Cars represent freedom? Really, because back when I owned a car, I felt like a slave to it. I'd have to give it my undivided attention constantly, even if I'm sick or tired, I lost so much of my time and money for it, and any time it needed repairs, I couldn't do anything fun for months to pay the credit card balance for it.
Selling that damn thing is one of the best decisions I ever made.
Freedom™ is when you have to be over 16, own a several thousand dollar machine, maintain it, insure it, get a special license, not be disabled, be well rested, and be sober, all so you can do an insanely boring task that if you stop giving your complete and total concentration you and possibly others die.
Real freedom is stumbling bleary eyed and drunk onto the subway at 3am and getting home safe for $2.
Real freedom is stumbling bleary eyed and drunk onto the subway at 3am and getting home safe for $2.
Genuinely the real reason why i hate cars and driving. Having a car is like having a dog, you have to take care everywhere you go, make sure to find good, cheap parking, make sure you’re 100% sober, make sure to give it water and food (petrol).
At least dogs love you back.
And actually I can be intoxicated with my dog around, she doesn’t mind if I’m drunk on our walk.
Ooh that’s a really good comparison, I’m gonna use that in the future
Outdoorsy stuff is the top reason I see for cars to exist. The Jeep is a car that makes sense to me. Though for most people (those who aren’t camping every week) they should be a public service, where at the edge of the city you can take a car for your drive through bumfuck nowhere. But trains are better between cities, and cars basically shouldn’t exist within cities at all.
I would rather take my bike to the park on a train, it would make places like Yellowstone and Yosemite much more pleasant to get the damn cars out of there.
If we’re talking long distance travel cars do have a certain “freedom” to them in that you can set your own itinerary and carry a lot of your own crap with you.
That's because our country doesn't have trains/buses running on any sort of useful schedule. And also because air travel feels like you're paying a small fortune to get squeezed through an industrialized anus for a few hours.
Road trips suck. They're uncomfortable, exhausting, boring as shit, and incredibly time consuming. They are only marginally better than plane trips and pale beside any sort of bus or train in an actual fucking country.
I’d trade this all for good high speed rail but I do sorta get the appeal of having a personal car.
No. You're wrong.
I just have some positive memories
Ah, well, there's your problem. You need to be more curmudgeonly and bitter.
Rail is pretty much superior in every way in terms of travel but there are a handful of advantages to piloting your own craft around.
Yeah, I get that. Of course, in theory you've got rail stops that run right out to the edge of the Grand Canyon or rental garages at the more inaccessible terminals so you can just drop $50 and drive around for the day. But in America we're not allowed to have nice things.
Again I’d give up my car for decent rail any day.
I'd settle for some decent bus service. Can't even get that much.
I mean trucks do have by virtue of being trucks more carrying capacity than public transportation or a bike or whatever, but the whole freedom part you're describing here is basically because the entire country is bent over backwards to accomodate this stuff with infrastructure. That road trip'd be a lot more shit if you had to barrel down your 2015 Honda Accord over gravel roads.
Are e-bikes gay? I find myself riding it and wondering if other guys think it's gay. Since that is the lens through which I unconsciously frame my entire worldview, being a toxically privileged soft boi Atlantic columnist incapable of self reflection who has completely lost his grip on any semblance of natural reality, I need to hedge my views on ebikes until men's issues beard bro influencer grifters decide whether or not it is gay to ride an ebike.
Just look at any bike seat, we've been ball-scissoring for years
Gonna write an opinion column in Globo Homo Times about the urgency to appropiate e-bikes as gay
“I dont want to look like the delivery guy bringing me my doordash” is what i read from this
The author is clearly saying they thinks vehicles = status, but they also know how elitist that makes them sound. So they try and blame it on "society" but I don't buy that for a second.
how does anyone live like this?
every decision being based on what other people might think of you?
i can't imagine anything more patheticHealthy people grow out of this when they're teenagers.
They're supposed to but advertising drives people to develop consumer identities like this and analyze all commodities and how their identities or their identities relate.
