RETURN

Old Chip is back from vacation in Miami with lots of interesting stories.

Well, come to think of it, "interesting" may be in the mind of the beholder. In Chip's mind, some pretty bizarre things are interesting, but you may be more conventional. Alas, for you.


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And I must tell you that I am still having troubles with "blogger" **** I have no doubt that this is my own failing, not theirs, as they are wise and intelligent computer nerds while I am mere intellectual residue, the sort that Bill Gates would scrape off his shoe and deposit over the cliff from the window of the 800 billion dollar house he lives in.

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I have not seen ARBORETUM for 8 days and would like to say I very much appreciate the postings on CAFE standards that SCOTSW did and also the comments by Anonymous Marty and Jim. I have been to the mountaintop and seen the other side of the automotive excess world. It's a valley filled with gas-guzzling monstrosities sitting in traffic jams -- way beyond my former understanding of it. There was also that flotilla of giant mechanized icebergs they call "Yachts" which were not only amazing but shocking. Miami is a petrochemical sinkhole, but my word, it is warm and mainly beautiful.

I'm feeling less much guilty about my own auto-petro use. Hate to admit it. You are I are pikers compared to some of the human energy suckers out there.

I thought Scot did some mighty fine writing and I especially appreciated this:

People have talked about the holy grail of a 100 MPG car. Frankly, who cares? The low-hanging fruit here are the huge bus-sized battering rams that people are driving around with the hand that isn't holding their cell-phone. We should be finding ways to put hybrids in the big SUVs, not in the already-frugal econo-boxes. That's where the gas savings are.