Just need to vent...

$5 in 1995 → 2026 | Inflation Calculator

 

As a young teenager I recall fellow kids mowing the entire neighborhood's grass for 50¢ /gallon. You'd ride your bike down to the station with a ½ gallon can & pay 25¢. That was 1971 right when Nixon took us off the gold standard - allowing the feds to destroy/deflate dollar value. Using the calculator above it shows how little gas has gone up in costs due to better tech for crude extraction. That ~$4/gallon we now pay was the equivalent of 50¢ back in '71.
That was when the term "GasWars" ended never to be heard of again.

 

Can I rant how much I hate driving?

It's not that it's boring. It's just that I hate being forced to do it.

Like, if I want to fly an airplane or sail a boat or something along those lines, I can decide if I want to make the time and effort to do so. That is fun. I love boating because of this reason.

But if I'm told I have to fly an airplane or sail a boat for the rest of my life to get anywhere, even to just pick up groceries, then it's not fun anymore, especially if I have to fly or boat in between hundreds to thousands of other pilots in the same forced situation, all right next to each other, wrecking into each other several times a year, all in a hurry to get where they need to go with no consideration of anyone else.

Oh, and when you can't see good enough to drive, then you're told you're useless and you have to depend on everyone else to do everything for you. Because nobody thought about how you'd go across several miles of land just without a car to pick up a jar of pickle and some hot dog buns for the cookout, that's also another dozen or so miles away. If I can't see good enough to motorboat maybe I could row boat or just fish from the shore. But cars? There isn't a solution.

 

You have several wrecks a year? Time for a bike or a move to the big (bigger?) city where you don't have to drive.

 

Me? No. I've never had a wreck in my life, except hitting a deer, which I've done twice in my lifetime. Not bad for living in the mountains.

But the general traffic does have several wrecks a year. We almost got backed into just yesterday. I also had a pickup just plow into me not that long ago as I was parked, car turned off, in a parking space, at City Market. The pickup wasn't even backing up, it was going forwards. One day I got rearended twice in a row, apparently because my sedan is so short these jacked-up pickup drivers can't see it and forget I'm there in front of them when the stoplight turns green. No place is safe.

Bikes are even more dangerous in a way. Ironically, you're more vulnerable on a bike, but less likely to do any major damage to others. I've known about 12 pedestrians and cyclists who've been ran over since I moved here. About half are dead, the other half have injuries they'll have to live with for the rest of their lives.

People weren't built to drive. Driving just brings the worst out of people. It isolates everyone from social contact with their neighbors. It's frustrating, and an easy way to let out that frustration. It pollutes. It's not really all that sustainable. Roads and highways are falling into disrepair because there aren't enough taxes, but people don't want to pay more taxes. And then countries have to wage war and invade each other to secure fuel so we can keep running over ourselves in gargantuan pieces of plastic and metal that only serve to move our butts around.

And it's all forced on us, there is no other choice.