Gee, isn't it funny how all the status symbols that symbolise freedom and coolness are sold by billionaire fossil fuel giants and all other options are seen as uncool? What a coincidence. I'm sure it has nothing to do with decades of advertising and propaganda.
One of the things I hate more than anything is the idea of we care more about signals than substance. This columnist dork is more concerned with being "seen as" free than being free. It's more about having a car to show that "I can go where if I want to" rather than investing in things that actually allow it. It's like blend of consumerism, object fetishism, feckless modern liberalism, capitalism (of course), and a very juvenile understanding of transportation. Also this just reeks of classiest privilege and genuine alienation. This sort of mental gymnastics is so indicative of the atomization Marx and so many others talks about.
Symbols and signifiers are more important than substance in their mind. It's not about anything other the perception of something rather than the actual thing being perceived. It's so wack, like grow-up man.
Great point! You're very much correct. That sort of mindset "We I paid more so I am entitled to more space, more shine, more more". It's so strange to me that these sorts of people just want drive a mechinized apartment building. They want TV, Wi-Fi, heating and cooling, and all sorts of other stuff they don't really need to get to A to B. They want to be a battle tank because they think the world is like Twisted Metal on the PS1.
Nah, everything is aesthetics (and the worst part is most of them are conflicting and boring aesthetics) these days and the older you get, the harder it is.
The funny thing is this literally could not be further from the truth, and my experience on my e-bike I get constant people in cars rolling down windows at stop signs to ask me questions about it, like where they can get one or how it works. People who see me arrive at a location and lock it up will constantly ask about why it looks like that and what the deal is, I've literally never had that on a motorcycle or moped.
How fast does it go/what is the range (for pedal assist and no pedal assist)? I've been looking at ebikes for commuting
I live in a town that's fairly dense, I have never had to bike anywhere that's more than 3 km away, and I am pretty confident I've never had to go more than 10 km in a day since I've had it. I usually do a little bit of pedal assist but mostly just hang on the throttle and only have to charge at 1 or 2 times per week. I have a North American model and it goes fast enough that people don't get upset with me on residential streets if I'm riding in the road. Most of the speed limits around me are 30 kph though, and I think it's just slightly slower than that.
Again though, my town is very flat and everything is pretty close together. I'm lucky that my house is located equidistant between the two main places where stores and businesses are located so even if I have to go to both clusters of locations, it's only around 10 km.
Ah okay, I'm considering a few options for a 9 mile one way commute (so, twice a day). At 20 mph its a bit slow, tbh. If I could get up to 30 mph then I think I would consider it. I've also seen some electric scooters that go 30mph for around 1000 dollars, with the added bonus of extra portability
So, the reason they go 20 mph is apparently because they're limited by law. From a quick search, electric scooters are legally classified as electric bicycles, so would also need to be governed down to that same speed to be road legal. If you don't really care about the legality, you could always get one of those DIY 2000w ebike kits and throw it onto a normal bike.
They're not that expensive, but I'd recommend getting an oversize disc brake kit for your bike, because the brakes on a bicycle are absolutely not meant to tote around a heavy bike going 40 mph, and frankly, neither are bike helmets. Protect your brain, get a motorcycle helmet in a bright colour, otherwise you're a silent, barely noticeable ghost, easily mowed down by an SUV driver.
My 6 mile commute at assist level 4/5 uses 3 battery bars out of 5 by the time I get home. If I ride casually with friends on acoustic bikes, I'll put it on level 2 and still have all five battery bars after going the same distance (even longer, tbh).
I have a RadPower, and it's limited to about 19mph, although I sometimes hit 22 on a slope. There is one hill I can go down at 35 mph. I definitely wouldn't feel safe at 28-30 on that bike for an extended period of time, even the hill is sketchy but it's fun enough to go for it occasionally. Going closer to 30 might be ok on a higher end ebike, but idk. I also am on residential streets and bike paths almost everywhere since my city segregates the bike routes from the main traffic routes (by a block or two), so going faster isn't super necessary and it would be more dangerous to dodge cyclists, people crossing (between parked cars), drivers being inattentive at stop signs, etc... but if you're going to be primarily on bike lanes on arterials, it probably won't be as much of a concern.
