort spot. Lots of places to stay. It is lovely there in the summer. I would live there, in the summer, in a trailer. The weather is really nice. There are several lakes around it, some of them natural. All of them are water supply for Reno, eventually. Donner Lake is carved by the glaciers off of Donner Pass. It was the source of ice blocks put on an express train for ice boxes in San Francisco and Sacramento, 100 years ago. The sawdust used to store the ice until summer poisoned the ground and you can still find it next to the rail yard east of Truckee's downtown.

Donner Lake is damned cold. Despite this, people use it for boating. Its very popular with skidoos and those stand up paddle boarders, none of whom look to be having much fun. It is about half a mile across and around 3 miles long. And just above freezing in the summertime. In the winter it often gets feet of ice. I hike a few miles west of the lake, up on the Pass itself. The road down (Old Hwy 40) is getting used for an Acura commercial these days. It is very scenic, and narrow, and slow, so is used by tourists. Near the top there's several ski resorts, including Sugar Bowl and Boreal and Soda Springs, and in the summer there's a fair bit of rock climbing there on the granite. It is steep and gives reliable handholds. The granite doesn't break off that frequently.

Scotts Flat: a couple miles across. 

Closer to home, and the place I'd likely use a small sailboat the most, is a lake contaminated with Mercury so don't eat the fish, but has a couple convenient boat ramps and an official Yacht Club. One that shares membership with the official ones like in San Francisco. Which only matters if you can keep it from being stolen. So not so valuable. Not as useful as being able to put your boat on the roof of your car, and lift it down solo. I can see some value there. Its about a mile across and a couple miles long. I'm currently leaning towards the Pico as a first boat due to convenience and storage options, and because what I really liked about the Laser was a light breeze would lift it up on its side and it FELT fast, even if it wasn't.

They look so cold. The lake waters are very chilly here, but mostly at the higher elevations. Down here they get a couple feet of warmth. So yeah, possible recreation there. If I decide I am willing to deal with a trailer, then the right answer is probably a Laser Bahia, as those are about 400 pounds and thus light to tow, and probably would store in the garage near the ceiling. Or under the house, if two people carried it there. Not as convenient as a baby boat. But able to actually carry people, and can use a motor, and even oars if need be. Nothing to dislike there. Some of the lakes worth fishing are too narrow and deep to visit without simple oars. Even after the big rains come this fall and refill all the lakes. Learning about boats and the local lakes is interesting. I'm not sure I will really throw any money at this, but at least I know.

Smoke blew in last night, starting at 10 PM. Got strong and was heavy by this morning. Didn't really blow away until noon, at which point it was hot again. So kinda miserable itchy night followed by a smoky hot morning. It finally blew away enough we could air out the house, when it was 85'F outside, and required a good hour for the stench to go. I managed my walk then, though I got sweaty in the process. Now we're back with A/C again and its 89'F outside. I hope that they get the fire out in the next couple days, but they are predicting 4 more days of this. Sigh. The local news is referring to You Bet and Red Dog as towns, but they're just roads that lead past old mining sites with no people, no buildings, no foundations. Nothing by mine scars. This is where they did hydraulic mining with fire hoses. This is where it was banned in the USA. Looks like most of the fire is out, from the pictures they just showed on the live news out of Sacramento.

Improving On Top Gear Mistakes

Part of the charm of Top Gear, which won so many fans, is they commit many yahoo-level mistakes. Bubba type mistakes. The kind that result in hilarious darwin awards. As Top Gear are serious car enthusiasts, who pull no punches when a car sucks, and wax rhapsodic when they are good, it is often a good idea to see them get reviewed. If you believe in your vehicle, you may get a lot of sales. The Ford Fiesta and Focus both got very popular due to Jeremy Clarkson liking them. There was a chase through a shopping mall. And a marine amphibious landing on a beach.

Clarkson, May and Hammond have participated in some funny contests where they buy and modify a vehicle to some task they've been set by the producers. They hate trailers (what they call Caravans) and slow RVs so they built fast RVs out of cars they've modified. And it might have been okay to work if they hadn't opted to utterly mock the entire thing. Blessed comedy that it was.

Pictured is clarkson's 3-story tower on wheels. A terrible idea, but it does make a comedic point about the absurdity of some RVs being too tall. Hammond's was the most realistic, yet fails utterly because it was mocking expansion panels (slideouts) taken to extreme. May's was too small, but he did make the point that there is such a thing as too much minimalism. May's would have worked better with some curtains, and Hammonds with a couple tent pop outs for his bed rather than panels that fell down. None of these was a truck camper, after all, which would have been perfectly fine, and able to move at proper traffic speed without any trouble. Showing one of those would have proven their point that there is an RV type they don't object to.

In later series, such as the Africa challenge they do a variation of minimalist RV conversion, turning their station wagons into RVs rather than stay in really horrible African hotels. Its fairly reasonable considering how little space they have to work with. They do this sleeping conversion again with big trucks for the Burma special. They'd gotten better at it by that point, though Hammond would have been well served to remove about 4 feet of metal railing and about 1500 pounds of dead weight from his truck. It would have helped with the speed too. Poor May didn't realize how fragile his truck was, and while the crane was really important later, he needed to fix up the suspension and transmission more than it needed to be painted yellow. Live and learn.

