bush is right about one thing: Americans ARE addicted to gasoline. We live near the

[Redstone]

Connecticut River, and today the Roar started, and it's going to last until October nonstop (except at night).

The Roar is the noise from boats that are powerful enough that we can heat them at our house, which is over a mile from the river proper. (There's 3/4 mile of salt marsh, a small hill, and several houses between us and the river.)

At least one of the boats today was one of those fucking Cigarette boats (think Miami Vice); they typically have TWO, count'em, boosted V-8 engines, and a LOW-END one has over a thousand horsepower. During one of our typical Saturday summer picnics next to the river, we'll at least five of the fucking things go by, along with I"d guess at least two hundred other boats (NO exaggeration)...and VERY few of them small ones.

How much gasoline does that represent? And how much more for all those fucking Jet-Skis and ATVS we see in the back of almost every other pickup truck every weekend? How about the snowmobiles?

There seem to be an AWFUL lot of Americans who don't seem to be able to enjoy their free time unless they're burning gasoline.

Last, but not least: Hey, people (especially my neighbors), stop mowing your lawn every fucking week, would you? It wastes gasoline, pollutes the air, makes WAY too much noise, and is bad for your lawn to boot.

Thank you all for listening.

Redstone

[don954]

1. if you think a dual engine cig boat is bad

try sharing the ICW here with quad engine monstrosity cigarette boats. The only thing i can think these things are really used for is running drugs... I had one nearly flip my sailboat while i was exiting Lake Worth inlet and one decided to buzz me at full speed...

[Redstone]

2. FOUR fucking engines? The guys who own THOSE must have REALLY small peckers.

Redstone

[GainesT1958]

3. The wake of one of those things...

At even half-throttle is not unlike the wake of a Navy Frigate at FULL throttle; even decent-sized fishing cruisers are imperiled by them. And at least half of them never cut their wake, even in congested waters.

Even if all of them aren't owned by drug-runners, their owners sure RUN them like a drug-runner would!:mad:

BTW, don't forget the water pollution caused by gas leaking out of engines' fuel lines. I know lots of old-timers in your neighborhood long for the days when windpower, not horsepower, ruled the river.

B-)

[Redstone]

4. And boats in general are goddamned inefficient. I have a medium-size car with 270 horsepower,

and it's goddamn fast. A medium-size boat with 270 horsepower? Probably can't get out of its own way.

(Disclaimer: Yes, I have a fast car with lots o' ponies under the hood. But I drive it about two thousand miles a year, and it does get 25 mpg on the highway. Any long trips, we use Mrs R's car, which gets over 30 MPG on the highway. And we only put about 8K miles a year on THAT. Living in town is a BIG advantage.)

Redstone

[Subdivisions]

5. Hi, Redstone. I'm getting the distinct impression

from reading your related posts that you aren't particularly looking forward to the uncertainty of what lies ahead of us.

You have a very tight grip on what is about to befall us and have chosen as your tactic to fight against it a personal campaign to convince folks to discontinue their casual use of gasoline. To conserve. And for this, I thank you.

However, you must know down deep in your soul that your efforts will prove futile in the face of human self-indulgence and Americans' self-interest. China and India are coming on strong. The United States of America is fading fast. Our leaders sit on their hands. The rich are vampires drawing every ounce of wealth from the middle class. Bees mysteriously vanishing. Vanishing ice, not mysterious. Criminal corporate cabal installed by coup de'tat. Nine Eleven. So much more. And if all that is not bad enough, we now witness unfolding before us the end of the Age of Oil. And with it the collapse of civilization as we have always known it.

Your efforts, and mine, are truly noble. And futile. And desperate. Because you and I know what lies ahead. And we are scared.

[Redstone]

6. Thank you so much for the kind words. The truth is, I'm not so much scared for myself as I am for

other people. I live in town, and my office is in my house, so I don't have to drive very much. And I do make enough money that if it costs me eighty bucks for a tankful of gasoline to visit one of my customers and get back home, well, no big deal.I can just factor the increased overhead into the prices I charge.

The people who I am scared for are the people who can't afford to live where they work, such as the police officers and teachers who work in affluent towns, but have to live several towns away where house prices are lower.

I'm also scared for the people who live where it's cold and and might not be able to afford to heat their houses next winter. (Even though the yuppie scumbags can air-condition their McMansions to 65 degrees in the summer, no problem).

Most of all, I'm scared that almost EVERYONE in this country has lost ALL sense of proportion. Show me a "poor" family in this country that does not have more than one television, and a cell phone or two to boot. Show me more than the conscientious 10 or 20 percent of Americans who actually PAY ATTENTION to how much they drive, instead of just pissing and moaning about gasoline prices.

Americans, in general, (Not including a whole bunch of DUers) have gotten lazy and selfish. I'm old enough to remember when a typical house had ONE television and ONE telephone (though an "extension phone" was nice to have if you could).

I grew up dirt poor, and Mrs R grew up even poorer. We've enjoyed being successful in business, and being able to have the nice big house, and the expensive cars; the kind of things we'd only have dreamed of, growing up. But you know what? Enough is just too fucking much. We're selling our "dream house," not because we HAVE to, but just because we don't need it. We're going to end up with a house about half the size of this one, and we'll be happier there than we are here.

The cars? We'll keep them, because I'm a car guy, sorry about that. But we'll continue to use them very little, because we'll continue to live in town where we can walk to most of the places where we need to go.

I'm rambling, sorry about that. thanks for letting me do so.

Redstone

[regnaD kciN]

7. No, American INFRASTRUCTURE is designed around gasoline...

...particularly once you move outside the Northeast Corridor.

The fact is that much of the infrastructure, especially once you move southward and westward, was created in the postwar era, when gas was assumed to be perpetually cheap and plentiful. The entire urban/suburban/exurban layout assumes placing housing far away from jobs -- and, generally, in a "wide" layout that makes retrofitting an effective mass-transit system difficult if not impossible.

Here in Seattle, commutes of 30 or 40 miles a day (each way) are commonplace. And housing prices have gone up so much that telling people to sell their houses and move to new ones closer to their workplaces is a non-starter...for those who work in Seattle itself, housing prices are such that more than 50% of working families would be unable to buy a house that wasn't another long commute away.

What I'm saying is that the problem is systemic, won't be resolved in the near term, and can't be written off as "addiction" based on anecdotal evidence of motorboats and lawnmowers -- which, annoying as they are, only constitute a drop in the bucket compared to even the lightest workday commute. Pontificating about the average American's "thirst for gasoline," as if it was a simple matter of willpower and self-control, is as ridiculous and insulting as shrugging off the absurdly high cost of medical care in this country as simply due to the average person's self-indulgent "addiction to health care." :eyes:

[Redstone]

8. Not true. Those boats are NOT a drop in the bucket. Furthermore, even people who are,

as you say, "trapped" in a situation where they have a long commute (and I'm not arguing that contention), can commute in a CAR instead of an SUV. Look at one mile of stopped commuter traffic in the Seattle area, and count the SUVs. Let me know what that percentage is.

EVERYONE can do SOMETHING. Whether it's driving a car instead of an SUV, cutting down on mowing the lawn, walking instead of driving, consolidating driving errands, it's still true: EVERYONE can do SOMETHING, instead of just complaining.

Redstone