Anything But The Car, Take II

Welcome to my latest reimagining of an idea I have held for a long time, the concept that the average American will be able to get life accomplished without use of an automobile, at least as Choice A. 

This blog will focus on that idea alone. I do not intend to retire my previous blog, Bus15237.blogspot.com, which has always been known as Anything But The Car, but until the dust settles, I will simply adopt that name for this one, a move I should have made in late 2010 when I set up that one. Prior to that, I had a blog going for several years on the MySpace platform, which I called Unicycle In Transit. I saw the demise of that platform coming, and so ported all 200-odd posts to a similarly named blog on this platform, UnicycleInTransit.blogspot.com. But where both of those drifted off into other topics that interest me, this one will stick with the single concept of alternative transportation.

At this writing, toward the end of June 2023, I have already composed the first half dozen posts. I plan to post on a more or less regular schedule, hopefully weekly, though the first couple might go up sooner since I have them closer to ready. Future ones, more a hope than a promise, to adhere to a weekly schedule, but I never lack for material. If nothing else, I can revisit the dozens of topics from past posts, all of which may still be relevant, though perhaps with updates due to my own aging and circumstances, the evolution of transport forms available, and the nature of the world in general. Whether one can consider any of the latter advances or not remains to be seen.

That's enough for an introduction. Now, to stir some dust up in the air!

Location: McKnight, PA 15237, USA

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Index placeholder

Index to this and, hopefully, all prior blogs This will be updated as time progresses. Not much to see here yet, but I thought it wise to make the second post the index. Much easier to plunk it here than wedge it in later. 
Read more

Is a 30-mile range enough?

More than a couple times, I've nearly stranded myself by running the battery nearly empty. I've only needed to call for help once, though, that being when I made a trip to the grocery, not quite a mile away, with only 5 miles left on the range indicator. Got there OK, but the machine would not start with only 4 left. Fortunately, my wife could drive my spare battery to me in a matter of minutes. Swapped out, drove home, and everything was fine. Lesson learned; don't expect the machine to start with 5 or fewer miles left on the range indicator. Downtown is about 10 miles from the house, by air. Inbound on the scooter, since it's primarily downhill, I use about 7 miles of range getting downtown. The return trip, though, uses double that, typically 13 to 15 range miles, depending on the path taken. With any diversions on the way in or back, that results in having only a couple of miles left. At least twice, the range indicator read 0 when I pulled in the driveway. I've...
Read more

My new-to-me e-scooter

 "Anything but the car" has been my mantra for decades. Regardless of the difficulty or distance, my commute and regular travels have avoided use of the car if at all possible. Mainly transit through the 1990s and 2000s, the bicycle through the 2010s, occasional use of a motorcycle after 2010, even use of the unicycle to supplement the bus commute a few times. In 2022, though, I added yet another item to the fleet, an electric scooter. Why did I decide to purchase it? Include or discuss the test drive, the purchase, the acquisition, the ride home. To begin: August 3 2022: Bought myself a new toy today. Well, toy isn't the most appropriate word here. Capital expense, transportation, rolling stock, addition to the fleet. It's an electric mini-motorcycle, one of the former Scoobi scooters. Scoobi was the electric bike rental in Pittsburgh. They are not simple e-bikes. These more resemble small motorcycles. They are strictly urban machines, 30 mph top speed, about a 30-mi...
Read more