Just a Normal EVTown (You Normal people rock!)

One of my favorite people in the world cruising around in his EV.

In my EV dorkiness, I keep a daily tally of all the electric cars that I see on Lubbock's streets. I have experienced days where I have seen as many as three electric cars in one day. I had a banner day yesterday when I saw two Chevy Volts on the street during the lunch hour. On our extremely cold last Thursday, I saw a blue Nissan Leaf. They are becoming more common, but not at an impressive rate.

So imagine my joy today when I learned about Normal, Illinois - a place where the town actually encourages electric cars. No big deal. Enjoy!

EVTown

May you live in a place where the citizen and civic leaders want everyone to thrive and be healthy!

From My First Car to the Kitchen Table

I want to say thank you to my parents for my first car. Back in 1983 (Yeah, I know I am old.) We went from Odessa to Midland to pick up my first car, an old Plymouth. We loaded it on a trailer. After we loaded the car, we started loading things like doors, bumpers, etc. It was a basket case. It took us more than a year to turn it into a viable (and quite beautiful) vehicle. It took another year of driving and repairing to get the major bugs worked out. I already loved things with wheels, but that car cemented the relationship and taught me a great deal.

This weekend it was cold here. Very cold! And I have had lots of cabin fever lately. So I decided to find something to work on inside. The bicycle battery pack was a natural choice. And I have thoroughly enjoyed researching and building it.

 

So, thank you Mom and Dad for that piece of junk car that taught me the value of building it yourself. If you'd bought me or helped me to buy a middle of the road used but dependable car with things like a cruise control and an air conditioner, I would probably never know the joy of seeing a bunch of parts come together as a whole and functioning thing, and I have a hard time imagining a life without that.

 

If you would like to build your own similar pack, here is a VERY helpful link from a mad-scientist-electric-vehicle-genius Canadian who goes by DoctorBass:

 

http://www.endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=28285&hilit=makita+building

 

And if you'd like a place to learn more about the value of young people learning to work with their hands, this is an excellent read:

 

Shop Class as Soul Craft

 

May your hands know the joys of making old things into new things, and may you have a friend like Grizz (who brought me a box of batteries and who is generally just a great friend to have around.)

 

Somewhat Green High Speed Adventures in Netflix and the birth of S.P.E.E.D.!

[Ok, this one may take a little stretching, maybe some YouTubing, and a whole lot of tolerance for this blogger's sense of how life should be enjoyed.]

Start on Netflix and find a really great BritSitCom called The IT Crowd. In Season One, find and watch an episode called "The Red Door". Pay attention to a character named Richmond. (approximately 22 minutes)

Next, while still in Netflix, find a documentary entitled Charge. I would recommend watching the entire film; however, for today's focus, just watch through the section where you meet Cedric Lynch, inventor of the Agni motor.

Now, on to Mesquite Hugger type stuff:
Charge is a documentary that outlines the challenges and triumphs of the first teams to build and race electric motorcycles at the legendary Isle of Man (Not the "I love man" as some have recently speculated.)

Keith, Mesquite Hugger's most frequent commenter and the subject of one early post, recently saw the film, enthusiastically encouraged all of his friends to watch it, and now wants to build an electric motorcycle. I like movies that have that effect on people. So, please watch Charge, maybe throw in a little Revenge of the Electric Car, and wash it down with a little WALL-E this weekend. Maybe we can start a local EV club. South Plains Eccentric Electro-Dorks (S.P.E.E.D.) or something like that...

May y'all have a great weekend and may you be warm!

The Other Exciting EV News for the Week

The incredible, edible egg!

Dork selfie taken in front of a Waco dealership - this is the only MiEV I have seen in person.

Warning: Dork Factor Alert - In case you have not figured it out, I am a big dork. And I am really not afraid of people thinking I look like a dork. (This would be an appropriate time to have sympathy for my wife for being married to such a dork. She, however, refers to me as a "nork" in an effort not to ignore my nerd factor.)

The other exciting news comes in the form of an egg with four doors and four wheels.

News came this week that the 2014 Mistubishi MiEV electric car will have a $6300 price drop. And, it'll have more speakers, heated seats, sportier wheels, etc. But I don't care about that so much. I care about that price cut.

So, the car is now $23,000. The Federal tax break is $7500. The new Texas incentive is $1500.

If my math is correct, that makes it a $14,000 car with extremely minimal maintenance and a roughly 80% lower "fuel" cost. The scary part of the car? It has an in-town range of 80 miles. It is not a car for road tripping. At all. It is a car that has received great reviews as an in-town commuter. The only consistent complaints have been the high price and lack of creature comforts. And those have apparently been addressed with the 2014 model.

So, are you looking for a replacement for your second car? Do you want to save a great deal of money? Do you want to drastically lower your environmental impact while skipping around town? Are you a big fan of Mork from Ork? (Which, indeed, rhymes with "dork". Again, have sympathy for my wife. And no, Dear, I am not heading down to the dealership to put a deposit on an egg, but I may buy a new charger for the bicycle battery pack I have been building on the kitchen table.)

http://www.mitsubishicars.com/MMNA/jsp/imiev/14/showroom/overview.do

May you be warm and safe today, friends!

An Overlooked Piece of Recycling

You may be at that point where you are thinking, "Hey Mesquite Hugger, I sort my recycling and I take it all to the recycling center. What's next? How do I step up the recycling from here?"

