Musings

In the "Let's catch up with my writing by tossing random thoughts out there" category:

The ever-thought-provoking Mikael at Copenhagenize offered some discussion on automotive design and marketing recently. He spoke at a conference on design, and while waiting his turn, listened to Chris Bangle, former head of design for BMW.

The point Bangle made, and that Mikael works with in the linked essay, is that cars are part of what Bangle dubbed, "Personal Emotional Mobility." More on that in a moment.

Bangle went on record as noting that Americans between sixteen and eighteen, an important-to-them demographic group, are increasingly "not bothering to get their drivers' licenses. These folks just don't care to drive, for whatever reason (or perhaps they figure on driving without their licenses...).

I mean, what is the matter with these kids? Don't they know that driving is as important as breathing? Oh, you mean it ISN'T?
/sarcasm

Anyway, Bangle's contention is that the automotive industry must, "...hook them back to the car."

As stunning as Mikael found that statement (and I have to agree), it is, after all, part of the marketing steamroller that is the auto industry. They are fearful of losing even a fraction of a percentage of their market for newer, fancier more expensive machinery with which our inattentive motoring public can continue to wreak havoc on society.

As for "Personal Emotional Mobility," well, yes, many of us are emotionally attached to our modes of transportation. I see evidence of this from time to time, when motorists rather emotionally express their displeasure with my slower-than-theirs mode of transport because I've seemingly cost them hours of their time in transit (knowing, as do most who read this, that it's mere seconds, and those angry motorists will just as easily make up that lost time by going even further above the speed limit in effort to reach their destinations before anyone else). I admit to being somewhat emotional about my choice of transit modes--I LIKE riding a bike. I feel happier about life when I ride instead of drive.

Yeah, Personal Emotional Mobility works for cycling as well as, if not better than for, motoring.


On another note, I enjoyed hearing Jenn the other day, as she struggled to rationalize driving to work instead of cycling. It's a sign that she really does prefer riding at some level. I suspect that she could have seen herself reaching this point in that hypothetical three-or-four-years-ago conversation (the "if someone told you four years ago that you would prefer to ride a bicycle to work instead of driving, what would you say?"), at least far more likely so than if the same conversation told her about riding RAIN in 2010. Still, it's somewhat unlike much of society, and is worth celebrating. Car-free-light, here we come!


Yesterday was the LBC Picnic. Associated with this event were a trio of rides of various distances, as is the norm. I took my Strada this time, as Jenn had some work-related reading she needed to do. It made for a weekend that accounts for about eighty miles on the Strada, which is almost a third of its miles for 2010. That bike is a lot of fun to ride--it's certainly a fast mount and is the fastest bike I've ever owned. That I've not been riding it as much reflects a couple of things: a) that I'm not doing as much club riding as I once did (I have about a thousand club miles for the year at this date), b) most of my club riding is on other bikes (at least a quarter of my club miles this year have been on the Vanguard and the Raleigh since I use those bikes for the New Rider Classes, and I often do club rides with Jenn on the Screamer). It was fun to ride some different roads, even though the small group with whom I was riding opted to re-route our return to Farnsley-Moreman a bit.

The next-to-last meeting of the New Rider Clinics for 2010 is tonight. Next week will be road/written test night. I might do some make-up work with a couple of students the following week, but that will be pretty mild stuff. Summer as we know it is almost over--although you wouldn't know it based on the temperature readings of the last week.