They once got told to build amphibious cars and then cross 2 miles of water on a reservoir. That doesn't sound that hard, but they forgot that you still have to cool an engine, as well as get a metal car to float on water. Floating works by displacement, of the density of the object in the water displacing enough water that the object weighs less than the water that was there. This is why things can sink in the Sargasso Sea (Bermuda Triangle). Top Gear forgot that just because you welded some doors shut, or sprayed foam in, you don't necessarily displace enough water to float. This was unfortunate since James May had a good idea, with the sailboat. Being a music major rather than an engineer, he did not know he needed a keel, and did not realize you can install one with a tall slat for it. Its pretty trivial. Looking at that video most people can see ways to improve it.

Most people can think of ways to make a car that floats well enough to cross a lake. Probably better than this. And its a good engineering challenge, too. When Top Gear drove across southern Africa, in the Botswana special, they did it in cars without 4WD and the real lesson there is that 2-wheel drive is enough if the cars are light enough weight. The power is a lot less important than the weight.

I mention this because Clarkson revealed in Australia during an interview last week, that he's in talks with "an American internet company" and while he can't say which one, Netflix has the money to pay for his budget and let him work without the hassles of the BBC. He will have to drive more Japanese cars because we don't have French ones here. And Fiat only sells the 500 in this country. He may need to find nice things to say about Lexus because we don't buy silly english-german royalty cars here. I suspect that when he drives a new 2016 Corvette Stingray he may have to admit is a good car. Clarkson discovered that driving American trucks is actually both comfortable and fun.

And cheap. Compared to the sort of muscle cars he's used to, American trucks are very affordable. This baffled him because he didn't want to like them, but he did anyway. It might be good for Clarkson to drive on the best roads, the ones he missed on prior short visits to America, and maybe tour the Pacific Coast Highway, since he's never mentioned Big Sur. He's never talked about Highway 395 from Mohave up to Bridgeport. Very pretty, though the southern bit is a different highway. 395 goes through the middle of the desert before meeting I-15 out near Barstow. It follows the back of the Sierras at Owens Lake junction north. Fantastic views and scenery, and no lions try to eat you. You don't get kidnapped and beheaded like in Muslim countries. Its perfectly safe as long as you have water and a cellphone. There's a lot of highways he could review, with nice fast speed limits and changing radius turns that will wreck bad drivers. Even north 49 is like that. Clarkson and company would like driving that road. And maybe he can do some more comedy with RVs and such, with his mistakes up against something modern as a competing vehicle. Sort of like the VW bug in Africa. The one that went everywhere, unmodified, and never broke down. I'd love to see Top Gear do the Baja 1000 in an unmodified "Hitler-mobile". They have a class for that, btw. No kidding. It would be hilarious to see the Top Gear guys deal with that. Whatever they end up calling the new show. BBC owns Top Gear as a trademark.

I hope they'll show more of America off in the new show, and maybe taunt American car companies into raising their standards. Ditch the straight axle. Go wishbones all around. Halfshafts to correct torque steer on front wheel drive cars. Make Clarkson take part in a fuel economy race, just to hear him curse about it. He's funny when he's mad. I expect the various US internet companies have the sort of money needed to get him and his co-presenters back to work again. And maybe with more programming than the ever-shorter seasons under BBC. We'll see.

Smoke

There's a wild forest fire east of here, close to I-80, along a road called Lowell Hill. That road runs along the Bear River's north bank all the way up to Highway 20. That's ghost town boonies. Nobody much lives out there.

The smoke billowed up in a huge plume yesterday, when it started, and then drifted down here last night. Sore throats from the poison oak smoke and manzanita burning everywhere. It is not very nice. The breeze finally came up, but its burning from the south so there's still a fair bit of this smoke around.

Containment is only 5% last I read, and its only about 3-4 square miles. Which is around 1700 acres. There's 640 acres per square mile, which is why square miles are a far better way to measure forest fires. Hell, they show them on the maps. They are called "sections". That measurement system is over a century old. Very useful, though. It is easy to divide and subdivide. All property deeds require recording the correct section your property is part of, at the assessors office, in order to be legal.

I wish it weren't burning. It wasn't nice sleeping with that floating around. It got bad enough to wake me up and shut the door. Then I had to breathe what was in the room afterwards. Not very nice. This is a big downside to living in the mountains. The wildfires make smoke for weeks, and the fire season lasts for months.

This one was started by a white lifted Jeep with big tires and a black roll bar. A bit generic description. All it would take is them pausing or dragging the hot tailpipe past some grasses. That would do it.

Home Layouts

In the old days, you could buy a Craftsman Home Plan from a Sears-Roebuck catalog for a small fee which taught you how to build a house in specific steps, from digging and constructing the concrete foundation to the plumbing, walls, electrical wiring and drains and then bathrooms, siding, interior walls, roof beams and shingles and all the windows. It tells you how to do this and when to call each inspector to sign off on your work.

You will notice something about each of these. There is no garage or driveway  in front. That is because in those days, before automobiles, people got around on foot, caught a horse-drawn trolley which ran on rails with street on either side, or via a buggy if they owned a horse, which was smelly and a lot of trouble compared to those new-fangled bicycles. Pity that streets were rarely paved, but every bicyclist was clamoring for pavement with smooth modern concrete. A bicycle could really move on concrete, far faster than cobblestones.

There were rumors of new Safety Bicycles, which wouldn't stop on a dime and flip you into the ground like a speedy Penny Farthing. If you had a carriage house, it would be around back so the stink wouldn't drift to your front porch or parlor where you entertained guests or caught the evening breeze because air conditioning wouldn't be invented for decades, and swamp coolers only work in places with really low humidity. This was between 1900 and 1928, essentially, that Craftsman houses were in their greatest popularity as the modern, self sufficient thing. Pre-depression houses were either these, the ultramodernist kind which leaked, or Victorians. Each of their appeal.

