Your Sunday Drive--Oh, and George Clooney!

Today's gas prices make me wax rhapsodic over our '86 VW Jetta, which weighed about as much as a half-full tuna can, was a manual, and therefore got thirtysomething miles a gallon--comparable to today's hybrids.

That was back when gas was 99 cents a gallon. I remember driving the car from Oberlin to Brown and feeling like we never stopped for gas. "Jet" died on 95 a few years back, however, when her odometer was inching toward the 200K mark, R.I.P. We subsequently bought a compact car that gets a lot worse gas mileage, but survived being rearended by a huge pickup truck (major bumper mismatch, put it that way), and seems to be heading for another good ten years.

I have to admit that *I* was the one who opted for a gas-inefficient automatic tranny car (okay, and air conditioning--also bad for gas mileage), as Providence is hill country, and I was having mini-infarctions trying to navigate those busy 4-way stops that are ridiculously half-way up the hills, gunning the engine and watching the car roll backwards....

Tried to absolve for these sins by living in a low-carbon-footprint situation where we continue to possess only one car, both walk to work, and try to walk to do our errands (n.b. rumor has it the FertilityBitch may be testing out a new commuter BICYCLE that can haul groceries--then we won't even have to take the car out for it's once-a-week jaunt!).

So, put it this way, we're not super involved in the electric/biodiesel/hybrid car thing, as we won't be in the market for a new car anytime soon, although MAN FERTILITY's environmental studies colleagues seem to be gravitating toward a consensus that biodiesel, no matter what Ah-nold says, may be an equally carbon-petroleum inefficient form of fuel.

But for your Sunday reading pleasure for those who are interested, The Greener Side has some interesting articles on Electric Cars.

Here's friend/colleague Sasha Hom's traveloque Naima the Nomad on Mamazine, about their adventures in biodiesel.

And thanks to reader Lynnette for this tidbit about G. Clooney and his goofy looking car. Reminds me of a friend from high school who was really into ballet, not the "safest" interest in the north woods o' Minnesota where most hobbies involve guns. This ballet-guy was so happy with himself, however, he didn't seem to care what others thought--he was also ran with the full-fledged jock crowd--how cool is that? And he ended up dancing in a Joseph Papp production on Broadway, as well--I ran into him on a flight from Hibbing back to NYC. This might even beat GC in terms of cojones. I wonder, does GC reaaaalllly take this thing out in the streets of LA?

tags technorati : electric cars biodiesel George Clooney Tango