Roody

Yeah, that's exactly what I mean. Perfect example, in fact.

JoeyBike

From what I have witnessed, ILTB uses the forum strictly for entertainment. He isn't here to learn anything (he already knows everything) or to hang out with like-minded people and have fun that way. Shoot, I doubt he even owns a bike sometimes. He probably has some kind of scoring system where he gets 10 points for every response, 20 points for an angry retort, and 50 points for an outright attack. Some people play video games, he hangs out here playing with us. Seems to me he would be happier in some other forum.

I appreciate all cyclists on some level. I don't really get the whole "fixie" fixed gear thing. Kinda like clothing fashion for young people I guess - the bike is part of the wardrobe. But I don't spend even one second in the Fixed Gear forum annoying them with my OPINIONS about their thing. Do your thing, baby. Looks like they are having a blast, but I don't feel all that left out. Also, I just don't get recumbents. Then again, I never tried one. Eyeball level with every exhaust pipe in town seems silly, but I don't go to the 'Bent forum and trash their style. I could start a big ol' s***storm over there with my OPINIONS, but why on earth would I do such a thing.

It seems like most folks in Car Free are having fun with it, gaining a feeling of accomplishment - not to mention liquid assets due to less living expense. We don't all do it the same, but it all works out. We come in here and toss experiences, gripes, and revelations around hoping to learn something, teach something, or just pass the time. But not ILTB. He has contempt (perhaps all an act) for so many ideas here that I wonder where he goes at BikeForums to be with his kind. Foo? I hope he eventually finds something he likes - then goes and does that - presuming it does not involve splashing venom on people minding their own business.

Add 30 points to your score ILTB. Nice derailment.

JoeyBike

Priceless.

[h=3]pro·vin·cial·ism[/h]/prəˈvinCHəˌlizəm/(Reference)

Noun

1. The way of life or mode of thought characteristic of the regions outside the capital city of a country.
2. Narrow-mindedness, insularity, or lack of sophistication

Sometimes, it is all in the Point of View. How do you think you look to the participating members of Car Free?

wolfchild

.
What you just said is true... I live in the suburbs which aren't too bad for getting around on a bike. But it's still physically demanding and time consuming to bike everywhere because of the distances, but so far I've been enjoying it, however most people around here would not do what I do. I've been bike commuting for almost 6 years now, and been car-free for just a little over 1 year. To be honest, one of my greatest regrets in life is that I wish I started living a cycling lifestyle long long time ago. If I could go back ,let's say 20 years, I would of done things differently.

JoeyBike

Yeah, I got lucky on that one. I got a nice road bike for Christmas my junior year in high school. My parents also gave me their old car. Since I had very little actual spending money (saving for college) I returned the car after a couple of weeks. We lived in the burbs but they were very bike friendly. So I got a taste for car-free living at 15. Then for college 80 miles away I had to get a car - it sat in a parking lot until I needed to go home for a weekend - still used the bike to get around campus and town. (I did occasionally bike the 80 miles home then catch a ride back to school with a friend).

After college the bike sat for a few years as I accumulated cars, motorcycles, campers, boats, and women. That phase lasted about five years. I hated my life, and I noticed my peers weren't doing any better. So I liquidated all of the junk, rode my bicycle to work (8 miles) for two years and hoarded money. On my 30th birthday I parked the last car and hit the road on a five-month solo bike tour. I gave the last car to my brother and never bought another motor vehicle. Now, at 55, I realize how lucky I was to get that first "real" bike and live in a community that made enjoyable car-free living possible.

At least you finally got to try the car-free thing. If not for luck it would have probably taken me a long time too. When I was unhappy it would have been nearly impossible to figure out that a bicycle was the solution had I not had the good experience as a young man.

I-Like-To-Bike

As an agent of "The Man" scoffing at their benighted versions of reality.

Probably similar to the way certain close minded followers of Fox News and the ilk react to any response that doesn't jibe with their group think version of The Truth.

