The downside of this place is, if you depend on making a living, you live in poverty. Rich people didn't get that way by spending what they've got on non-essentials. Poverty people always rush out to buy the latest new thing so are the first to learn its not so great and costs money to store. Poor people are always surrounded by stuff and have no money for important things like paved roads. This makes them easy to identify because their cars are covered in dust and mud, their clothes don't fit, and they stink of patchouli if they can afford it, since it does a fair job of distracting noses from the stench of hemp oil from all the dope they're smoking to distract themselves from being poor and surrounded by junk. If only they'd give up the dope and used soap more. It isn't like soap is expensive. Sell the junk or throw it away, a bit further than the front lawn.
Poor people have cars covered in dust because they live down gravel and dirt roads. They can't afford to pave and don't want govt attention by calling crews to fix the holes they've got because those crews might see their pot fields.
Of course, what with the cost of tar being so high and pavement being full of holes, I can't help but notice the tiny old 1950's cars getting hotrod engines and buzzing about on the streets. You have to admire that. It's the rich old guys, retired mechanical engineers and suchlike, who build them. They show them off at the half dozen free hotrod shows they have in this town every year. One will be coming up in a couple months. Looking forward to that, I am.
I have to admire the tiny little unaerodynamic cars, the Morris Marina equivalents, and the short convertibles like the Bug-Eye Sprite. They rattle and squeak and are really slow everywhere, but they GO everywhere so it makes up for style with substance, if you see what I mean. You can drive a Morris Marina or a VW Bug or a BugEye Sprite to the top of a mountain pass for a picnic lunch because it will do it. It won't get you there fast, but it will get you there eventually. And the point of a journey is to see things, and if you're staring at the road because you're in a hurry, what's the point? The scenery is on either side. I keep getting advertisements from a web-seller of motorcycle safety gear, and I like the idea of a scooter since its a bike that pedals up the hill for you, but faster than that? Give me more wheels, thanks very much. In a little car, not very fast, you see more than one that's barely gripping the road you're slewing about in such a hurry. I admit to loving the sound of a 12 cylinder engine, and the pop of a turbo charger, but my first car was a VW Beetle and I used to slew that around with the best of them, out to Salmon Creek Beach just north of Bodega Bay, a road that routinely finds Jaguars and Beemers sprouting from the ditches and fences, almost as if they were growing there to start with. Imagine that, if you would, should that be their birth place, as it were, springing from the ground. Explains the organic curves and the bits of rust they all suffer from, and the tendency to lose grip on turn apexes. A fool and his money are soon parted, but a fool may sometimes sell with something not so terrible if used right. This is why rich people dress down and visit quite a few garage sales. You often find deep discounts. Funny how they get rich, isn't it?
I expect my old Beetle wouldn't terribly mind the local gravel roads and dirt, despite finding that stuff creeping under every crack. My Beemer had better ground clearance and didn't mind dirt roads provided I was slow enough. I'd rather take them with a Land Tractor like the Suby, as they are the True Car of California, not the Jeep, which breaks down everywhere and have more rust than you can comfortably poxify their description.
If a Jeep analog were to be built today, an improved version I mean, it would be made from Aluminum, with all wheel drive from the smallest Subaru, still offer the no-doors and canvas top with rollbar thing, and allow you to lower and latch down the windshield, which was a nice feature the originals had. Bad in bug season, but they didn't go fast enough to really pop you so you just used sense rather than sue the manufacturer because you didn't put up the windshield in a light rainstorm. Drops sting, you see. They don't compress.
A modern Beetle Sand Rail is a very capable offroad vehicle, very light. Built it from raceframe tubing, cover in fiberglass, keep it light above all else. Bring back the original Mini which weighed a thousand pounds and had 14 inch wheels. Probably want slightly bigger motorcycle tires and a leaning suspension. Make it fun again. A car that close to the ground LOOKS FASTER when you're driving because everything streaks by in the peripheral vision. It's a trick, but who cares. It's fun. And Mini's make good rally cars. With roads losing their pavement, any kind of rally car is the car of the future, not electric ones.
And the original Fiat 500 with the canvas roof. Slow and poppy and loud but good fun with a girl squeaking and the gears grinding because their synchro gears were more suggestive then durable. Ital post-war was less than half paved, bombed out and shot up. They'd do fine on a patchwork road.
And the Lotus Super 7, and train the driver to end exclamatory statements with the words: "What-what!" and "By Jove!".
Why not? We've already got plenty of other cosplayers. Ever seen a Harley Rider? Look like a pirate dressed in black leather, some frilly crap, a bandana to cover the bald spot, and some kind of flags and skulls and maybe an eagle. And too much chrome, which turns interesting colors when it gets hot.
Unfortunately, with the end of pavement, that means narrow bicycle tires are done, which means people who ride them are going to either pay to visit paved trails at a velodrome or they'll get wider tires, probably knobbies, and shift back to mountain bikes again. Funny how that is. I'm still a huge fan of the Yamaha 125 and the Honda SuperCub. These are vehicles made for dirt roads and crap pavement and immensely popular in the real world, outside America. Its a fair bet that Obama's refusal to ratify/approve the Keystone Pipeline means the Canadians will sell their oil through Vancouver to China. And China and Japan both dumped $300Billion in US Treasuries a few days ago. A huge booming sound. The EU bought them at discount, but dump enough T-bills and the US dollar won't buy much foreign imports, including oil. The price of gasoline will be going up 50 cents a gallon over this, if not more. If China and Japan dump all their US Treasury bonds (aka T-bills), they won't have ANY REASON to play nice with us, and can stop selling us discounted things, start chiseling now that our industries are all gone and we're fully dependent on them for manufactured goods. Isn't that nice?