Victorians have more room, for bigger families, and tend to be tall, with basements and parlors and up to three stories with a seriously large floored attic with dormer windows. People don't often build like that anymore. These are presentation homes, indicating those living there are civilized, proper, and not criminals or poor people. Or Irish immigrants fresh off the boat.

The important lesson is that in modern times, for couples without kids, a bungalow is big enough, without wasting lots of space (which is taxed by the square foot), and in a post-oil economy, having your garage in the back is a good idea. It is going to become rather optional in coming years. Why dominate the front of your house with a place to park your car when you don't have a car anymore? Because mining oil is illegal (fracking has been banned in half of California already, and most of the counties with oil under them), and electric cars cost more than a house. In the post-oil economy, because there's no fuel for commuting, house prices will plummet to the going rate for all the minimum wage jobs around where you live, which isn't much. So houses are going to drop down to about $80K, which is still double the cost of materials. The thing about a bungalow is they're around 500-750 square feet inside. A smallish apartment. Not cramped, but not the sort of place to encourage you to to have a bevy of children. Bungalows are for more responsible people, or those who haven't married yet.

After cars replaced carriages, the stable stalls were replaced by gravel parking spaces for a car, and swinging garage doors behind the house. The alley which ran behind the houses, facing the back gates and carriage houses of each bungalow, was the place to slowly drive your automobile down and carefully open the gates and garage door, then drive in, then shut them both. A bit of a hassle in the rain. Large parts of Los Angeles is still built this way. Unfortunately, that alley is an excellent place for a gang of hoodlums to burglarize any unlocked gates or garages. It is easy to get in because few homes have many windows facing that way.

Modern high density housing ignores the alley, and instead reverses the house. The back garage is all you can see from the street, and the house faces its postage stamp back garden. If it has one.

In cases like this, they cram these as close together as possible, for maximum profit. This is unfortunate since if there were space on the side, there's a method for a side-drive gate that passes by the kitchen and retains the carriage house as a separate building facing 90 from the street, behind the house, out of sight.

This also makes it a very convenient workshop in exchange for a garden or having a back yard or back lawn. Many homes like this have a gate, and an electric opener. An important consideration for all the people who prefer to make furniture or work on cars rather than hoe weeds and plant corn instead of buy them at the local market. This is not to say that bungalows can't have gardens. They can, if they don't bother with a garage. And they have have some in the front, like this picture. It is usually very formal. I understand it is considered poor manners to grow veggies in the front garden.

I think bungalows, currently second only to restored Victorians for sale value, are the next big thing in real estate. Unlike the "Ranch House" which is dominated by its driveway and 2-3 car garage in front, the Bungalow isn't obsoleted by the end of oil. Not to say you can't do useful things with a Ranch House, or a McMansion. You can break up the driveway with a sledgehammer, remove the doors, replace with greenhouse or convert it to more bedrooms or even an apartment of a shop. You could turn a garage into a business, and put up a wall and gate in front of the house entrance so customers would know not to pester the home, focus on the shop or cafe or whatever you have there. I think we'll see a lot of this.

In the post-oil future, a single parking stall from your former garage is enough for your scooter or motorcycle and bicycle parking. Somewhere out of sight from people who like stealing cars. A big garage won't be necessary.

Real human beings won't own electric cars, though some might own golf carts because they're dirt slow and the batteries are cheap and don't wear out. But same with an ATV, which is faster and if running small diesel engines or setup for Alcohol, they can go faster, further, and are easier to refill. They aren't bragging about how rich they are, not like a Tesla or Porsche 918.

Porsche 918 hybrid. $875K. Rich people only. 

 Cars for the ultrarich. Cars that don't have room for a bodyguard to protect the person who owns it.

$95K, Tesla S. If you can drive this, you are worth kidnapping. 

These hybrid or electric cars are very fancy. Very nice. Very expensive. People who own them will need to live in places where others are so rich they won't steal them either. In closed communities, with armed guards with machineguns and the right to shoot on sight. Places like Mexico and Brazil and Florida and Russia. Places where money talks, and the only lives that matter are those who can pay. Not like here, not where normal people live.

Former garage on the right side, driveway garden now. 

We will have bicycles and scooters and small houses that are easy to heat and cool, and live modest lives without much money. We will have the bungalows because that's all we can afford. And people with kids will convert their ranch houses and restyle them to look more like a bungalow, turn one of the garage spaces into a bedroom or office. This is what most people will do. The ones who either found the right town to settle down into after travelling a while, or never left in the first place, or fuel was so difficult to get that an RV/trailer no longer made sense. This is the outcome of the final result of oil depletion.

When The Ice Returns

This is Sardine Lakes, a pair of them. On above the other, formed by the same glacier that carved the northernmost spur of the Sierra Nevada mountains into this sharp and craggy point. The lakes aren't huge, but you can fish in them, in a boat. There's cabins, camping, picnic grounds, and hiking trails. It has been getting rain almost daily all summer long. As you can see there is no glacier left there, but it will come back. Making glaciers is a matter of "accumulation". If more snow falls and stays through the summer than melts, you get a glacier. Summers can still be warm and have an ice age. They just can't be warm enough to melt all the snow. Not at the highest elevations, like this mountain. These are visible from where I live, btw. You can see them for a hundred miles. 

