Mark’s Bloomin’ Journal

There have been an awful lot of rental cars for me to drive in recent weeks and in just about as many countries. As the price of fuel soars they become an ever more costly component of the trip, therefore choosing the right one becomes critical to the bottom line. There is clearly a standout motive force and it is outrageous that we are seemingly deprived of the technology that makes it so.

While some of us (like those of us in Portland OR. whose behavior seems insufferably green and enjoy jamming it down reluctant throats) pat our collective selves on the backs and feel super cool for buying Toyota’s Prius or some other hybrid, in reality they provide dismal mileage by comparison to what is available to the world at large outside the US. The fact that we are (kept) in the dark about this and are laboring under the thought that we are heading in the right and righteous direction is absurd. To wit … I picked up a VW Passat wagon the other day in the UK and it effortlessly returned 55mpg while running at freeway speeds seldom seen here unless accompanied by flashing lights and dark glasses. It as easily burbled around country lanes a Hummer could not hope to fit down. If I had driven it with a little less abandon I might have got a solid 60/65 mpg out of it. While these figures may seem startling and other wordly to you they are becoming mid pack in the world out there as the French, Japanese and others launch ever more modern diesels that sip at the parsimonious rate of 75/80 mpg…while going like stink, all the while without the stink of course !

Don’t try kid yourself that these are toy sized cars for two and a purse, with gutless performance and a plume of smoke out the back. The Passat diesel in question runs and pulls stronger than any car I own or have owned with motors so much larger and grossly more thirsty. It will keep up with or soundly beat 95% of anything on our roads. Don’t kid yourself that these are polluting conveyances as they are not…they run far cleaner than our gasoline powered cars and from within the car itself there is nothing to tell you the motivation is coming from a diesel…other than the stunning mid range torque and acceleration! Not to mention the (comfortable) bulge in your wallet that you still get to sit on.

So why are we messing about with batteries which are clearly a poor answer and pose serious environmental problems in manufacture and disposal? The same goes for ethanol, the emphasis on which will surely lead to environmental degradation by removing far too much bio mass from the landscape, absorbing way too much water and man made nutrients as at the same time providing lousy motive power and upsetting the worlds food supply and pricing structure. Sitting out there still is a fuel source, that while declining could be made to stretch so much further, giving breathing room (literally) for us to develop even better, ever cleaner and longer lasting solutions to an energy source needed for transportation in particular. Why or how can we be proud of a fleet average that struggles from both engineering and political perspectives with 20 odd mpg when the vehicles already exist to triple that number at the very least? Just how blind can we remain as at the same time we pay lip service to our fuel consumption, complain about fuel prices and see sections of the economy suffer badly because of such. Oh and of course, don’t forget there is all that concern about the environment. If our current driving/travelling habits remained the same but consumed just one third as much as present…would that not be a good thing?

I know with certainty that if we put the average Jack or Jill in a showroom to make a choice between a hybrid and a diesel of the VW’s ilk the hybrid would never be asked to the dance. I read that Mercedes and now BMW will add more diesel options for ‘09. That is all well and good, but what about the rest of us mere mortals. Bring them on and let us all enjoy that sure to be $4.00 a gallon gas that  can be pressured to eke out 60mpg. We should be enjoying it right now so as to give us a huge competitive edge that has already been lost by those on the other side of the Atlantic where a gallon of the stuff already costs $10.00 courtesy of the tax and spend crowd.

As for my other recent drives, particularly in California the offerings were brand new, supposedly state of the art, pretty close to the most economical on offer and driving speeds were to say the least mundane and the mileages recorded by all models hovered around the 20mpg mark. None offered any more room for man or beast than the VW and none were as quick or good handling. The comment of “that’s just wrong” from a young teen when  viewing our own recorded 17mpg on the ride home from the airport pretty well sums up where we are. The puzzle is why?

As an intersection it may not even exist but as a rather abrupt turning point it certainly does and comes upon one unexpectedly and most inconveniently. Avianca releases me from the fetid confines of the aluminum tube that has made transit from Cartagena to Miami possible. The flight’s terminus seems hostile in comparison to its departure point. The slow, silent, bag lugging shuffle along endless corridors and past various surly check points that take up space and time with nothing more productive in mind than a glare or a sneer at the entrants.

Toes touching the yellow line, passport, permanent resident card, customs declaration neatly and accurately filled out I glance about at fellow travellers with suitably discreet curiosity and not a care in the world much beyond an idle contemplation of why my line always appears to be the slowest of them all and a silent prayer that those now at the booth have been as accurate with their forms as I and we can all move along and get on with the next chapter of a busy day. I am beckoned to approach! Idle contemplation morphs to an immediate and tightly focused understanding, that of having an enemy. (more…)

Sweating as if starring in a commercial for a sports drink…is this town behind its fortified walls. I fair not one drop better sitting in a lovingly, if only modestly refurbished colonial house dating back to the early 1600’s that is at least twenty times longer than it is wide. It is entered by a very large arched doorway, off a narrow street, off a lovely square, where locals are playing board games and chatting as all the while some body part or other keeps time to one or more of the competing latin rhythms wafting around the streets. This house has dark places and only slightly more light places, arches and alcoves, running water in numerous courtyards and ballustrade after ballustrade decorated landing and window. Dark wood louvres cover every window…and all are closed.

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I have just stepped off the Lufthansa flight from Venice to Portland via Frankfurt after fifeteen days of peddling a bike in, over, down, around and damn near under the Dolomites…as fast as was possible. I certainely spent many a day there feeling washed up, wrung out and in having been hung out to dry.

In my mind I am mostly still in Italy, wending my way from one tiny alpine village to another, listening to a myriad church bells marking the passage of time, drinking in the sights and smells of meadows now choked with the autumn crocus and noting the cracks in limestone walls sprouting tiny cyclamen. People appear industrious and gainfully employed in these pastoral settings. Much too busy to be petty.

Awaiting me at home is a mountainous pile of mostly junk mail and unread newspapers. Better it all should be tossed into the recycling bin. In the doing so I catch an article on the front page of the WSJ dated 9/18 and begin to read further. Perhaps it is because I have just spent fifeteen days washing my cycling kit every night and hanging it out to dry from various hotel windows and balconies from Castelfranco to Cles to Cortina d’Ampezzo and many another lovely village, that my attention is captured.

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This is just wrong, this getting up at 3.30AM. No way is this enough sleep…to go anywhere on, let alone PDX airport and then another airport and onto yet another airport somewhere, someplace halfway down the globe. But then I have invited it upon myself as for a few years I have angled for a trip to Quito, especially if it falls during the school year! Delta’s middle seats are no better than awful, especially when the people sitting either side of you ooze both over and under the seat arms and into your already meager space. It really is too bad that at the very last second an alert ticket agent (who, doing the math at five in the morning finds me five months shy of being age enough to take my assigned seat in the exit row…despite my being near six feet tall and far more athletic than the portly sloth now assigned to it). Portland recedes and Atlanta approaches and then comes Quito but only after being treated to a beautiful sunset as we transect the Florida Keys above Islamorada (more…)