Anything But The Car II

 Blog post 7:  Rolling down Liberty Ave in the Strip District one evening, I ran over something that put a moderately fast leak in the rear tire. I didn't notice it immediately, only when I got to a red light a mile later and wobbled as I started off. A flat front tire on a bike is immediately a problem and a danger due to loss of steering, but a rear flat can be ridden for miles. Since I was downtown, I merely pushed it to my usual parking spot under the Crosstown Blvd bridge and parked it. There was no way I was going to try to ride it 10 miles home. Even if I could, I would likely damage the rim. Replacing a tire should be a simple, straightforward affair. Should. Operative word there. Ha. The immediate problem was getting it home or to someplace I could work on it. Ideally I'd find a shop that could pick it up and fix it for me. But after a series of phone calls and emails over a full week's time, I had struck out on a simple fix. Nope, this was going to be a self repai...

 Blog post 6: Replacing our own cars We have two cars, my wife's 2010 Kia Rondo with 142,000 on the odo, and my 2011 Nissan Versa with 133,000. Myself, I also have the 250cc gasoline motorcycle, and the electric scooter, as well as the bicycle and a bus pass. All get regular use. I might employ two or even three of the above in a single day, while my wife uses exclusively her car. Both cars are at the age where replacement is within reason, but since both are in good shape, we have some time to decide what to do. This essay is about that thought process. It does help that we've used the same mechanic for over 25 years, and he knows both of our cars, and the several which preceded them. If there's any serious problem developing, he would let us know. At this point, there are no major issues for either one. On mine, as noted elsewhere, it gets little use, so if need be we could scuttle that one without major inconvenience. Our family had only one car for 18 years, living in t...

Blog post 5: The scooter and the big picture Unless you walk or pedal-bike everywhere you go, your personal movements have a carbon footprint. Your car burns petroleum. Your EV, though powered by electricity, ultimately is powered from some source, most likely coal or natural gas. The size of your footprint, and the 300 million other people in this country who need to get around, form the transportation segment of the nation's carbon footprint. Scooters, though, and e-bikes, use way less electricity than an electric car. My scooter, when recharging, draws about 600 watts for four hours. That works out to 2,400 watt-hours, or 2.4 kWh. At 10 cents/kWh, that costs 24 cents of electricity. Since I get 25-30 miles on a charge, that means a day's travel costs about a quarter. If that electricity was coal-fired, that would add 0.86 pounds of CO² to the atmosphere. Compare that to a gasoline car which gets 20 mpg. Thirty miles would be 1.5 gallons of fuel, which works out to about 30 p...