The drive up Highway 49 from Nevada City is about 90 minutes. It is twisty, has blind turns and changing radius turns (those kill people because you loose grip as the turn tightens), and winds over all three forks of the Yuba River. The South Yuba, which passes near where I live, is the one that come out of Donner Pass area and it follows I-80 for a dozen miles before veering off into its own canyon to the north. The Interstate than follows the ridge between the Bear River and the American River, which also have deep canyons and lots of gold mining scars all the way down to Auburn. Highway 49 follows the locations of the various gold mines and used to be a stagecoach road. It is paved, smoother and straighter than it used to be, but it is still a very fun road to drive in a sports car, and painful in a slow moving RV or towing a trailer. There are sections, such as the one between here and Auburn, which carry lots of heavy trucks and commuters at high speed, but much of the highway is slow and two lanes and people pull over to let the more anxious pass them. We did, for a few maniacs with downhill mountain bikes heading for Downieville. There is a local hardcore sport that runs out of Downieville for cyclists. They pay a van to take them up to Sardine Lakes and drop them off. They climb up the hill over various ridges onto the west slope, stare at the view from the top, all the way to the mountains which hide the Pacific on their far side, and then power down the various trails for 20 miles, back to Downieville. It is not a good place to wreck, and proper downhill bikes are purpose built for the trip, and very expensive. 

This is a race from 2012. Bikes are getting longer and more angled suspension forks, to absorb more bumps. They also cost a few grand, so rentals are popular, and the shuttle services and bike rentals make it fun for the tourists, who also stay the night, eat at the local restaurants and provide most of the funds in this little tourist town nestled deep in the mountains. It is pretty much the only legal employment in the area, since the illegal stuff is on the south bank of the river, that being the north edge of the San Juan Ridge pot growing area. Sigh. When it starts raining hard this fall, the pot growers will be ready, harvest and process their plants, and make their annual bulk sales down in the cities. Next year will have lots more water, and lots more pot will result.

In any case, the highest parts of the northern sierra, up the mountain from Downieville is very pretty, and totally worth a visit if you live in California or Nevada. Someday those lakes will be filled with glacier again, the trees and brush ground under the advancing ice that returns to the high country first, and I'd like to write a story about the geologists assigned to studying them as they advance, then going down the mountain to one of the local towns for rest and resupply snowmobiles and 4WD trucks, probably electric by that point. Its one of those good things about Star Wars, that it gave us the concept of a scifi universe with dirt. It opened the door to filthy heroes with crap on their boots.

It was a fun day. I drove us over the Yuba Pass, and respectable speed, and descended into the Mohawk Valley below, which thanks to getting almost daily rain, was green, healthy, and filled with cows. They are not having drought there. It was gorgeous and Dad and I both want to live there. I just need to get someone to pay me to be a librarian. Sierraville, several thousand feet below the pass, is in Highway 89, at the south end of the Mohawk Valley. It has a forest service branch office, a Caltrans repair yard for the various highways going through there (serious jobs) and a small market. I did not see a library. Pity. Its got about 350 people, in the summer. And more like 100 in the winter. It ices up during the winter months, and it is about 30 miles to Truckee, which has the nearest supermarkets. We zoomed down that highway with the other traffic until we reached Nevada County, where the roads turned to bouncy thumpy crap. We also passed a crash being attended to by fire trucks, ambulance, and CHP (Highway Patrol) for some honda that had tried to cross a creek at speed, backwards, and wrecked. Not sure how they missed the bridge, but texting is never a good idea. People still do that, texting while driving. I think it is a Darwin Award, and it resolves itself. I remain a fan of Single Car Accidents. Texting crashes are just Chlorine in the gene pool. Once in Truckee, we rejoined I-80 and climbed over Donner Pass, and it rained most of the way up and part of the way down the west slope. This slowed traffic somewhat, but the road was also slippery. A good weekend. 

Quake Misinformation for PNW

Sigh.

http://video.foxnews.com/v/4356513070001/report-mega-quake-could-kill-13000-in-pacific-northwest/?intcmp=watchnow#sp=show-clips

Most of what is said in this news segment is wrong. There are mountains between the Sea and I-5. The water won't cross those, much less go very far inland. However, the damage from a 9.2 quake would stretch for a hundred miles inland. That part was right.

But we don't know that this will be a 9.2 quake. Its just as likely to be an 8.2-8.7. There could be a quite a lot less shaking energy, and a lot less damage. Oregon and Washington states both use anchor bolts on their foundations so houses won't shake loose. Broken windows can be replaced, but the houses probably won't fall down. There is no evidence to suggest 4 minutes of shaking. Most quakes are 15-45 seconds long. Not several minutes. I live in California. I've been through lots of quakes.

Prior tsunami from the January 1700 quake was 30 feet high (at the shore), and went 15 miles inland, along the tidal flats. Not 600 feet tall. Thirty feet high and 15 miles inland is not so terribly shocking, though just as bad as the ones which hit Japan and Thailand. The upside is there are excellent warning signs along every beach there and people know what to expect. They are risking their lives, on purpose, and don't care. So don't get worked up if the quake kills them. Accept other's suicides properly, with the respect they deserve. People who choose to live less than 30 feet above sea level are taking their risks. People who live higher than that are avoiding most realistic tsunami dangers. Its a DUH rating, and they even tell you this when you want to buy a house.

I would appreciate if news agencies, trying to be taken seriously, would not allow this kind of nonsense on the air.

