_The Cyclist's Manifesto_, Robert Hurst (kindle)

Boy, when people say that political alignments in Colorado in general and Denver in particular are different from the rest of the country are not kidding.

Most of the indications are that Hurst is not a culture-war style conservative, but is a fiscal conservative, and a knee-jerk liberal basher on account of liberals being rich, ignorant elitists out of touch with reality (I'm not saying liberals are -- I'm saying there is evidence in the book to assert that Hurst thinks along these lines). Obviously, I'm going to find that annoying.

Hurst is part of a cohort that grew up pomo (postmodern), and his interpretation of a manifesto is well in line with that aesthetic: self-referential, ironic, darkly humorous primarily by telling you the truth straight in a way that forces the reader to perceive the world as the tilted funhouse that it truly is. I like that. In general, he is careful about what he says and how he says it (none of this more cars than Americans from him -- he gets it right: more privately owned vehicles than registered drivers), altho there are occasional errors, some of which he notes on his website (the comment about the Idaho law on the subject of cyclists, red lights and stop signs, for example), they are not particularly serious. He recognizes both that cycling has dangers, and correctly disentangles who is most at risk (a big minority of bike accidents involve drunken riding, presumably by adults who've already lost their driver's license to the same persistent substance abuse problem; another chunk involve children; most of the fatalities involve cars; most of the got-hurt-but-not-dead do not). I have a lot of respect for someone who can navigate that mess with such crisp precision.

In addition to using Frances' Willard's book about cycling to talk about women and bicycling in the early days, Hurst includes the use of bicycles in war under utility cycling (including how the British lost Singapore, which I'd never heard about) and devotes a chunk of the text to the racism of the League of American Wheelmen and cycling in general, via the story of Major Taylor. I'd _heard_ of Major Taylor and knew he was a racer, and hadn't pursued the tale otherwise; I feel bad about that now. I'm going to be referring to Jackie Robinson from now on as the Major Taylor of baseball. Only fair. It is, of course, always fun to get a giggle out of learning that a major temperance activist enjoyed her experience of ether in the wake of a bicycle accident.

Hurst sets himself apart from the Vehicular Cycling vs. Cyclepaths Everywhere fray, in favor of sharrows (big arrows in the middle of the lane with a bicycle icon, indicating that the lane must be shared with bicycles). *shrug* If he'd gone to the bother of including stories of bicycle boulevards in Portland OR and similar bike/ped/local resident only streets in Vancouver, BC and elsewhere, I might have taken it seriously (especially since traffic calming islands can help prevent the unfamiliar from inadvertently traveling on these roads unless they really are their destination). As it is, it feels like local prejudice: a useful thing, but not the Be All and End All.

Climate Change is never mentioned, altho Hurst goes on for a bit about Peak Oil, using _Twilight in the Desert_ as his main source.

And he gratuitously disses Portland, which I find way past lame, along with his dissing of European city bikes, and European cycling cities as being plodding and boring.

You can't blame Hurst for any of this, tho, really, since he presents himself as unstable, and able only to stay in the ballpark of sanity by lots of exercise (on a bicycle). I _do_ blame Hurst for this ridiculous piece of nonsense:

"In reality, only those of us who consume zero petroleum can preach to everybody else about the evils of oil."

What "reality" is this? Maybe if he'd used "should", or some descriptive modifiers ("reasonably", "ethically", "responsibly", "non-hypocritally", etc., all spring to mind), but even so.

Barring the occasional rhetorical flourish of this nature, however, this is an entertaining and engaging read, written by a bicycle messenger who can accurately repeat stuff he's learned which is saying a whole lot more than it might sound. Should you read it? If you were thinking about reading either of the other two bicycle books I've reviewed recently, but were feeling on the fence, I'd start with this one instead.

ETA: Want to sample the flavor? Try the author's blog. And look at what he named the research file.

http://www.industrializedcyclist.com/index.html

_$20 per gallon_ foolishness

Locations 1040-53

"Carriers you can expect to survive: Lufthansa, British Airways, Air France - KLM, and Japan's All Nippon Airways....Some countries, such as Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Austrial, Ireland, and Italy, will lose their national carriers altogether as foreign airlines take over the transatlantic business-- Continental, Air France, British Airways, and Lufthansa."

I don't get it. KLM is the Netherlands national. It merged with Air France in 2004 and operates as part of a larger consortium including Continental at this point. So what did the above pair of statements mean? The name KLM will go away? He doesn't realize KLM is the Dutch national?

ETA:

Locations 1167-74: "But state schools that depend on out-of-state students will be hurt as well, including the University of Vermont, which draws 65% of its students from out of state."

Uh. Gee. Where to start. Calling the University of Vermont a "state school", while technically true, sort of misses a lot of what UVM is. UVM got invited to become an Ivy (which it turned down), and while a lot of its students are from out of state, they are not from out of region. I do not envision a world in which $8/gallon gas has a significant impact on the ability of UVM to attract the kind of students to which it has grown accustomed. His further examples are pretty silly, too. Kids are limited in college selections now because everyone is broke and borrowed too much and is scared to death and retrenching. The idea that someone would decide not to go far afield to college because they couldn't go home 4x a year (or whatever) neglects how common that was not too many years ago. The idea that people wouldn't move across the country because they'd be away from extended family and unable to afford plane fare to visit neglects, you know, like, how on earth is it that this country had so many white people in it before airplanes were invented.

