[lordofthemark]

@mello yello 60341 wrote:

cell phone goes into ziploc,

Good idea, I will remember to do that.

[lordofthemark]

@OneEighth 60342 wrote:

Rule # 5.
Sorry, but someone had to say it.

“Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon”????

[lordofthemark]

Okay, I brought in my stuff this morning. Wife didn’t like the idea of me taking it on the metro in a garbage bag, so I stuffed it into a canvas grocery bag (a Walmart bag – that’s unelite, right?)

Now it appears there will be scattered thunderstorms tomorrow. Not sure if I will ride.

[lordofthemark]

Didn’t people used to us baseball cards for that, or am I misremembering?

[lordofthemark]

@KLizotte 60054 wrote:

It helps a lot if your fitness center allows you to keep stuff overnight in a locker; that way you don’t have to keep hauling stuff around. You’ll also want to bring soap, deodorent, comb, and possibly flipflops. I find that so long as the weather is under 75 degrees and low humidity I can get away with just baby wipes and a few toiletries in the bathroom. Unfortunately I have longish hair (I’m a girl) so that takes a while to dry out but I rarely have important meetings in the morning and co-workers are used to seeing me with helmet hair. In the winter it’s all a non-issue since my commute is only 30 minutes and the cold keeps me from sweating much. In many ways, I find commuting during the cold months easier.

Too bad you missed out on commuting this morning. It was fantastic!

Fitness center does not allow locker use overnight, but I have a locker at my cubicle I can use.

[lordofthemark]

Okay I got my decal. Just need to find a good spot to attach it on the bike. And I am now a member of the fitness center. I would bike to work tomorrow (assuming enticing weather) but its my telework day. Also I guess I want to preposition a towel, and change of underwear, I guess.

[lordofthemark]

I read this as tales of lost items. sorry.

I will try to come up with a feel good story.

[lordofthemark]

@dasgeh 59572 wrote:

Ugh. Isn’t Enterprise the company that will pick you up?

Oh I forget to mention that part – I was delaying till 5 on the assumption they could pick me up (I may have known they closed at 6, I dont remember now). When I called for the pick up they said they were too busy. Thats when I decided to bike over.

[lordofthemark]

Tales of bike unfriendly businesses

I was gonna post this some time ago, but didnt – this seems like an apt thread, sorry if my story is a downer.

My wife was going to head to NYC for the weekend.We are a one car family, and I had some errands on the weekend I needed the car for. She was going to take Megabus. At the last minute – late friday afternoon, while I am teleworking – she announces that she is taking the car. But I can to go our nearby Enterprise rent a car – she has found that they have one of their weekend specials in effect. I don’t want to leave during my work day, so I decide to wait till about 5PM to go pick it up. She’s already gone, so I will walk over.

I call them and find out what I forgot, that they close at 6PM. That is going to make walking a close thing. But, AHA, I have a BIKE! I call them and ask if they have bike parking. “Oh, sure”. I bike over, wearing my helmet, and my backpack with my Ulock. I will lock it for the weekend.

I get there and this shopping center has no bike parking. I ask if maybe they have some in back, but they say no. They dont want me to leave my bike inside their store. I could take it over to some places I know do have bike parking, but I will run out of time to get the car. Okay, so I will put the bike IN the car. Even though its a compact and that will be the usual frustrating process.

The guy takes me the car, parked between two other cars. “er, I can’t put the bike in that way”. He takes it out to the lane in front of the shops. Well okay, now its physically possible to get the bike in, but Im blocking the lane and folks are driving there and getting upset. So I hurry to get the bike in, and drive off.

The next day I realize, I left my back pack, my u lock, and my helmet on the sidewalk. I drive by, and its not there. When Enterprise reopens we go to ask them, but they havent seen it.

I am now borrowing my daughter’s helmet (we currently only have one bike, so..) bought a cable lock (I know, but Ive been careful about where I lock up, plus its an old cheap bike) and have been riding with minimal stuff.

I would think a car rental just MIGHT be bike friendly, but I guess not.

[lordofthemark]

@mstone 59181 wrote:

I can’t imagine how negative stereotypes about people who just want to lower their emissions could possibly get started.

1. Some of them could actually be jerks and say rude things to other people

2. Some people might feel guilty and react even if the person said nothing rude. People can be like that.

3. There can be an organized campaign to demonize environmentalism.

Its possible all three might blend in society, leading to negative stereotypes.

There are lots of sources of negative stereotypes – whether about racial and religious groups, or even about modes of transportation.

[lordofthemark]

@mstone 59165 wrote:

You’re the one who decided you were pretentious..

excuse me? I not only did not say hybrid drivers were pretentious (though I did read that into others comments) I never said I drive a hybrid. In fact I said that I drive a conventionally fueled compact, which I do.

[lordofthemark]

@mstone 59165 wrote:

I don’t understand why you’re being so defensive here. You’re the one who decided you were pretentious. All I said was that buying a new prius is generally a statement, not a rational economic decision. I made no claim that this is a bad thing and didn’t suggest any judgement–if that’s what you want to do with your money, bully for you.