Motorized Bicycles and Price

I live in a mountain town, with steep hills everywhere. These often have narrow roads climbing them, with trees close on either side and blind corners. You would think this would be a bad place for bicycling, but there's a regular contingent of serious hill climbers here. And drivers don't run them over. Drivers are strangely conscientious about making sure they don't have accidents with cyclists, motorcyclists, scooterists, walkers, and kids going home from school. That's a very positive thing about the locals.

If you aren't a superfit athlete wrapped in skin tight spandex, bicycling here is extremely hard, so you only go a short distance and are exhausted the rest of the day. Technology to the rescue? There IS such a thing as a bicycle motor. Legally, you can use those up to 33 cc without a license or registration.

Most of the kits sold on Amazon and Ebay are 80cc, and geared for flatland speed. This will get you arrested and ticketed for using an illegal vehicle on the roads. So what are the legal alternatives?

There is such a thing as an electric bicycle. The two different conversion kits involve replacing a wheel on your bicycle with one that has an electric hub, a controller, brake cutoff and regenerative braking system, and often you have to buy your own battery. The Chinese kits have TERRIBLE Engrish instructions and no specs are listed as to the wheel's axel width so you can't tell if it will fit your bicycle frame. Also, the batteries don't come with the bike, and so far, those batteries don't last more than about 500 days of use, and realistically need to be replaced in a year. They're getting cleverer about the design, such as all inclusive swappable wheel (totally worth stealing!) that uses your smartphone for wireless controller, but you give up your other gears on your bike if you do that. And here in the Mountains? You need those other gears. Also, these tight setups in one wheel have a small battery yet cost $1100. Um... no. Tidy design, but the price is wrong. If that were $300, it would probably sell. Just keep in mind that the actual build price, in parts and labor, for a Vespa is $175. No really. The parts are $125, and the assembly time is 15 minutes. The rest is greed and markup. This is why I despair at Vespa. They COULD Be the Honda of scooters and be on every street if they were selling for double their manufacturing cost. They'd corner the market. But they went for luxury greed and so only rich fools buy them because they don't care. This irritates me so much.

Amazon also sells fully assembled purpose built e-bikes, for $900. Their reviews are relatively positive, but the fine details on the warranty are that the batteries aren't warrantied after a year, which is about when they need to be replaced, and good luck getting ahold of an English-speaking rep to send you a replacement $300 battery from China. There's sites which list the best ebikes, which are often around $4000. That is a LOT of money. That's the cost of a new motor scooter, and several entry level 250cc motorcycles, which get 70-80 mpg and don't require $300 in battery (or gasoline) per year, and those can go on the freeway and climb mountain roads at considerable speed.

As it stands, Electric Bicycles are a luxury item, and remain on the cutting edge. Their advantages are:

1. being nearly silent 
2. can park in your apartment or office
3. Can recharge in various places
4. Do not require a special license to ride

Their disadvantages are: 

1. Battery only lasts a couple dozen miles per charge
2. Battery needs replacement every year for $300-600
3. Initial cost is higher than motorized transport
4. Legally limited to under 20 mph
5. Weight significant compared to a regular bicycle
6. Worth stealing so can't park in public
7. Purpose built Ebikes are $3-$4K

I will note that if you have a Kymco scooter dealer, with parts on stock, a Kymco Agility 125cc motor scooter from Taiwan is $1900 and will climb the hills better than an ebike, doesn't need its battery replaced annually, and gets 80 mpg. 

If you don't have a local Kymco dealer, a Piaggio (makes Vespa too) Fly 150cc is $2900 and gets 70 mpg and has better quality than the Kymco and uses the Vespa parts network. I see these around town, being $1300-3000 less than a similar Vespa. They have less chrome. They can still be stolen, but they are heavier and thus require two people to lift into a pickup truck and hauled off at speed. These can generally be parked in public. This being Gold Mining country, the local main streets are NARROW with very limited parking and you can put these on the sidewalk legally. I would have one. Honda makes UGLY scooters made for seriously flamboyant homosexuals. I wouldn't be caught dead on one. Being straight and single sometimes limits your choices in vehicle. 

50 ccs 4-stroke is only 4 HP. This is pointless in California. 

Too Ghey for words. 

If you don't have either scooter dealer, or you need to get on and off the freeway, a Honda Rebel motorcycle, with a 234cc engine and a cruiser setup with crappy drum brakes is around $2000 used, or $4400 new with the better brakes and the new EFI 250cc engine, which is far better than the old one (the 234cc air cooled Honda has been in production for 25 years). The Rebel creeps up the hills, but it is pretty bulletproof and is slow enough to reduce self destructive acts of speed. A couple of my neighborhood teenagers have 650cc supersport bikes. Neither has died yet, but they get more and more aggressive with their riding as they gain skill and I expect each of them to die because of it. This is sad, but everybody makes choices. Choosing to die is a choice. I have to respect that. The little Rebel is a baseline choice, used, compared to the various scooters. 

Honda Rebel with disc front brake

I could probably live with this as a daily commuter, and its less expensive and more able to climb hills and deal with bumps than a scooter. There's a local guy who put a sidecar onto his. Its a bodge-job with a mountain bike wheel and heavy steel angle iron, and I'm sure I could do better, including leaning and a bias brake to help it slow down without causing the bike to wreck. Even some suspension for the bumps. Still, this is better than a scooter or electric bike, despite requiring a motorcycle license and safety gear, uncomfortable at this time of year due to the heat. It does get 70 mpg. So keep this in mind when thinking about value. I also think about the value, which is why I don't own a Vespa. If they were $300 I totally would, but not for $4500. 