Yes, people are not moving much right now -- but that happened with cheap gas because the housing market froze hard. If it gets expensive for people to fly to Disneyworld, they can still drive. If he's thinking they can't afford the gas to go to Disneyworld, they can if they swap to high enough mpg figured over total passengers so maybe there might be trains and/or buses involved. When I was a kid, Disneyland attracted people from Seattle. In droves. And they didn't fly.

I'm finding this book unbelievably frustrating. I suspect the author is very young. It's reminding me of that article that suggested that if you couldn't fly across the ocean, the next alternative would be Harry Potter style through-the-fireplace wizardry. As if boats had never carried passengers across the pond.

If this is to be believed, people are indeed switching from the bus in the sky to the bus on the ground:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/07/13/earlyshow/living/travel/main5154463.shtml

ETAYA:

As another $8 effect, our youthful author notes that resort towns will suffer and has an extended discussion of ski towns such as Jackson Hole, and how the resorts there guarantee the airlines who run flights into Vail-Eagle Airport and promise to make up revenue shortfalls if the folk don't show up. "In a world of $8 gasoline, however, guaranteeing those flights will be a risky play, as the airlines will likely demand $800 a seat or more."

A quick trip to google confirms what I suspected: 50% off sales on multi-million dollar homes in Telluride, Vail, etc. in auctions designed to get the totally cratered real estate market. More notably, it confirms something else. Tourism is not and has not been the "No. 1 area industry" (location 1207-15). Real estate was. It didn't take $8/gallon gasoline to wipe out the resort towns (and, I might add, you can get some significant discounts on season passes at all of them this year, more than enough to make up for whatever increase might happen to your plane fare, and I bet the hotel rooms are going begging, too).

Locations 1200-? whine on about how DisneyWorld will close with $8/gallon gas, which is pretty funny. I _know_ people were driving their 12 mpg max SUVs down the coast when gas cost a buckish. There's no reason you couldn't drive a Fit down there when gas cost $8/gallon; the fuel cost of that trip either way is quite minimal compared to the overall cost of the trip.

Don't believe me? From here, it's about 1300 miles. 2600 RT/44mpg (the Fit when R. drives) = about 60 gallons of gas. At $8/gallon, that's under $500. Even in the _cheapest_ flight years, you'd be hard pressed getting 4 airplane tickets from Logan or Manchester to Orlando RT for $500 (altho there were times it could be done).

$8/gallon gas wipes stuff out because people's fuel budget grows and wipes out what they can afford to spend on other things. It wipes out casual dining chains before it wipes out Disneyworld. _We know this_. Because we already saw the effect at $4/gallon gas. I'm utterly mystified at what this guy is picking for what goes away when.

I've driven to Las Vegas

More than once, in fact. I left Las Vegas (in a car. that I was driving) around noon once and drove home to Seattle, arriving the next morning around 9 a.m. or so. I did take a couple naps in the car along the way. (I will further add that that is not the only time I drove around 1200 miles in a single driving "day".) So when _$20 per gallon_ says:

"Almost nobody, save a few L.A. gambling junkies, drives to Vegas. And the five-hour drive from Southern California won't be too appealing, either, when filling the tank costs $150."

I start feeling a little pissy.

I think a lot more people drive from LA to Las Vegas than he realizes. And in any event, driving 265 measly miles is no great shakes and with an appropriate vehicle selection, shouldn't cost more than $100 RT. And I'm betting there's bus service.

http://www.luxbusamerica.com/index.php

Why yes! There is.

This guy is _really_ annoying me. Las Vegas _is_ hurting really, really, really bad. But they're hurting for the same reason everyone else is hurting. And it does not have that much to do with steep gas.

Math, we love it; also, modest amounts of driving

Locations 1619-25 of _$20 per gallon_:

"For a family driving a modest amount, say 15,000 miles a year on two cars, and driving vehicles that do well on overall fuel economy, say 30 mpg, their annual fuel costs would be $10,000."

This 15K a year has shown up both earlier in the book as an expectable amount of driving for brand-new-car owners in India and China, and it has shown up earlier in my blog as apparently what some people think of as a typical amount of driving to do in the course of the year. Now me (and remember, I've driven 1200 miles in a day. More than once), I think that's wholly unreasonable. I think 12K is a more reasonable number, and the one I recollect from my younger days. We put less than 12K/year on our two vehicles. Combined. But wait! He doesn't mean 15K combined! He means 15K _each_! OMG!

Well, you know. Sell one car, replace it with a really decent mileage vehicle that you preferentially drive, cut your mileage as much as you can (walk, bike, public transit, eliminate trips, order online, carpool, vanpool, work 4 tens, you know what everyone did when we hit $4, right?). If you can, sell one car and don't replace it -- the savings on insurance, taxes, maintenance etc. will help _a lot_.

If people did all that stuff at $4, why would he be treating 15K/yr driving as normal ongoing behavior at $10? I _just do not get it_.