Categories: all aviation Building a Biplane bicycle gadgets misc motorcycle theater
Apparently, without knowing it, I've been part of a group all these years: a group of people who are making it their business to use cycles (I'll use the generic term, since I'm referring to both motorcycles and bicycles) as their daily transportation.
I'm not sure that there are any clever websites out there that I could link to which describe this, but it does seem to be something of a movement. I'm getting this impression from reading BikeForums and other random places.
The bicycle contingent is more vocal, probably because they really get that self-righteous "I burn no fossil fuels" attitude worked up. But really, both groups, motorcyclists and bicyclists, seem to exist.
What's interesting to me is that I came to it out of my own reasons, and without really being prodded by anyone else. I was proud to be able to say, "Actually, I haven't owned a car since [whenever]." But then, I like being weird, and living without a car is definitely weird.
It's kind of a pity that being carless is such a weird thing, though. Our appetite for easy transportation seems like it's bound to be our undoing, as we fight wars and slowly destroy our living environment to facilitate the pratice. Fortunately, we're not "killing the planet" or any such nonsense. The Earth will survive, as will a lot of interesting life forms. Just maybe not us, and maybe not a lot of the life forms we value.
For all that, this insatiable appetite for energy is long-standing. The whales were almost hunted into extinction because of demand for whale-oil for lamps. (Either the first or one of the first lighthouses in the Puget Sound area, on Whidbey Island, ran on whale oil for years, for instance.) That was in the middle of the 19th century, and it's easy to find other examples further back: Scotland was once entirely forested until all the trees were cut down for firewood and buildings. Now, it's a barren-looking land of low scrub and peat moss for the most part; it's been that way for millenia.
Anyway, to bring this all back around, I'm looking forward to a neat future, if only I can help convince everyone else to reduce their energy usage. With things like transportational cycling, decentralized power generation (think solar panels and little wind turbines on every house, or even methane-powered fuel cells, running off garbage heaps), and better urban planning, we can go a long way towards fixing up a future that could otherwise be viewed as pretty dismal.
Gotta run, it's bicycle time!
Posted at 17:58 permanent link category: /bicycle
Categories: all aviation Building a Biplane bicycle gadgets misc motorcycle theater