Holy crap, oil is $138/barrel? Times, they are a-changin’. I’ve heard a lot of people talk about how they or someone they know is now taking public transportation where they would previously drive. And GM may stop making Hummers. The high price of oil, while painful in the short term for many, will have a positive effect in the long run.

I wonder, if oil prices stay high and people continue to take public transit, if many people who previously were on the other side of the argument will now argue in favor of expanded public transportation. I would love to see that happen.

I was thinking about making a short trip to Davis to see my buddy William sometime soon. Public transportation isn’t the easiest thing when you start heading too far east of San Francisco, so it would require a car. Now that I don’t have a car, I’d have to rent one. City CarShare wouldn’t work; it is meant for local trips, so they charge you $0.44/mile plus an hourly charge. That won’t work well for a long trip.

I have always thought that car rental places are too expensive. I figured that one reason for this is because you always get a new car. Why do I need a new car? I don’t. Today, I happened to stumble across Rent-A-Wreck. They rent used cars at discount prices. Sounds good to me. I just did a search, and I can rent a car for $24 from Rent-A-Wreck. The lowest price I can get on Expedia is $35.

Of course there might still be the under-25 fee from Rent-A-Wreck, which I find silly, but that is another discussion.

0-60 in 4 seconds.
$0.01-$0.02/mile
redline 13,500 RPM
two gears

The Tesla Roadster

I think once or twice, I have started a blog post in this fashion. I think I have a lot of things almost worth saying, but nothing that is worthy of its own post. So I just start slamming my thoughts all into one post. Anyway, here goes:

I posted my car for sale on Craigslist. I hope it sells soon. Because when it does, I am going to buy a mountain bike and maybe a new laptop. Also, I can “move on.”

I really get a great feeling out of doing something correctly. I usually can’t do something correctly if I am rushed. So I have learned to not even try, sometimes, if I am going to be rushed. Today with my car, I was able to take my time and get this first part done right. I double parked in front of my apartment to take all of my belongings from the car to the apartment. Then I drove it down Van Ness to get it washed. $50 + $10 tip. Worth it for a good detail. I then drove it back to my garage and took about 40 or so pictures. You can see them here. Posted on craigslist…and now I just have to hope it will sell. Actually, if I don’t hear from someone by tonight, I will post on eBay or the paper or autotrader.com. But the great thing is that my legwork is done. At this point, almost all my work can be done from a desk.

Moving on…Alyssa and I saw “An Inconvenient Truth” on Saturday night down at Santana Row in San Jose. It was a great movie. Gore covered everything: past, present, and future of the effects of global warming. past, present, and future of what is being done to prevent global warming. I think that a lot of “issue” movies miss out on at least a few of those things.

I was honestly pretty amazed at the scope of our current problem. I didn’t realize that we were already so far in the deep end. But that doesn’t much change my outlook. I was already on Gore’s side, at least I would like to think, when it comes to the environment. One thing I would like to do, however, is take a look through the Gore-debunkers’ arguments just to see if they have any substance to them.

I sometimes think that I am a bit too exposed to the liberal viewpoint of things and not exposed enough to the conservative viewpoint. And even if someone is a complete liar, you can still learn a lot from listening to them.

On the way back to the city on Saturday night, I was listening to Rush Limbaugh. I have always thought that the guy spouted complete nonsense, but I gave him another chance. He failed. He spouted complete nonsense (except for one small rant he had about a Walmart issue). But even so, it was good to listen to him because so many other people soak this crap up, and it is good to know what the talking points from the other side are.

The same theory goes with reading almost all newspapers. Even if you think that they are completely controlled by corporate America, you can still learn what corporate America wants you to think. And that is very valuable.

Moving on (again)…I am currently reading ABC of Anarchism by Alexander Berkman. I can’t really say that this book is a great read. But it is great in the fact that the main idea is so new to me, and it has gotten me thinking a lot. The main ideas are that workers are “wage slaves.” This means that they have the freedom not to work, but they will starve if they don’t. And they are being stolen from by the capitalists – they get paid much less than their work is actually worth. This is evidenced by the fact that there is so much excess capital to go to those at the top – those who did no actual work. I can’t really say that I disagree with any of this. But at the same time, a lot of what he says is stated as fact, when indeed it could use a lot of supporting evidence. I cannot complain about this too much, however, since this is indeed supposed to be an introductory book to anarchism. I would very much like to read more on the subject after reading this book.

One way that these ideas are applied to real life is by thinking that – remember that guy that cut you off today? That was horrible, wasn’t it? Well where were you coming from when he cut you off? You were coming home from work. Your workplace where you spent 8 hours getting stolen from. So, yeah, that guy that cut you off wasn’t very nice. But if we’re going to get mad at someone, why are we going to get mad at that guy? Get mad at those who are stealing your hard work.

Having said that…I would not say that I am an anarchist. I will have to read a lot more on the subject before that previous paragraph becomes something that I would care to defend fully. The field of Economics is pretty much the enemy of anarchism – I’ll have to do a bit of reading on that as well.

I was reading an article yesterday on high-speed rail in California (still just a dream, by the way), when I realized how insane it was for me to own a car. It costs me over $800/month to own my car in the city:
$300 car payment
$300 garage payment
$150 car insurance (even though I have a clean driving record *shakes fist*)
$50 gas (conservative estimate)

And this doesn’t even take into account repairs.

So it looks like I will probably sell my car very shortly here. I am not completely sure I am going to do this yet, but I am about 90% sure. Thankfully I live in what is considered “downtown,” so there is great bus access right near my place. And since I live downtown, groceries are just a walk down the street, as is drinking. So here is what I would do for transportation in lieu of a car:
- SF MUNI bus for going to work, EFF, Best Buy, other not-too-far-away city places
- Caltrain for going to places south of San Francisco
- walking for things that I already do (no-brainer)
- a new Trek bike for medium trips during the day when it doesn’t involve carrying much
- City Car Share for when I need a car. They have a few different models, and plenty of parking spots (where they store the cars) throughout the city. One of them is five blocks away (right near where I currently park my car) and one is just a few more blocks away than that. I would look forward to driving the Scion, Prius, and Civic Hybrid.

I think the biggest thing holding me back is that I love my car and I love driving a fast car. But I don’t think this is a good enough reason to spend $800/month. I have been thinking a lot about all the toys I could buy with that amount

And I also think that if I got rid of my car, I’d get part of my soul back. I think we all have our concepts of “how the world should be,” and in my world I see a lot less cars and a lot more public transit. So I’ll be one more bus-riding bum, very slightly growing the demand for expanded public transportation.

I have been having car problems recently, so I decided to treat myself to a new car. I’ve never actually bought a new car, only used. Anyway, I will spare you all the boring story. Here are the pictures of my new Honda Civic Si:

   

197 horsepower. 0 – 60 in 6.9 seconds. Slalom as fast as the $86,000 Dodge Viper. Yay.

You’ve got to see this car to believe it: The Ariel Atom