I'm actually looking at the DIY option with a 1200W motor... it would be around 600 + price of a bike, I've heard of some people using a BMX bike
I just bought a radrunner with the passenger package so my wife and I can tool around town together!
Should be delivered soon! I'm excited.
They're sincerely fun. I recommend getting a cheap MIPS helmet, as there are more protective than a traditional helmet to the type of accident you might find yourself getting into, or even go for a moto helmet. I also recommend bright colors, because pretty much the only thing an SUV driver can see is the top of your helmet, so a brightly colored bobbing head shaped object is going to get a lot more notice than something black and matte which seems to be the trendy style of the day.
Mips helmets can be found for as little as $50 or $60 online or even sometimes in bike stores, don't let some bike shop dude talk you out of a helmet with rotational protection, they can absolutely make the difference between getting a mild concussion and death from getting pumped by a car or even just a fall.
cool, I bought the original radrunner over a year ago. If you haven't already upgraded the LED to LCD display, you can get it for half the price that Radpowerbikes is selling by finding the OEM (Kingmeter) on aliexpress. Rad just slaps their names on some accessories and double the price lol. Their mirror that they are selling for $50CAD is just Hafney rebranded, again you can find them for half price on aliexpress. Good mirror.
I think the RadRunner 2 uses a totally different display, but thanks so much for the info I will definitely be doing some research into this!
Yeah, I am a tiny white passing woman with a terminal case of kindergarten teacher face, so people find me very approachable which I imagine contributes.
Generic looking nonthreatening white dude here with boyish looks, people just approach me and are like "hey I don't really have anything to say you just look really approachable"
God, it's wild. I had a lady the other day stopped me in the grocery store to have a conversation and I didn't want to be rude and tell her that I had no idea who she was because it seemed like she knew me and I just suck at remembering people, but after about 20 minutes of mostly inane drivel I apologize and told her I couldn't remember where I knew her from and she just straight up told me that we never met before but I had a friendly face so she felt like chatting since she had nowhere better to be.
How about we don't attach status symbols to personal methods of transit considering most people need a way to get to work.
Sometimes I feel like the only people to become article writers like this are the morons in third grade that take the teachers suggestion to always use flowery words over simple ones way too seriously. Every single article now is a 30 min read about the writers breakfast in front of them and the smell of the air before they start talking about how they are opening a new Wendy's on 24th st. next week.
I learned essay writing through a film analysis elective and it blew my mind. I'd been taking English writing classes since as far back as I could remember and it was a blowoff class that actually taught me how to write.
I hate when they do that with written interviews. Writing about walking into the room itself and the meal you're having is basically never interesting stop doing that.
You got me to read by telling me who you're interviewing, I want to read an interview not an article about an interview.
Literary equivalent of leaving the slate/clapperboard in the final video for filmed interviews. Yeah we get it you're a big boy filmmaker
You gotta have some sort of ego disorder if in the days of the internet you get into writing op eds for a newspaper
I've seen people riding these big, rugged looking e-bikes that look like they've taken design cues from ww2-era motorcycles and they're just :pingu-horny:
I really wanted to build an ebike like this but every option wound up being prohibitively expensive (I wanted to spend max $1000 between bike, motor, and battery) or impractical for commuting (limited gearing or suspension). Wound up buying the coolest looking functional mountain bike I could find for <$400.
They look cool but I'm a little :yikes-1: :yikes-2: :yikes-3: about having the battery mounted up so high - if you end up needing to drop the thing the battery seems like it'd take more impact than if it would being mounted on top of the pedals, and that's pretty bad for batteries.
Cyclists can have a little aesthetics, as a treat
Cars get to be freedom but my bike is jerkness? Fuck this guy.
That’s right folks, a $3,000 bike that’s virtually free to ride anywhere is elitist and repressive. The $30,000 car that costs $100 to drive a week is truly humble and freeing.