I-Like-To-Bike

Then we are in agreement, your version of the proper forum is one where all responses should conform and agree with an OP's version of reality. Any other version, opinion, question or variation of the "truth" presented in an OP is a "derailment" if the OP matched the PC group think of the self styled dreamy economists and sociologists of this list.

Jared.

No, just bitter and negative, mostly.

I don't agree with a lot of stuff posted on this forum, but there is no need to comment on most of it. I just try to take away the positive aspects of the "information" provided in here, which there is a lot of.

I-Like-To-Bike

Your choice to comment on only the posts that you agree with or find positive.

Makes for good group think on the list when/if others feel that positive reinforcement of every post is the only appropriate response.

Jared.

Not what I said.

You, nor I, are the saviors of group think. It is an effort in futility if you believe you make any significant difference in the thought process or belief system of the posters in this forum. Aside from that, I see a varied set of opinions expresses by quite a few of the posters here.

I-Like-To-Bike

I thought I paraphrased and accurately represented your intent. Please clarify, why shouldn't someone point out a ridiculous statement when it is made by a less than clever person on this thread or others?

Examples are statements about the costs of automobile ownership that are extraordinarily high implying that the only way to avoid being driven into poverty is to go car-free. Or that a large segment of the population only think they need an automobile and that need would disappear if only these people would write a formal budget.

The only posters who seem to be self proclaimed "saviors" are those who cry foul when their sacred cows get gored.

JoeyBike

What? Most posters here are just hanging out trying to have some fun, be entertained, or relate some personal experience to other like-minded people. One poster in particular seems to be on a crusade to correct every mistake on the Internet. If the Car-Free folk wanted an "adviser" correcting every post they could easily wander over to the Advocacy & Safety forum. Or Trollheim

Ekdog

ILTB's sacred cow: the car-centric lifestyle. That's why he doesn't cotton to folks who espouse a different way of living. Guess he'll have to get used to it, as the percentage of young people with a driver's license continues to drop.

Bikepacker67

Why does this thread smell like a litterbox?

I-Like-To-Bike

Really? Perhaps you can point out a post or two where I espouse car-centric lifestyle as preferred over any other or where I recommend that car free people should change their lifestyle.

I will acknowledge that I have recommended that some naive, parochial and/or clueless posters try and get a grip on reality when they go off the deep end with their economic rants, or make bogus/ridiculous extrapolations about transportation requirements from their own unique living circumstances to the rest of the general population.

Roody

The usual reason.

EarlGrey

I perfectly agree, but the question was written as if the cost for 100k miles in a bicycle and in a car were comparable. They are not. Bike is absolutely cheaper, even buying 50$ tires every 1000km, taking or not taking into account initial car cost.
I don't expect anyone to spend more (or even close) than 8000$ per year on his/her bike.
Why you travel for 20'000mi per year, just to carry around yourself or all your belongings , 2 miles 20 times per day or coast-to-coast 5 times per year, it's another matter.

I-Like-To-Bike

Not exactly as my response was to smallwheels post https://www.bikeforums.net/showthread...1#post15168999 ("How much would it cost to ride a bicycle 100,000 miles? I think it would cost less per mile using a small car if it were done in five years.") which specifically suggested comparing the costs of 100,000 miles traveled by each mode over a five year period. Yes, a bike would be cheaper for 100,000 miles of travel in 5 years, assuming time has no value to the hardy cyclist, but it is also not practical for anybody for such a use.


Using a bike instead of a car for distances and chores for which it is practical is where the economics of a bicycle stand out. Even more so when and if such bicycle use can allow the individual or family to get by with owning one less car.

The real "eye opener" is that some posters cannot or will not make the distinction, nor can they figure out that there is a world of difference in being car-lite (access when needed to automobile) and car free (no access to automobiles; totally dependent on bicycle/public transportation to get beyond walking distances).

Probably most adult cyclists who use a bicycle for any transportation purpose are "car-lite" except when they are not. Just like being virtuous.

