update: getting away from the auto

bluegoatwoods

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I bought a 3 yr old chevy pickup a few months back. It's quite a nice truck. And I don't hate it nearly as much as I hate the automobile in general. I like it, really. The whole town and much of the neighboring towns know me because of all the years I've spent riding bikes around and toting them around on my trucks.
And the motor assisted bicycles that I put together this spring have reminded them of me again.

But one of my goals is to drive it as little as possible. It hasn't been real easy to convince my family to get around on two wheels, but I'm making some progress.

And lately I've noticed that the truck doesn't leave my driveway for 2, 3, even 4 days at a time.

I'm making progress and it feels great.
 
Yea I own a 96 ford f-150, 07 kawi 650 and an 07 chev colorado and I dont drive them at all but im sort of coerced into that lol. I like riding a bicycle now after 33 years of not riding one. I like the feel of not being in a hurry and the exercize is doing wonders for my health. With the way fuel prices are rising I dont think Ill ever go without a bicycle again, for the short trips it just doesnt make any sense to me not to use a bike...now. Its hard to explain the exact feeling but it does make ya feel a little younger pedalling a bike.........................................
 
The truck I gave up on this spring (still sitting in my driveway) is a '95 F-150.

I put 436,000 miles on that thing. I was aiming for a half million, but it's getting so rusty that I needed to move on. It's on it's second clutch, second exhaust (1st converter), second a/c compressor. Other than that, no major parts replaced, head never removed, etc. It's still on it's first timing chain. Incredible!

I'll take some credit; I drive gently and was pretty good about oil changes and such.
But Ford can take a good deal of credit for building a terrific pick-up truck.
 
Thanks for sharing. I wish my wife would learn to combine car trips to save fuel. She wanted to blow 3 bucks of gas today on a trip to drop off a small box of plastic and other stuff at the recycling center. She doesn't get it that her diesel SUV costs about 24cents/mile to drive.

It'd be a dream come true if our vehicles stayed in the driveway for several days at a time.
 
It seems you can't give your trucks away anymore. I had a Chevy s-10 Blazer 4x4 with some minor front end damage from that incident at Duane's when we were putting Cronus together and I was asking 1,000 for it.
Long story short I gave it away for 500.
That's alright though for I knocked off 50 bucks a month on my car insurance.
Yesterday I saw my dream car at the Dodge dealer. The new Challenger. Black. There it was. I stopped. Looked. Didn't even take pictures,then just rode on. A year ago my face would be slobbering at the side door glass staring at the interior.
This whole Motoredbike thing for me is almost a year old but not even that yet. And within this years time I've gone from my Happy Time Moop with all the mods to my Titan Cronus to this weekend building a new MOOP from an old Rocky Mountain News bike I'm still trying to find the history of this thing to looking at fitting my chainsaw engine to my trike.
All my life I was a complete car nut.
Now a car is just a car to me.
My lead foot is but a memory. Hypermiling is my new game.
I can go 35 mph on my truck in overdrive without bogging down my engine in a level road.
I've always dreamed of building my own car from the ground up,but this sport has completely taken me over.
And that bug to build a car is all but forgotten.
And the longest I've gone without driving my truck has been two months. I broke it yesterday when I needed to go to the bike shop that's about 15 miles out I've ridden there before many times but I only had 45 minutes before I needed to be home.
My truck has a BOOM BOOM system in it but I didn't even have my radio on.
Maybe I can make some money selling my stereo system.
 
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Yes, I could get glassy eyed over the new Challenger, too. I haven't seen one in person yet, only photos. But it looks like an awfully cool car.

Some years back, after the initial success of the new Beetle, I heard somewhere that Volkswagen was planning a retro version of the Karmann Ghia. Haven't heard anything since, but I'm keeping my eyes and ears open. I'd love to see that come to be.

I really do despise the automobile in it's totality. But I definitely admire individual machines that are cool or particularly well-made or both.

One of my "win the lottery" fantasies involves my setting up a nice, big, clean shop and doing, maybe, 3 or 4 restorations. One of them would definitely be a 67 to 69 Barracuda Sport. Another would be a Karmann Ghia. I've often thought about a Mercedes SL from the 1960s, too. But then when I think about what they did to Chrysler I feel so much disgust that I'd probably boycott Benz. Maybe a BMW 1602........
 
Shoot. At the rate I'm going my lotto dream would be that garage full of vintage pedal Harley's ,Indians and Whizzers with a Happy Time section because that's the engine that started my fire. I would also have an arsenal of rack mounts as my daily commuters.
...but I would also have a 70 Hemi Challenger in the corner too. :D
 
This thread's starting to turn into "getting back to the auto".

I'd have an old school 'Vette.

- http://www.kerbeck.com/kerbeck/kerb...592734419D8525702A007D36CF/$FILE/DSC05837.jpg
- http://vettenet.org/graphics/big/57-white.jpg

One of the only old school cars I've fantasized about. VW has some stuff that's also appealed to me, like the Thing... but I've never actually seen one that was in good shape. The only [relatively] modern car I care for is Nissan's 240SX and perhaps even the ones converted into Skylines.

- http://www.importtrenz.com/v3/catalog/images/T/2007/B-NI2489-GP01FBU.jpg
- http://www.importtrenz.com/v3/catalog/images/T/2007/B-NI2489-W9FB.jpg
- http://www.24zero.com/Modifications/images/240sx_1.jpg

The '94 bodystyles aren't bad too, but I'm a fan of those pop up lights.

- http://www.dragtimes.com/images/8812-1994-Nissan-Skyline.jpg
 
I need a new Lambroghini so the neighbors will point and say "That's the guy that rides his bikes with the engines!!" then suddenly Motored Bikes will have a higher status.
 
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