You can trust your car to the man who wears the star. Or not.
• Skid Marx: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.”
• Al Sleet lives: “The weather will continue to change, on and off, for a long, long time.”
• Raiders of the Lost Arkea-Samsic: “We have top men working on it right now.”
“Why do American cities waste so much space on cars?”
Uh, because they’re climate-controlled living rooms that go places?
A good newspaper not only reports the news, it stimulates debate on the issues of the day.
And this piece by Farhad Manjoo in The New York Times — “I’ve Seen a Future Without Cars, and It’s Amazing” — is certainly going to set some chins wagging.
But hoo-boy, talk about your roadblocks:
Given how completely they rule most cities, calling for the outright banishment of automobiles can sound almost ludicrous. (We can’t even get people to agree to wear masks to stop the spread of a devastating pandemic.)
In other words, don’t swap the Escalade for an e-bike just yet, Sparky.
One more minor quibble: I think this sentence — “Manhattan, already one of the most car-free places in the country, is the best place to start.” — is just a wee bit Noo Yawk-centric.
How about starting with a smaller space, like Santa Fe? Wall off the actual walkable/bikeable bits from the metastasis that surrounds them, provide car parks around the perimeter, and encourage people to engage in muscle-powered transportation.
Pedicabs will be available for hire, but you’re gonna have to show me a serious hitch in your gitalong or other qualifying infirmity before you make someone else haul your fat ass around town. The penalty is crucifixion (first offense).
My lodging for Interbike 1999. While I was en route, anyway.
Two distinctly different takes on the ancient and honorable practice of kipping in the car, the first from Adventure Journal and the second from NPR.
I’ve spent many a night racked out in my rides, starting with a 1974 Datsun pickup that had an aluminum topper. The two ’83 Toyota longbeds were an upgrade (more space for me and the dog(s). The ’98 Tacoma? A little less so; that truck was too pretty for stealth camping.
One of the best ever was Herself’s Subaru Legacy Brighton wagon, acquired sometime in the mid-Nineties. Fast, decent fuel economy, AWD, long enough for a 6-footer to sleep in, and no icy water dripping on the sleeping bag on rainy/snowy nights (all truck toppers leak eventually, especially if you bounce them along the indifferently maintained dirt roads of Crusty County for a few years).
Of course, the best thing about kipping in all these vehicles was the certainty that it was both temporary and voluntary. Even a Motel 666 in Dipstick, Idaho, looks pretty good after a couple-three nights spent roadside in your ride.
This teensy little sumbitch got me back on four wheels after a few hours plugged into a wall socket (the four-wheeler, not me).
Almost forgot: Sue Baroo the Fearsome Furster is back on the road after a few hours hooked to the Schumacher SC1301 Fully Automatic Battery Charger.
So, yay, etc.
I must’ve triggered one of the 2,485,397 interior convenience lights somehow. When you only fire up the four-wheeler every couple of weeks this can pose a problem re: infernal combustion and the application thereof.
Happily, the SC1301 was on sale at O’Reilly, so with all the moneys I saved I added some jumper cables to the order.
Even so, I think I may start using bicycles and the Vespa for errands more often, because (a) I really don’t enjoy driving in Albuquerque all that much, and (2) I rarely venture far from home in this, the Year of the Plague. So why not make my outings more funner?
Guess which one starts?
Today was grocery day. I was armed with a rather extensive shopping list, my last trip having been a short one to the Wholeazon Amafoods to collect a few delicacies for our 30th anniversary dinner.
That list got edited more than somewhat when I slid behind the wheel of the Fearsome Furster, turned the key, and … bupkis.
Not a slow crank. Nary a whir, click, or grind. Fuck-all, is what. Dead silence.
The trusty Wald basket shifts easily from bike to scooter. I use toe straps to cinch it down.
Like the rest of us, ol’ Sue Baroo has been enjoying some extended downtime in the Year of the Plague. She gets out about every two weeks for a grocery run.
But our last voyage was just a week ago, so I can only assume I managed to trigger some pain-in-the-ass interior light that failed to catch my eye. The battery is fairly new. Newer than the car, anyway.
But plenty of things are. This beast dates back to the last dipshit fool we had in the White House.
“Well, hell,” sez I. “What else we got in this garage here?”
Yeah, yeah, I know. It’s Bike Month. I should’ve manned up and turned one of the touring bikes into a grocery cart. It’s not as though we lack for racks and sacks around here.
But I took the easy way out. Pulled the Wald basket off the Soma Double Cross, strapped it to the rear rack on the Vespa, and putt-putted over to the Sprouts with a messenger bag slung over one shoulder.
The lack of cargo capacity means no buttermilk biscuits for breakfast. But we all have our crosses to bear, amirite?
The actual outdoors. No instructors shouting at you. Free of charge.
I’m having trouble fitting into The New Weird Order.
The idea of spending $2,245 for a Peloton bike plus $39 per month for online classes*, so I can stay fit for … for. …
For what, exactly?
“Enjoying” a long and healthy life spent indoors, never more than a few steps from a screen?
I guess if the auto industry gets another bailout, as seems likely, these folks — the ones with all the money, anyway — will be able to have their “outside” and their screens at the same time.
* Incidentally, if you already own a bike, and you must do your cycling indoors, you can spend a few hundy on a stationary trainer or a set of rollers and join the free community of voices in your head.