Roody

You honestly believe that carfree people can't make the distinction between being carefree and car light--even thought most of us have been both car light and carfree? If anything, we see the distinction better than you do, since we have experienced both conditions. We know very well that both the sacrifices and the rewards of being carfree are much greater than for being carlight. It would be so great if you could quit harping on this to the extent that you really are ruining this sub forum.

Smallwheels

I still don't own a car in case anybody was wondering because of my assertion that the per mile cost of traveling by bicycle might be more than a car. The time factor and fuel factor for traveling long distances is where the costs add up. If someone only drove a car two thousand miles per year it would definitely cost more than a bicycle. The annual insurance costs would add up and make it unreasonable.

A while back I noted that since I only drove my last new car 2766 miles in twenty-one months before selling it, my per mile cost was two dollars. A cab would have cost less. Had I driven it twenty-thousand miles per year the per mile cost would have been a lot lower. Eating enough food to pedal twenty-thousand miles in a year would have cost a lot. Internal combustion engines are a lot more energy efficient than human bodies converting food into energy.

Cars do cost a small fortune to operate, especially if the owner is not even close to the middle of the middle class in take home pay. If somebody wants to spend 25% or more of their take home pay on a car that is fine with me, as long as they aren't forced into doing it. Unfortunately most of the USA's geography and the design of cities forces people into car ownership.

JoeyBike

A bicycle would be cheaper over the course of 100,000 miles if time has no value. When i set out on a 6-month bicycle vacation the bike costs me almost nothing to maintain. My guess normal cost per year would be well under 1K total riding every day. But it would take me 100 years.

So ILTB has a point that it might be worth owning a small car if i was forced to travel 10,000 miles a year for ten years.

Myself, and others here, structure their lives a certain way to make a car-free lifestyle work. I do not consider renting a car nor catching a taxi makes me car-light instead of car-free. Maybe others see differently.

loaba

That's not car-light and it's not car-free either. That's utilizing a car when your bike won't do the job. Car-light, to me, is far more practicle then trying to go car-free (and having to catch cabs and/or rent cars.)

/ note to OP - a decent used car will always cost less then a new car due to lack of payments and lesser insurance rates. Also, someone posted that their car was costing $2.00 a mile before they sold it... Man, that's not a lot of money at all. I kinda shook my head when I read that...

I-Like-To-Bike

You are speaking for yourself and maybe a handful of other posters who actually maybe car free. Judging by the numerous posts from the so-called car free that constantly harp on the extraordinarily high costs of any kind of automobile ownership, I doubt that many of them have a clue about costs of car ownership based on their own personal experience.

Based on many of the posts of the so-called car free posters, they seem to lack the ability or knowledge to compare the overall costs of meeting transportation requirements by the various possible modes, except for their own very narrowly drawn scenarios (i.e. single person who works and lives and travels within a city and without any requirement for transportation of anyone else).

Posters reporting their experiences with their car free (or car lite, whatever that means) lifestyle to include their reasons for doing so is not an issue. What becomes an issue worth a serious response is when posters begin extrapolating their misinformation/exaggerations about the actual costs of car ownership and/or limited personal personal experience into sermons and moralizing about the failures of the rest of society to recognize their sins/stupidity of not joining the car free crowd on a great crusade to rid society of "car culture".

Perhaps you should reread the blurb at the top of this forum- It doesn't call for all posters to gather around singing Kumbaya over Roody's preferred discussions of simple-life asceticism, sociological theorizing, or the evils/stupidity of car use by others.

I-Like-To-Bike

Some structure their lives to assure that their spouse's car or someone else's is available when being car free is not the order of the day.

Roody

But you see, many people actually ARE single childless 20-something's living in dense urban areas. Yes, my hippie friend, these people do exist, though possibly not so much in Burlington, IA. Their lives are no more a "very narrowly drawn scenario" than your own. Their experiences are every bit as valid as your own, or mine. Your inability to grasp this simple truth is appallingly simple and as always, disturbing to me. You have no right to keep calling them names. This isn't " kumbaya"--it's just good manners and following the BF guidelines.