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...

 "There is no bad weather, only inadequate clothing." So goes the saying of many experienced cyclists. Obviously when on two wheels, one will have to ride in the rain from time to time. How to deal with that?  Myself, having thousands of rides in all manner of weather, I opted to invest in some good rain gear. I spared no expense, obtaining shoe covers, pants, jacket and a hood, purchased from Showers Pass, a leading trusted brand of cyclist outerwear. I had already bought the set for the motorcycle, but a major drawback to that set of wheels is absence of storage space.  In Pittsburgh, the ride into work will be dry but the trip home at 6pm will be in the rain. With the scooter, though, I can store the rain gear in the hatch and only don it when needed. It does take a couple minutes to put it all on and to take it all off, but when I'm in motion, I'm dry.  So how about some details? Having grown up on two wheels (or one!), I am experienced in getting caught in a pas...

In the first couple weeks I owned the scooter, I started to wonder, how much will using this add to my electric bill? Every mile on the scooter is a mile not on the car, which (even though I don't drive it that much) sucks down gasoline at the rate of at least $50/month. Turns out, not much. After charging it a few times, including once all the way from totally drained, I noticed that it takes about four hours to charge. I can tell it's done charging when the light on the side stops blinking and stays on steady. The specs say it draws 600 watts during the charge cycle. Simple math, 600 watts x 4 hours = 2,400 watt-hours, or 2.4 kilowatt-hours. At the current residential rate of about 10 cents per kWh, one charge thus equals 24 cents. Since this machine goes 30 miles on a charge, that means I'm spending under one cent per mile to operate it. My car, in fuel alone, cost about an order of magnitude more to operate, per mile, than the scooter. How much does this compare with ot...

 "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...

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.  https://anythingbutthecar.blogspot.com/2023/06/anything-but-car-take-ii.html https://anythingbutthecar.blogspot.com/2023/06/my-new-to-me-e-scooter.html https://anythingbutthecar.blogspot.com/2023/06/the-scooter-part-2-electric-bill.html https://anythingbutthecar.blogspot.com/2023/06/the-scooter-part-3-rain.html https://anythingbutthecar.blogspot.com/2023/11/the-scooter-and-big-picture.html https://anythingbutthecar.blogspot.com/2023/11/replacing-our-own-cars.html https://anythingbutthecar.blogspot.com/2023/11/the-flat-tire.html https://anythingbutthecar.blogspot.com/2024/11/hey-its-slippy-aht.html https://anythingbutthecar.blogspot.com/2024/12/why-i-carry-brick.html https://anythingbutthecar.blogspot.com/2024/12/is-30-mile-range-enough.html https://anythingbutth...