Fifth Wheels

So my summer research project on RVs and Trailers continues. I'm looking at 5th wheel trailers. These are interesting because you get a mount on your truck bed and you can see the hitch link up out  your back window. They tend to be tall ceilings inside, and some even have a ceiling fan. The queen sized bed is generally in the hump over the hitch, and there's often space for a battery, more water, a generator, and storage for chairs and folding table etc. Things you want if you camp in the woods.

Quite a few of these trailers ALSO have a rear-facing camera on the back of the trailer which links to a display you hang in front of your rearview mirror in the truck so when you glance at it, like normal, you see what a rearview mirror would see. So you can back up safely. And see who is tailgating you. Its really clever. Many modern RVs have this. It is also worth pointing out that you can put one of these next to the hitch to help line it up for lowering it onto the "ball", latching it down and driving away.

It has been pointed out by fiberglass trailer owners that their trailers basically delaminate in the sun. After 5-10 years they are falling apart and have crappy resale values. I have seen many examples of this problem. It is caused by the plastics binding the fiberglass together being chemically changed by UV light hitting the plastic skin. UV is energetic and plastics are petrochemicals, a type of oil. It evaporates/oxidizes in strong sunlight. We even learned to avoid exposing artificial fiber clothing to UV light because polyester can literally fall apart after a session of welding. We wore cotton or canvas or leather, all treated with fire retardant in my welding class. If you opt to buy a fiberglass trailer, it looks like serious maintenance needs to be done on its skin every year or two, to delay the breakdown problem. Re-skinning one seems very expensive.

Compare this to an Airstream which is still good on the outside after 50 years. They do require SOME maintenance, but its a lot less, and they have a good suspension so they last really well and are easy to tow. The reason for this is the curved aluminum sheeting (which is stronger and watertight) and simple design with good insulation and few moving parts to fail. They don't have sliders, and they use a steel frame underneath so they are really strong. I would seriously consider a Flying Cloud 23FB model for myself. It is big enough. I'd want to expand my kitchen a bit, however. I don't enjoy eating out that much and like to cook. Having a good sized fridge matters to me. Tow this with a midsize pickup, with a turbo V6 or V8 engine and I'm good to go. I could see working the summers at high Sierra or Eastern Sierra mountain towns needing a librarian for the summer. It could happen.

Compare that simple Airstream to the "slideouts" of a modern fiberglass RV. They offer a lot more space. While I can agree that putting a heavy fridge on a slider is a really dumb idea, you can anchor them down in the kitchen and move something else instead. They drastically increase the surface area for heating and cooling, and places for potential leaks, unfortunately. They are summer-only, and only in mild climates. Not too hot, not too cold. Not year round. This is a downside. Perhaps you keep them closed when it is raining, like the top on a convertible.

I suspect no answer is perfectly good, and if I spend any time in one I will start designing a better one, and once I run out of functional modifications, build one from scratch that IS right, with the weight in the right places, a good suspension, proper tough skin, good truss interior frame, excellent insulation, proper heating and cooling for -20F to 120F. I would use the right materials. I notice that nobody builds out of carbon fiber, or better yet phosphated silica thread, which is considerably stronger and more resilient, as well as being cheaper than carbon fiber. It is made from sand and requires no nanotubes (which are expensive to make). Read the paper on it, because it is IMPORTANT to the future. Honestly, we should be using this stuff in every vehicle. Its great stuff. Really strong. You have to cut it with a torch because it gouges steel scissors, snips, and shears. A shell made of that would be fantastic.

The whole point of this exercise isn't just for the classes I'm taking that use this research information. Its also for my own future, because I just don't count on the people I work for now, for free, to pay me. It isn't in their budget, or character. Volunteers never get jobs. And non-volunteers don't either. It is a closed system. So I am looking beyond them, and getting work experience, and seeing a future where being able to move to the good library budgets is easy. A sensible answer is reduce my stuff further, experiment with the bare minimum size built from plans or rehabbed to tow behind a truck I can afford, and see how it works out. Maybe after experimenting a bit with long term stay motels or month-to-month rental apartments, though I have come to hate apartments for all their noise and petty theft. And motels are just as bad. Ergo, one of the above options are already better, provided you park them in the right places. I think a lot of us are going to see this as a valid approach to our ever-worse economy. There has been no recovery. Things aren't getting better. And the Communists keep voting in more communists to keep those of us who want jobs and can't get one (thanks to age in my case) out of luck. That's how things are. I can't change it. Not even by voting. There are too many communists here making my vote meaningless. Gotta show ID to cash a check but not to vote. How's that work? Oh, its corrupt and evil. Sigh. So I minimize and I move it along. You try and stay ahead of the evil, or barring ahead, away from. Mobile lifestyles are for more than a great view.

Engineering For Affordable Transportation

Hybrid cars like the Prius are all well and good, provided you understand there isn't enough lithium on Earth for every potential driver to have one. Lithium is in too short supply. There isn't enough of it. If its the only option for vehicle batteries, it will be fought over, like Gold, and people kill for Gold. At some point, having a Lithium Battery is going to be like having a Gold Watch and walking through the ghetto at night, drunk. You will get rolled for it. You might even die. Having a lithium battery will become a bad idea in a public place. It becomes a motive for crime.

