tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25614437.post114453146625075400..comments2014-08-04T18:12:12.424-04:00Comments on Hawthorn Thistleberry: Meliora, the clever, pretty PriusHawthorn Thistleberryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00358395505794303985noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25614437.post-1144630396074016852006-04-09T20:53:00.000-04:002006-04-09T20:53:00.000-04:00Well, might be nice, but is it worth the cost, con...Well, might be nice, but is it worth the cost, considering how rarely they'd get used? Seems hard to justify, particularly at full price for a bike sturdy enough to support me.Hawthorn Thistleberryhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00358395505794303985noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25614437.post-1144599896156459212006-04-09T12:24:00.000-04:002006-04-09T12:24:00.000-04:00Hopefully we can get you a bicycle soon. Maybe one...Hopefully we can get you a bicycle soon. Maybe one for each of us so we can go out and ride in the nice days.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25614437.post-1144555231883004172006-04-09T00:00:00.000-04:002006-04-09T00:00:00.000-04:00Back on Long Island, you could get pretty far with...Back on Long Island, you could get pretty far with a bicycle. Everything is flat and things are very close together. My college was 7 miles away and I rode to school faster than it took to drive, after you account the time of parking, taking a shuttle from the South P-Lot to campus, and walking to the building you could ride right up to.<BR/><BR/>Was during those times that I took a class on Philosophy of Technology, where we asked such questions as, "name one technology that solved a problem without causing another one just as big." (Only one we came up with was public sanitation.) When I looked at it, cars, seen from the point of view of how a society spends its resources, are the most godawful, inexcusable waste ever. Think of all we, as a society, spend on having cars. Roads, bridges, parking lots, smog, refineries, oil drilling, building the cars, sitting in traffic, auto shops, gas stations, auto accidents, insurance companies, and you can keep listing things all day. And in the end, with the way traffic works, most of the people using cars on any given day in most of the country aren't really getting anywhere faster than they would have if we hadn't done any of it.<BR/><BR/>During this same time, I had my first car. My parents bought it for me; I didn't ask for it and didn't want it, so it was a very disappointing birthday. It sat in a driveway because I didn't want it. That Christmas, all I got was registration and license plates. I decided this was a hint, so I started using it. It immediately started bleeding me dry -- I had no money from then until fall, due to one repair or other. And it took me longer to get everywhere.<BR/><BR/>I had not been able to afford to get people anything nice for Christmas for a few years, but this year I saved up so I could get good stuff for people. Was looking forward to it. Mid-December, my car ruptured its gas tank. Guess how much it cost to fix it. Exactly what I had saved, to the dollar.<BR/><BR/>For many years after that, though gradually diminishing, that's all cars ever were in my life. Money-sucking time-wasters. I never met an honest mechanic; dealing with mechanics was like pulling teeth. Everything about dealing with cars reminded me over and over of how bad an idea cars are, personally, environmentally, socially, globally.<BR/><BR/>Even now, with me being fat and slow, living in a hilly area miles from anything, I still sometimes miss having a bicycle.Hawthorn Thistleberryhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00358395505794303985noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25614437.post-1144554006082740832006-04-08T23:40:00.000-04:002006-04-08T23:40:00.000-04:00It always warms my heart when engineers rethink th...It always warms my heart when engineers rethink things that have "always been that way" to make simple, cheap, but welcome changes. :)<BR/><BR/>To address an early point of the post, I'm curious: why have you always hated cars?litlfroghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18234742365994968340noreply@blogger.com