transportation modes

AntEm is doing some biking for different reasons than I am planning….

As an old fart who lives on a tight budget, I am considering make some changes to my mode of transportation. My suburban is like a pre-teen, it likes to eat up all the fuel it has available to it.

With the gas prices here now at $2.19 gal and my tank holding 38 gals, the $84.00 it takes to fill it up makes me consider buying a bike to buzz around town.

bikeMy town only has 12,000 folks and it’s less than a mile to the local HEB grocery and 2.5 miles to Wal-mart who is selling 18 speeds for less than a tank of gas. Now this raises some questions about bike riding when you are approaching 70, can you still remember how to do it?. I think I am capable of performing well enough to keep from getting ran over by a vehicle.

The next consideration is when I go to Houston, a distance of 130 miles, to visit family. I sure am not in the Lance Armstrong class of endurance when pedaling a bike, so my estimate is it would take me about 5 days to reach Houston based on the fact that I would die from exhaustion trying to go more than 25 miles per day. After considering doing a Tour de Texas and having to tote a sleeping bag and spending 4 nights sleeping along side the highway covered in OFF to repel Texas’ most famous flying creature, I passed on doing that.

ThumbDeciding that I was not Lance Armstrong, I would do my Jack Kerouac thing, as I have had more experience to rely on which I learned as a child of the 60’s when I had thumbed my way all over the country in my early 20s. Besides I could meet a lot of wonderful people driving up from the “Valley” going my way, which would include drug smugglers, semi trailers full of “undocumented” tourists along with the assorted serial killers and ther people with weird diversions.

I guess it would only take about 1.6 hours, based on the average speed of the Texas drivers, if I ever got a ride.

Oh the decisions one has to make…….

April 7, 2005   Posted in: General

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