People buy the Prius because it gets around 55 MPG on flatland. Here in the mountains? Its more like 30 MPG. You can do that with most passenger cars today. Smaller cars, which don't have the weight of the battery, do better because it really is about Power To Weight ratio. Every Top Gear test car has proved this. Lowering the weight is as good or better than increasing the power. The fastest cars are both light and powerful. Richard Hammond jokingly refers to this technique as "add lightness". You can do this at home by removing the other seats from your commuter car, which generally reduces the weight by around 80 pounds. Sometimes a bit more. It depends on what the seats are made from. I pulled the seat from my BMW in order to use it to deliver newspapers, back when I was a college student, and this dramatically improved the power to weight ratio and my fuel economy and handling. Few people are willing to remove a seat because they might carry other people in their cars, even if its really just a solo commuter vehicle, so they don't get to experience the benefits.

I had a coworker who endlessly complained about his daily commute fuel cost but wouldn't do this step. "Where would I put the seats after I take them out?" he complained. "In your garage with your other boxes of useless junk." Idiot. This was the same guy who said that murdering people would be okay if you "did it for your family". Uh-huh. He was a devout Xtian, btw. Muslims aren't the only murder-hobos. I find this attitude prevalent in the Bay Area, btw. The place is filled with potential or current murderers. I think drinking water full of birth control pills and anti-psychotics, which doesn't come out with mandated water treatment techniques, has created Reavers from the general population.

So I'm glad I don't live there anymore. Yuck. The water I drink isn't filtered through anyone's kidneys first.

What this means is any serious attempt at sustainable transportation requires vehicles without these fancy batteries. It was discovered decades ago that a 400 cc 4-stroke engine is the best balance in power to weight ratio for a 2-wheeled vehicle, a motorcycle in particular. This gets you around 70-80 MPG depending on how hard you push it, and will run a 250cc bike frame, which is light, compared to a 650cc bike frame, which is 100 pounds heavier. This detail is important. Motorcycle manufacturers opted not to produce a 400cc bike, instead increasing the compression of a 250cc bike, requiring you to run the most expensive gasoline, 40 cents a gallon higher price, or deliberately decreasing the performance of a 650cc bike, or worse, "sleeving" the engine into a smaller displacement and adding weight in the process. This was a legal loophole, since many countries, including Canada, have special lower insurance rates for bikes under 400cc. In reality, this isn't a real 400cc. There are some being make, but they are pricey.

Suzuki Dr-Z 400 thumper. Offroad bike (dual sport street legal), heavy frame, good suspension, but heavy. $7000
KTM Super Duke 390 cc. $8000
Honda SS400 (air cooled, 1970's technology)

Kawasaki had a 450cc in the 1980's. It was steel and weighed 500 pounds.
Honda also offered a 450, same weight problem.

Honda currently has a 500cc sport bike, which is basically a commuter. Good fuel economy, complaints about power, however some bikers ALWAYS complain about power, right up until they die. This article is not for them. The 500cc bike is also nearly 500 pounds. That is heavy.

There are also some 300cc bikes.

Kawasaki has a 300cc Ninja. This bike wins awards but the engine noise would offend my neighbors and annoy my ears. I don't like it for that reason. The BZZZ! would get old after a few minutes.

Honda has also released a slightly larger engine for its CBR250 called the CBR300, which is really just a CBR286. So this is a minor displacement improvement and an exaggeration. I continue to be unimpressed by Honda's commitment to motorcycling performance and fuel economy. They should build a scaled up engine, a proper EFI 400cc thumper. The technology for this is both available and cheap. Make your engineers do some work this year, Honda. Soichiro may be generating power for Tokyo with his spinning coffin, but you owe it to his memory to stop being useless. Your F1 team is an embarrassment to motor sports. They haven't even finished a race this season. A multi-million dollar advertisement for poor reliability. Honda has done better. Re-release the CB350, the old steel airhead bike, with a modern EFI engine and oil cooler, the old twin, steel, upright UJM.

Classics never go out of style. This is the bike I would have. A Honda CB350 with the front disc brake conversion. Properly maintained, this is a 60 mpg bike for less than the cost of a Vespa, and it is highway capable. Don't think I'd like it on the freeway, but for short bursts, it is probably okay. Suzuki released something like this, which is not sold in California because CARB is insane, called the TU250X.

This bike has EFI rather than a carburetor, and is very clean running, even when cold. The EFI also gives it more torque at lower RPMs. This bike really needs to be sold here. They would sell a lot of them because its is priced at $4300 new. It is very popular in SE Asia, since it is made in Thailand. This is a good commuter bike, and riders say it will go 45 mph all day long. It is possible to change out the final drive sprocket to increase this speed, but your wind resistance becomes a real drag above 40 mph and at 50 is seriously noticeable and the need for cowlings and a windshield totally spoils its looks. If you want to go fast, get a proper sport bike like a Ninja or something more powerful. And write your will. But this article is not for racers. It is for commuters and weekend riders using back roads and taking their time to see the sights and ride below 45 mph. Slow travel has its value. You can hear the birds sing and have time to turn your head, or easily stop and look at something. This is why I like scooters. They are slow enough to be like riding a bicycle. These bikes will go faster, but they can also go slow and they won't go out of style and you don't have to dress like a Power Ranger.

Morning Rain

Thunderstorm last evening. Sky was fantastic this morning. 

 This is my kind of morning sky. Love it. 

10 minutes later it started raining with huge drops. 

I kept walking. It is nearly 80'F at dawn. 

 Rain all over the street. Drying fast. 

 10 minutes later and the sidewalk has mostly sucked up the water. 

 The thunderstorm drifted down the mountain to the West. 