“Down by the river … I parked my Chevy. …”
You (OK, I) might have been thinking to yourself (or myself): “Man, a van, down by the river. That would be the thing right about now. Fresh air, solitude, no cootie-carrying COVID Charlies popping in and out, sneezing on everything. Get tired of this place, move to that place. Living the dream, baby.”
Not so much, it seems. Kylie Mohr chatted up a few van-life types and found that this livin’ off the road is gettin’ kinda old given current conditions.
Says full-time van-lifer Matthew Tufts:
“While thinking I’m living quite independently, I’m actually reliant on far more public places than the person with a home who fulfills a lot of those little daily tasks and activities from their residence. It sounds idyllic to weather this storm in rural locales and on the road, as if mobile living makes you immune to the issues currently plaguing most of society. But in reality, living on the road isn’t in the best interest of the greater population. …”
Happily, as in other corners of society, the nomads are taking care of each other, providing parking spaces, spare rooms, even apartments. Says one good Samaritan, Aileen Gardner:
“I definitely feel like we had a responsibility to take care of the people who are currently living on the road. The van-life community is honestly half the reason why people do van life. We take care of each other.”
C’mon. When you’re staring at this much screen you want a box of popcorn, a big ol’ soda, and a preview of coming attractions that does not include the honking 18-wheeler into whose lane you have strayed.
I have an ironclad disagreement with the notion of a multiplex in motion.
My argument is a simple one: If you want to drive, get an automobile. If you want to text, tweet, phone, Facebook, Instagram, eat, drink, smoke, shoot, or stream anything other than your own bad self down the road, why, get a sofa and some fixed location to put it in.
Our discussion of the Escalade Multiplex with its 38 inches of curving OLED real estate caused me to remember an earlier screed on this very topic, from the pages of Bicycle Retailer and Industry News circa 2014. For a change I cited sources other than the voices in my head, though of course they too were interviewed at length.
Rather than simply reprint the column — c’est ennuyeux! — I barked it into the old Shure SM58 and presto! Yes, yes, yes, out popped another episode of Radio Free Dogpatch!
Too late for this year’s Pulitzer for Audio Reporting, but hey, there’s always next year, amirite? Or maybe 2024, when the sonofabitch will be 10 years old and journalistic standards may have declined even further, perhaps to my level.
• Technical notes: This episode was recorded with a Shure SM58 microphone and a Zoom H5 Handy Recorder, then edited in Apple’s GarageBand on the 13-inch 2014 MacBook Pro. Post-production voodoo by Auphonic. The background music is “Well Oiled Machine” from Zapsplat. Sound effects from Apple’s iMovie effects bin and Your Humble Narrator.
Who says there’s no such thing as good news?
A jury in Fanta Se has convicted Jacob D. Brown of Moriarty in a March 2018 road-rage incident that left three cyclists with broken bones after he first exchanged words with, then backed his vehicle into, a group of riders.
Sheriff’s deputies took Brown into custody following the verdict. He could be looking at more than four and a half years in the hoosegow when he faces sentencing next month.
Props to everyone who fought for this victory over senseless violence, nearly two years in the making. Let’s hope it sends a message to anyone else who thinks they own the road along with the automobile.
A spokesman for Seniors on Bikes told The New Mexican via email: ““We are thankful that Santa Fe citizens are supportive of the rule of the rule of law and that cyclists are not considered targets on our roads. We hope everyone stays safe: motorists, pedestrians and cyclists.”
Phantom 309 gets a phantom Big Joe.
Oh, good. Waymo is bringing its self-driving minivans and trucks to New Mexico.
The Duke City’s drivers can’t wait to take their hands off the wheel for real. Then they won’t have to steer with their knees while texting, smoking meth, swigging hooch, spitting out the fire in their laps (spilled hooch and pipe sparks), and shooting at the punk-ass bitch who gave them the side-eye at the last stop light they ran.
Patrick O'Grady sells words and pictures to Adventure Cyclist, Bicycle Retailer and Industry News, and pretty much anyone else who can spell his name correctly next to the phrase which sounds so musical to his aged ears: "Pay to the order of. ..." For more on Your Humble Narrator, click the comic.
Patrick O'Grady was bad enough with pen and ink. He got worse
with a keyboard.
Now he has a microphone.
God help us all.
If you need a tub of margarine, a spatula, and the dubious assistance of a giggling friend to squeeze into your old team jersey, it's time to step up to some kit that fits. Click the pic to join the Old Guys Who Get Fat in Winter Racing Team!
Know your rights, and defend them.
Fight hate.
Defending press freedom since 1970
Colorado Central columnist Hal Walter cranks out a book now and then, and they'd look swell in your library (they also read nicely, too). Click the image to order yours.
Drink the Kool-Aid
Words and pictures on the DogPage © 2020 by Patrick O’Grady/Mad Dog Media. All rights and most lefts reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, redistributed, laser-printed, photocopied, crocheted into a sampler, knitted into sweater, tattooed on a floozy, spray-painted on an overpass, tapped out in Morse code, sublimated onto a jersey, shared in whispers in the back row of an adult theater, shouted from the rooftops, scored for tuba and banjo, translated into Squinch, or communicated via telepathy without the permission of and hefty payment to a heavily armed, chemically preserved cyclo-cross addict who knows your IP address. Bonehead shysters and the simpletons who employ them, take note: The opinions expressed on the DogPage contain toxic quantities of hyperbole, satire, parody and humor. Pah-ro-dee. Hyyuuu-mor. Acquire a sense of same or read at your own risk.
