Earth Day II

Yesterday was the official Earth Day, maybe today can be another one too. The UT Austin campus had quite a display on the East Mall with tables and such promoting water conservation, energy management and of course a couple of new "Smart Cars". This Honda really look attractive to me, it runs on natural gas. It looks like it would carry 4 people comfortably but not much trunk room. A feature that I really like is that you can fill it up at home with that hand little filler upper sanding by the rear of the car. It taps into your household gas supply line. The demo person told me it held 8.5 gallons. I asked her that since my gas bill speaks in terms of cubic feet of gas how that works on gallons. Her answer was that it they have converted the real cost comparison to gasoline at about $1.25 per gallon. I still don't know what that means and since there were a lot of people there, I moved on to look at other exhibits. But she did tell me that car could commute around town for about 225 miles on a tank. So going by what she told me, I figure that it gets about 26.5 mph. That would be $11 per tank per 225 miles, clearly and conservatively at least 36% the cost of me driving my Impala at the same mileage. I think. Feel free to correct me on my numbers. I am certainly no mathemutatian, can't even spell it.
Here is Phill, the filler upper. Typically, in a garage, it would mount on a wall with no stand. There was a car that ran on vegetable oil, but I'm not to keen on that just yet. These days as I take my bicycle ride to work, and listen to NPR, I hear something about the looming world wide food shortage and how bio diesel is on of the issues impacting this situation. I believe that weaning off fossil fuels is a better option for now as long as the people of the world choose to wean in totality at some given time.
Along those lines, NPR also interviewed a forecaster from Shell Oil who says that in a few short decades we will have to be off the fossil fuel nipple anyway, as a shortage is definitely in sight. So if we can use natural gas for now, by the time its expense is too costly, maybe we will have developed other means of energy, even if it is harvested off the land as is bio fuels.

Lily Has Arrived For Emily

Emily found this vintage Bertoni frame on ebay. Sol is shining it up and ordering parts to build it up as a single speed.
She has named it Lily. It's lavender color on the chrome is very nice.