And for what it’s worth, I’ve been able to exceed the epa mileage on every car I’ve owned except the minivan. Probably too much extra weight.

there have been refernces to prius drivers as smug and wealthy

You imply that either the savings on gas gets a good ROI on the incremental purchase cost, or its “a statement”. You may not have stated that making a statement is a bad thing, but there are certainly lots of people around here who think thats something negative. You also seem to have excluded the possibility that some people pay an economic premium not to make a statement, but to reduce their GHG emissions. Is it a more public way to do so than buying GHG credits? I suppose. Some people give to charity anonymously, and some want their name on the building. Does that mean they dont genuinely care about the charity? I dont think so.

Why am I defensive, even though I do not own a hybrid? Because it seems to me that the last few years a lot of people have been trying to take a lot of different steps to be more “green” – from choices in what they eat, to what they drive, to using alternatives to driving, to where and in what size unit they live in, to how they dispose of their trash, and each and every one has gotten push back as hypocritical, pretentious, preachy, etc, etc. And one of the memes used in that pushback is the assumption that everything is done for oneself, or to “make a statement” and that there are no authentically altruistic actions (at least not by environmentalists) And I’m tired of that, frankly. I think this attempt to “think globally and act locally” should be applauded.

the rational economic decision, for society, whould be to price carbon (and as we learn more about likely feedback loops, the higher the rational price is looking to be). That some individuals get utility from the optimal societal outcome, to the point that they will effectively shadow price that carbon that our dysfunctional political system is unwilling to price, is again, a good thing, not only not a bad thing, but not a neutral thing.

[lordofthemark]

@jabberwocky 59137 wrote:

I personally don’t care what anyone drives, I just get really annoyed by people who give me crap for what I drive. I had a coworker at my old job who was a hard core environmentalist who constantly berated me for my turbo subaru. I (I thought reasonably) pointed out that I almost always rode a bike to work, and drove less than 5k miles per year, which means that even if she was in a Prius I was consuming way less gas than her, and the response was “well, its the image of the thing”.

I had a similar conversation with my girlfriend when I replaced the subaru with an older Explorer (14mpg woo!). I did the math and even with her Prius C, I still burn way less gas than her in a year because I hardly ever drive. “Its the image though, it sends the wrong message”. Sigh…

Bikes have pretty good image. And living close to work, is like what all the cool kids do these days right?

Jerks are jerks whatever they drive or do. There are jerks who want to make people feel bad for not driving a low MPG car – just as there jerks who want to make people feel bad for driving an old car, or for not moving to the “better” school district, or make women feel bad for working, or for not working, or for not breast feeding, or whatever.

I personally think whatever people do to reduce GHG emissions -whether its biking, living closer to work, driving a hybrid, eating less rede meat, or being careful to turn off their computer off at the end of the day, is a good thing. But even defining green actions most broadly, being a jerk about it probably isn’t the best way to achieve change.

[lordofthemark]

@ShawnoftheDread 59135 wrote:

No it doesn’t. If they’re both overstated, then the difference between the two is probably the same.

it depends if they are overstated by the same absolute MPG, or by the same percentage. I assume that the overstatement due to differential driving style is the same, percentagewise, for different vehicles. OTOH that might be less true for hybrid vs conventional than say for two conventional vehicles of different sizes. That really gets into details of what the differences are (excess idling? Accelerating too sharply? Sharp braking?) and how that relates to the way hybrids work.

[lordofthemark]

@ShawnoftheDread 59128 wrote:

It would take most people about 10 years to go that 150,000 miles.

I was noting the sticker MPG for both. I see no reason to believe that the sticker would be overstated for a Civic but not overstated for a Civic hybrid. In fact, I’d expect the hybrid’s sticker to be more likely to be overstated, since gas savings is one of its selling points.

the MPG are estimated by the EPA, not the car companies, so selling points have nothing to do with it. My assumption is that the reason my personal observed MPG is less than the EPA rating, is due to the rating being based on some ideal conditions, not how I (and the other drivers in my household) actually drive.

Yes, that would make them overstated for both. Assuming its equally overstated, that means the number of miles to get to 1500 gallons is less than it is assuming the EPA estimates are correct.

So instead of ten years, say nine years. Which is still a long time. We decided NOT to buy a hybrid – we probably drive at least that much but thats largely highway miles, since we drive to NYC to see family a lot. And I personally do not have a high confidence that gas will go north of $4 a gallon. And while I am willing and eager to do something to avoid emissions/make a statement/whathaveyou faced with buying a new car, I wasn’t willing to pay that much of a premium to do so.

But my point is that it was not THAT far off. For someone who drove much more than we do – whose miles were more commuting and less long drives to NYC – who DID beleive that gas north of 4 is in the offing – the numbers could be positive. and if not positive, the premium for being ecofriendly could be smalller.

Is ANY sacrifice for the greenness pretentious? Maybe we should stop going to the trouble of recycling marginal items and just dump in the trash instead. The trouble is small (though my wife DOES like to rinse them off first) but its not zero. My wife insists on it. I want to bike where I can IN PART for the benefit to the planet, however small. I also want to move someplace thats more attuned to a less driving focused lifestyle than where we are now. Some people prefer to drive a Prius. No sweat off my back, and some benefit. Whats to be resentful for? If people spending money to make a statement bothered me so much, I don’t know how I could leave the front door in the land of BMWs, SUVs, and McMansions with driveway gates.

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