It probably drifted over Marysville eventually. 

Rainbow. 

Summer Research Projects

I am taking two internet researching classes for credit towards my Librarian degree. In one, I am compiling a list of fuel efficient vehicles, which is more complicated than Googling "list of fuel efficient cars" because I'm also including bicycles, e-bikes, scooters, and motorcycles, as well as expensive electrics and hybrid supercars like the McLaren P1 and Porsche 918.

It is worth pointing out that Jay Leno has entertaining car reviews, and owns not just a garage full of around 70 cars, but also has a staff and a CNC to fabricate repair parts since half of these cars are quite old and long out of production.

The other thing I'm researching, for the second class, is RV living. I posted on that. As a burgeoning librarian, I can tell you that volunteering at a library is teaching me that quite a few librarians are nice people with normal views... but not all of them. Same with the towns libraries are sited in, and the sort of people who wander in might not be the kind you want to deal with long term. Living in an RV means you can drive away from stupid people, and take jobs while living on a campsite or trailer park temporarily, till the job is done. And drive away from badly funded libraries rather than work too hard for too little, as most librarians do. From what I see, library budgets are dependent on tax revenue from property taxes, and those lag on real estate booms and collapse when those bubbles burst, as they often do. When they bust it is time to leave. Owning a house in a state where bubbles pop every few years is a bit silly. You need a house for at least two years or the taxes murder you financially. This describes California far too accurately. So moving via RV or trailer makes sense so long as you work as a librarian. It becomes too nasty a job if you have to take a pay cut and hours cut and then be expected to volunteer for all the events, unpaid. No thank you. I'll leave bad jobs behind. That's what working for the last 20 years has taught me. Don't stick it out. They just stick it to you if you try.

Winnebago Viva? Or Airstream Flying Cloud?

One has to do serious thinking when considering the mobile lifestyle. I have been. A new neighbor has a smaller Winnebago RV in their driveway. Its a Viva model.

Neighbor has this

Other neighbor has this

These are basic Class C RVs, built on a serious van chassis with a big V8 or V10 engine, usually gasoline but sometimes Diesel power. These are the kind you get stuck behind on mountain roads and never pull over because they don't use their rearview mirrors? Yeah, those. The kind that Top Gear hates passionately.

So how would you live in one?

1. You have to detach yourself from STUFF, including furniture and bookshelves. I did that. My marriage was cluttered with her stuff, and it was a bad experience. It put me off of Materialism. Any stuff you have, that you don't use daily, needs to go into storage, which you pay for every month. And you have to come back there to trade stuff out for the season. Most RVers also own a home, which they pay taxes on. 
2. You have to admit that staying in one place is only of value if you can guarantee yourself a better life, regardless of economic drama caused by natural disasters or political enemies. 
3. You are alone, or a serious couple that can share space and don't find bumping into each other unpleasant, ever. I'm alone, so this works for me. 
4. You have to be willing to live in a small space when the weather is bad, and clean it religiously. Or be outside as much as possible so the small space is just where you sleep. If you don't like the outdoors, the tiny space of an RV or trailer will drive you crazy. 
5. You have to be willing to spend roughly 1/3 the cost of a house buying your RV, or buy one for half that and spend many thousands fixing it up again. And deal with the troubles of a used RV (engine, stuff breaking, unanticipated repairs)
6. Be willing to limit your cooking options...  or eat out at restaurants a lot. This one I can't do in an RV (not one I can afford). I have been hunting for an RV that trades spare beds for a proper kitchen so I can cook properly. Those don't seem to exist. 

But the good news is there's lots of trailers that do have better kitchens, both 5th wheels and travel trailers (standard hitch). Airsteam has a "Cloud" 20 or 23 footer that would suit me pretty well for around $70K new.

19 Foot, 4500 pounds

20 Foot, 5000 pounds

23 foot, 6000 pounds

Replace the couch with a writing desk and computer, possibly, and I'd be okay with that. Tow it with a Ford F-150 4x4 with the tow package and Class 4 hitch I'd be okay with that. And both are still less than half a house costs. Less than a third of a house around here.

You still have to pay to park it, or deal with water issues if you boondock it, but it would still work. I will want streaming internet, probably via satellite dish internet service on the roof. I expect to get good at pointing that after getting into a site. At $100/month that's a pricey service, but cellphone companies charge more. I will see what other options exist which are good enough for streaming broadband video. This also brings up the display and my computer and games console, assuming I bother with that. Also for writing.

Then there's the issues of repair tools, locked away and out of anyone's sticky fingers. And the gun locker, for a twelve gauge, one of my rifles, and a handgun. I wonder if I should think about some kind of tank swap system I can use to deal with the black water and the clean water tank? More and more, I can see the point of a light crane on the back of the truck, for lifting stuff out of the bed. One with lockable controls. No Jeremy Clarkson James May tent incidents. 

I need to see what solar panel options exist which will still look nice on the roof of an Airstream. And a hot-water sump and heating loop off the panels. Maybe. Might not be necessary. There is a lot to know, when you consider the full-time RV life. Its better than being trapped in a dying city with an underwater mortgage. I am pretty sure about that.


As you see, this is a classy looking trailer, and not too big.
Bathroom at the rear, bed at the front, kitchen in the middle. Dining table can be used for food prep. Assuming I can swap in a bigger fridge and hang the TV/Monitor on the door with my computer above it and the wireless mouse and keyboard on the table for use writing or watching movies... that would work. This one also has a 39 gallon fresh water tank. I could live in that, year round.