The good news is that the Yamaha 125 beloved in Central and South America? It is made in factories in Brazil. We could stand to import those and sugar-cane based ethanol. They'd be a good trade partner. Less trouble than China, that's for sure. Brazil has no ambitions of invading the USA, and has never threatened to nuke us into oblivion like China has. So that's an option worth considering seriously for basic post-pavement transportation. If the upgrade, made to fit the same bolt holes in the Yamaha 125 frame, were say, a twin or triple with water or oil cooling, a 4-stroke so its reliable, so much the better. A 375cc 4-stroke with oil cooling? Might be a very good vehicle. Would also work as a jalopy engine. Something like a Sand Rail or Mini could be powered by one.
Folks need to accept that the future of bad and dusty roads means going a lot slower, and taking longer to get there. Maybe more stops along the way. We're so used to going fast, to rushing. But this is a post-capital economy, where everybody with a job gets minimum wage, and can only managed part time hours because businesses can't afford to pay benefits under Obamacare anymore. 2.5 million jobs lost, and counting, since he forced that in. When the pay is pathetic, why take all the risks and waste the fuel being in a rush? Take your time. Get there whenever. Finish it whenever. Man(y)ana is too much of a hurry. It's the indifference to time and clocks which leads to using the South of Europe for vacations. It's hot, do it tomorrow morning.
People kid themselves about bicycle commuting in this context. Bicyclists are the main proponents of paved roads, initially. Trouble is, roads were quickly taken over by cars and drivers, which leads to those cars running down cyclists and killing them in the street. Putting yourself in their way, knowing this, leads to cyclist's stories about getting hit or nearly hit by a car, over and over again. That is not sane. Separate roads sounds like a solution, until you see all the dogs and walkers with headphones blocking them, strollers with children, people with cameras and its not a cycle road anymore. A nice place for a walk, however. I believe you should only cycle when the weather is good. Why bike when the street is icy, and why be surprised about getting hit by a car in those conditions? I see suicidal behavior way too often. I'd rather see a cyclist in tights riding for exercise than one in work clothes in the rain when they own a car and could be driving sensibly rather than DARING a distracted texter behind the wheel to hit them on their school run. Too much selfishness on both sides.
The biggest upside to a Supercub is they go the same speed as a school run vehicle, so they're not classified by drivers as "pedestrians weaving along side of road" and passed without thought. A 35 mph motorcycle or scooter is a vehicle, albeit small. But a vehicle, like them. A person. So they're inherently safer than a bicycle in traffic. Ironic, right? And a jalopy is physically bigger, still going 35 mph, and thus is a car, if a small one. Mentally, safer yet.
It is also important to remember that both vehicles are popular in countries with the same kinds of volcanoes as we have here, thus the same kinds of mud, which turns into thick soupy dust. When the pavement goes, cars will be slowing down, and bicycles will have to switch from sub-inch velodrome tires to 2-3 inch mountain bike tires to get some grip, probably with suspension to help with the bumps, but you can't really do a school run when the kids have to pedal their own bikes and you're merely an escort. Once more, alternative vehicles make more sense. Particularly since schools today, even Middle Schools, are full of drugs. The local one has 8th graders snorting meth and 13 year old girls getting abortions. And this used to be a really good area, too. Is this the benefit of socialization? Do we need school vouchers after all? It would cut down on the traffic, at least, and would be a lot more practical to have neighborhood schoolhouses rather than big central schools full of child criminals and run by more, from the teachers union.
The other curiosity of post-pavement world is the mosquito abatement folk find it somewhat more difficult to do their jobs, and the puddles and such from washouts and runoffs make for MANY mosquitoes, which means that Malaria will make a comeback. You may scoff, but Malaria killed more people in temperate climates than tropical. Archangel, in Arctic Russia, lost 12,000 one summer to a malaria outbreak. Telling survivalists that Malaria is coming back is a good way to make them really angry with you, btw. You can't really stock enough bullets to kill all the mosquitoes, and they never think about mosquito abatement in their "preps". Bad enough they only stock 60 days of food. Sigh. Malaria kills you just as dead as a bullet, and probably quite a lot more painful. As the money flows out of this place with pot-legalization, I expect the growers will start turning up at local clinics sick with malaria, bird flu, and eventually Dengue. They've already got STDs and HIV and various cancers. Free love, huh? Natural healing? Right. Oh well. I'm sure the Opium trade will fix things for them.
Enjoy your race car and your skinny tires while the roads still have hard pavement. It won't be like this forever. When you gradually shift into a slower pace and plumes of dust behind every vehicle on the road, you learn to shrug and laugh and keep your expectations grounded. This the Progress the current party in power has always wanted: peasants, slavery, autocratic rule handed town by a tyrant-king. You voted for this. You stood by and let it happen. It's the law now so shut up and deal with the consequences. Aren't you happy? Remember: it is going to get worse before it gets worse. You might someday be able to afford this:
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