More Than Basic Transportation

When you first get into Peak Oil, you panic. You realize that Fossil Fuels really do run out, that the oil companies are lying about their reserves, and OPEC is lying even more, mostly to keep the money coming so they can avoid revolutions like Iran. Saudi is down to their last 6% of their oil, and that won't feed or uplift their 2 million bigots out of the Dark Ages and into the modern world. So they treat them like mushrooms and pretend there's lots more oil in the ground. There isn't.

Westerners, like us, panic because we think we need to change our own habits first and give up everything which makes Western living good. This isn't so, not yet. We SHOULD experiment to find what's comfortable and adapt our thinking to life that way, however. This is why I encourage all the people I care about to either move close to work or work close to home and to ride a bicycle and scooter or motorcycle sometimes, just to get used to it. The parts are cheaper now than they will be when it counts, probably just 2-5 years away. I'm being conservative with my estimates because I was way wrong about them previously. Of course, if Saudi Arabia had a revolution tomorrow, all bets are off and you can feel free to panic.

A bicycle or scooter is basic transportation. It moves you to work or the market and back, not very comfortably compared to your car with its heater and stereo and door locks and windows that go up and down. You don't get all the frills on 2 wheels. If you don't mind looking like a doofus or overpaying, you can buy a Smart or a Geo Metro. Or you can get one of those 3-wheeled covered scooters or a golf cart. Not great either, but in a downpour they're better than pushing on while soaking wet. I realize that the Nissan Leaf is pure electric and suitable commuter for most suburban people, but I don't live in the suburbs anymore. I'm in the boonies, or at least in a town in the boonies. I can't give up on liquid fuels.

When I price scooters against the cost of tanks of gasoline my heart sighs. They cost too much. The cheap ones are notoriously unreliable and all of them have wheels so small you may as well fall into traffic thanks to all the potholes. This points to motorcycles. Honda has some good 500cc commuter bikes this year. They'll pull the hills and ride all day at freeway speeds. Suzuki has a new 250cc twin which looks very nice, but I like their more vintage TU250x best, on looks and reviews its a very reliable machine. It can be modded easily many ways for even better looks and styles.

And then there's Deus cycleworks, who restores old bikes found leaning against sheds or in the back of a barn and turns them into unique moving artwork. Look at this.

Deus SR400TT Cafe Racer

Imagine commuting on that. Its not some poseur Harley that breaks down every 20 miles. People who see that will not turn up their nose in disgust. This is an old bike, restored and fixed up. It could use a better rear suspension, but otherwise the bike looks nice. Its got the crucial hardware, yet is minimalist, just like our future economy and our ambitions. It is a reflection of the Real America, not the fake one Hollywood keeps trying (and failing) to con everyone with. People are LEAVING LA, not moving there. Hollywood has failed. The nonsense has failed. This is a Post Oil world, and easy driving is over. The Deus bikes are built for places like Bali, for farm roads and gravel tracks and back streets. This would be a fantastic machine to ride on highway 20 to see my brother and his family. It does all that at 45-60 mpg. Take that, Prius.