There are lots of answers to that question, but one overlooked answer is to start seeking out recycled products for your own consumption.

One of the biggest goals in recycling is to stop using up natural resources by reusing the ones we have already harvested. Instead of cutting down more trees, squeezing more oil from the ground, or mining more metal from the earth, we need to reuse what we have already extracted. And one of the best ways to do that is to support the companies who specialize in reusing. This helps them to thrive and reuse more of your recycling. It also encourages their competitors to start looking at more recycling.

So, the next time you are out consuming shopping, look to see if there is a recycled version available.

Here are two quick examples we had lying around the house:

 

Paper goods are a prime example and an easy one to adopt. We have given up paper towels in our home, but I am not about to ask the family to give up toilet paper! So, the next best thing for us is to use toilet paper that is manufactured from recycled paper products. Locally, this particular brand can be found at Market Street and some United Supermarkets, but there are several other brands to be found in other places as well.

 

This one was a little surprising to find locally, but here is what can be created from used motor oil - more motor oil. Yes, it's a far from perfect solution - (insert shameless plug for electric car here), but if you are still running a gasoline engine, this is a great way to go. It is very competitively priced and can often be found on sale. And it gets high ratings. Unfortunately, it is a very slow mover. People are hesitant to buy an oil that is 50% recycled. As a consumer, this is where we can step it up. Encourage the companies who are trying to do a better job of conserving our resources.

 

If you have any favorite recycled products, please share them with us. And please keep your eyes open for new opportunities to support recycling efforts.

 

May your day be filled with recycled goodness! Take care, my friends!

 

(PS. An even better option for conserving resources is finding ways to consume less, but every little bit helps.)

 

 

WOOHOO!!! It's real! (Electric Bike News)

In contrast to yesterday's rambling philosophic introversion post, this is something real, mechanical, tangible, and American designed and built.

They emailed me today! The Copenhagen wheel is available for pre-order. It is no longer on the list of vaporware that may never appear for us mere mortals. And I hope this turns into a VW beetle for the modern age.

You may be asking yourself, "What's so special about this thing?"

Let's start by recapping the virtues of an electric bicycle:
No gas.
No registration fee.
No insurance requirement.
Each (electric) fill-up will cost you less than a nickel - often less than a penny.
Stealthy.
You can still exercise.
Free parking (and always a good parking space).
Very low maintenance.
You might actually enjoy your commute.
Phenomenally less environmental destruction.
(Keep in mind that most car driving Americans spend more than 30% of their income on owning, maintaining, and operating a car.

So, what's so cool about THIS electric bike?

Let's just check out two photos:

This is a fairly typical DIY ebike - it actually looks tidier than a few I have built. The cost for this particular setup was around $600.

This is the Copenhagen wheel DIY bike. The cost for the Copenhagen wheel is $699.

 

Need I say more? Well, I will let their very slick website do the talking!

The Copenhagen Wheel

 

And, just in case you want to check out the typical ebike and many more like it, head over to EVAlblum.

http://www.evalbum.com/4268

 

May you have a big red wheel on your bike soon and may you joyfully and healthfully ride on past the gas station!

 

 

 

Wrestling with Socrates

Socrates versus Neo, or, um, Ted 

 

A life unexamined is not worth living. - Socrates

Every time I run across this quote it takes me aback. A life unexamined is not worth living?!!!

How about you? Do you believe it? Do you examine your life? Do you take time to look at yourself and figure out what the heck you're doing? Does it make your life worth living? (Forgive me, but I always get a little introspective when we head into the holidays and into colder weather. When it's cold outside, I examine life more. But I live in a mostly warm place, so I don't examine too closely. The whole thing explains the quality of Siberian writers to me. You seldom hear about the great Bahamian novelists - the weather is too nice.)

But I do make an effort to examine life fairly often. Many years ago, a young woman named Ginny handed me a blank journal and said, "It's your turn." I have been writing ever since.

When the writing is going well, I do examine life. I count blessings. I recognize missteps. I correct the course. I get things into perspective. I plan for betterment.

In neutral times, I make lists and document the daily comings and goings of a pretty average life.

When it's going badly, I do all of the things listed above, but poorly and with a negative slant.

When it's going really badly, I do not write at all, and life goes unexamined.

For me, it is one of the springs for the whole Mesquite Hugger thing. I examine what I do, I loosely categorize it, and then I decide what to do with it, and how things could be made better.

When I do examine my life, I try to categorize how I spend my time: positive, neutral, and downright bad.

Positive: spending time with family, spending time in worship, walking the skinny dogs, spending time with friends, making life better for others, teaching people how to make life better for others, fixing things, learning, time spent in nature, reading. (Just imagine the Mesquite Hugger joy for me if I could synthesize some of these things into a string - learning about some thing that makes the world a better place for others, building that thing, teaching friends how to build that thing...)

Neutral: washing dishes, doing laundry, cleaning house, all the stuff that makes life no better or worse but does help one to exist in this world.

Downright Bad: time in front of mindless TV, dwelling on the negative, shopping for shopping's sake, playing video games, wasting resources, sitting around the house, focusing on depressing news stories, analysis paralysis.

May you have a friend like Ginny and a teacher like Socrates, and may your life's analysis bring you joy and improvement!