I don’t know if I have ever mentioned this anywhere but I have this massive infatuation with most types of modern transportation. And I’m not even sure why.
FLYING! I love flying. Airplanes are like the greatest thing. I’m that person who insists on the window seat, uses up every exposure on her camera within ten minutes of takeoff, and generally geeks out over the entire process. Last time I flew it was probably comical; twentysomething me bouncing around in the seat, in stark contrast to the six year old kid next to me who spent the entire flight quietly reading a novel. I dunno, maybe it’d be different if I had to fly everywhere as part of business trips all the time and I was jaded, but I don’t actually fly very often so I get to geek out over it, thank you very much.
CARS. I love cars. And not so much in the whole sup dawg, pimp-my-ride kind of way either. No, my love of cars is more abstract. I love cars because I love driving and I love driving because unless I win the lottery, it’s the closest I’ll ever get to flying my own plane.
AC on, music cranked to 11, cruisin’ down the freeway. One With My Machine. I don’t care, I’m still free, you can’t take my road from me. That’s what I’m talking about.
Now this little love affair of mine tends to put me at odds with the increasingly common zeitgeist that I should be carpooling or biking or something. Putting aside the fact that I hate bikes for various reasons (Hyperbole and a Half is pretty spot on here), or that carpooling is out because I get nervous when other people are in My Car (perhaps because then I can’t get away with squeakily belting out Poker Face)… I understand the sentiment behind said zeitgeist. But it’s hard for me to get into it when I am so very in love with my 2002 Toyota Corolla which allows me to be blissfully free for ten minutes a day.
See, I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: I’m fine with tree-hugging, so long as I can do it in a specially constructed tree-hugging robot suit with all the extra bells and whistles and lasers and jetpacks.
Basically my idea of the future is nature and fuzzy animals living in harmony with robot suits and lots and lots of mechanical bunnies.
I like my idea of the future.
Also, lemme know if you find any tree-hugging robot suits laying around that are in need of a good home.
I don’t particularly care for driving, but that could be because I have to drive a hour to get to work. Planes are fun, but I wish we had decent public transit down here. 🙂
planes, i love, but for flying around, i really really want an ultralight. i just don’t have 5k for one. we need to do something with our envioment, but look at the big picture. one of those big wind generators like in kansas and stuff? pays for itself in energy usage in 15 years. that means it takes 15 years of that generator generation’ to balance the amount of energy that it took to make it. and green engines are NOT the awncer. What does your average new medium suv get? 25? 30mpg? my dads 525 hemi gets 30 mpg (mathematically speaking). look what i did. I better wright my own post on this instead of using your space 😛 (love the curator pic btw pike)
The answer to your problem? A hydrogen car. Think about it; we have the technology to make cars run on WATER. Literally WATER. Simple electrolysis can supply the world with limitless fuel!
As a bonus, hydrogen cars are about as futuristic as you can get. Think of it; a car powered by the same element that powers the SUN. And the tree-huggers are happy because the only emission is water.
The energy efficiency of hydrogen is not all that great, but that’s not the point; the point is that its limitless. Who cares about energy efficiency when you can hook a solar cell up to a water tank and pull your car’s fuel out of tap water?
Electric cars, unfortunately, probably won’t take off because they are about as durable as a cardboard box and once their battery burns out in 2-3 years, it costs more to replace the battery than it does to replace the car.
Start the hydrogen revolution, Pike!
As long as you can find a hydrogen filling station somewhere…