All my life I’ve been amused with Virginia’s road signs “speed limit enforced by aircraft”. It’s one of those signs which makes me wish I were a cartoonist or animator. Instead I’ll have to stick to written word. I think the signs should be appended to read “speed limit enforced by aircraft…because if our plane can catch you then you were really flying !”
Category: Travel
Megabuddies
Megabuddies
Notes to megabus passengers
Notes for megabus passengers: morning arrivals require sunscreen and Tilley hats, both left at house.
Robotic cars now
http://www.interpretthis.org/2014/05/30/the-end-of-driving
Today’s post on robotic cars
Google Self-driving Cars to be Safest on the Road
Bring on our robotic overlords — self-driving cars are needed now!
When I enthusiastically talk about the death of personal transportation, my friends wrinkle their brow, squint their eyes, and declare, "I’ll never give up my car!" I will! I’m ready now. I would much rather open an app on my iPhone and schedule a car to arrive at the house at a certain time. Say, 9am. But I dillydally until 10am. That’s okay. The car is billing me. And in the long run, that bill will be far less than the cost and stress of ownership. The car will take me anywhere I want to go even if that is across the country. I won’t be concerned with filling it up with whatever magic makes it go. (gas? electricity? tired mice? I don’t care.) Never again will I have to schedule maintenance, lose a Saturday to sitting in the mechanic’s lounge drinking bad coffee while watching Fox News and having discussions with people I’ll never see again, or worry about how I’m going to pay for whatever vehicular madness is destine to befall me during next month’s lean period "Sir, your combobulator is defective and we have to send it to Pennsylvania and we needed to add 300 gallons of water to your tires and I have this great coupon which brings your bill down to only umpteenquadrillon dollars." Anyone that has ever used Uber can appreciate the means by which travel will be handled in the near (yes NEAR) future. A car pulls up, you get in, it takes you somewhere, you get out. No currency exchange. And no driver!
Infrastructure will change. Imagine no longer needing traffic lights, road signs, or lines on the roads. Roads can narrow and in many cases be eliminated completely. The municipal savings will be tremendous!
Additionally, parking lots will go away. We simply will not need parking lots when your car will always drop you off at the front door of your destination. Imagine your shopping mall’s parking lot becoming a wooded nature trail…with shopping in the center.
The other thing I have said in describing autonomous vehicles is that the configuration will change. Specifically I’ve said the car of the future will have a round table (popup from the floor possibly) and the chair will all spin to face the interior of the car. In this way, the passengers can see each other, do business, play games, converse, and relax. There is no need to see what is happening outside. For that matter, we could make the windows go away. Google has shared my vision. Their latest rendition of the autonomous car eliminates the steering wheel and the control pedals. I can’t wait until these are the primary means of transportation!
Of course, with scientists saying that they can convert light to matter within the next year, the car may be dead. Bring on the transporter beam!
Follow-up commentary: In answer to:
So it comes down to comparing the time it takes to walk to your car in a parking lot versus waiting for a robot to come pick you up. How much is that convenience worth? Less in dense metropolitan areas where it’s impossible (or really expensive) finding a place to park."
I answered:
In theory, there will never be more than a few minutes way, like Uber.
For those living in rural areas, some planning ahead may be in order…the trade off for living away from the city. So instead of having a vehicle in under 5 minutes, it may take an hour.
Just like the challenge we face with extending broadband to rural areas, this model may flounder outside of metropolitan areas. Perhaps we will see outliers continue to own personal transportation for which they will drive to the extremities of Metropolis where they will switch for a robotic car. BUT what I suspect will really happen is that the robotic cars will use the same predictive algorithms that Amazon is going to use for same day shipping to make sure a car is near the rural place of need. So if rural home 401 farm st. always orders a car on Wednesday morning why not go ahead and send one before it is requested? If 401 farm st doesn’t call that car someone nearby is likely to need it. Also I suspect the maintenance and storage facility for these vehicles will be in rural areas serving a dual purpose of warehousing outside the space of the city and providing faster deployment in those rural communities.
Then an hour later Techcrunch published "Uber Confirms ‘Record Breaking’ Fundraising, Interest In Driverless Ubers"
Tron…now!
I’ve been watching Zero Motorcycles since 2008. I’m jonesing for EV motorcycle in a bad way and this video didn’t help diminish my desires. Matter of fact, I’m wanting one more than ever now!
China Mulls Building High Speed Line to the United States
China now owns so much of the United States that they are considering building a high speed rail from China to the US to be able to check on their investment.
Yes, you heard correctly. The United States cannot build a high speed rail across its own country, TN cannot build a high speed rail from Knoxville to Chattanooga, yet China is considering crossing multiple continents and countries with a high speed rail. Once that is complete, a short leap across the Middle East to the Chunnel and we will be able to travel the world by train! How’s that for an Oriental Express Agatha!
The proposed journey will start from China’s northeast region, cross Siberia to Bering Strait, and run across the Pacific Ocean by undersea tunnel to reach Alaska, from Alaska to Canada, then on to its final destination, the US. To cross Bering Strait will require approximately 200km undersea tunnel, the technology, which is already in place will also be used on Fujian to Taiwan high-speed railway tunnel. The project will be funded and constructed by China. … With average speed of 350km per hour, passengers will complete the 1,3000km journey and reach the US in less than two days.
[Source, ChinaDaily, China mulls high-speed train to US: report]
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/business/2014-05/08/content_17493399.htm
Seeking advice on using US phones in Europe
To my European friends and my more traveled friends, my son heads off to London (7 days) and Paris (2 days) this weekend. My next quandary is cell phone. My plan currently allows my son unlimited texting and sending of pictures over SMS internationally. However, it does not include data or voice. What I learned today was that if he received a phone call (and doesn’t even answer it), he incurs international roaming charges.
So, do I:
- make him leave his phone at home?
- let him take his phone but remove the sim card so he is forced to use wifi?
- Have him jump into an EE store and buy a 30 day prepaid phone? I presume the tour group isn’t going to stop to waste an hour in an EE store letting everyone buy prepaid phones. — does the airport have these in vending machines?
- Beg a friend or relative to drop a prepaid phone by his hotel?
Are there other options?
1st person to post a Liam Neeson meme gets 10 points.
Trials and tribulations of a EV owner
Does waking up and realizing you forgot to charge the car cause anxiety? No. It just means that I may plan my day a little differently, or add a visit to a park with a charger. There are plenty of miles left of the current charge. (pun intended)
Whoa! Knoxville has public transportation?!
For the better part of 13 years, I worked from home. Prior to that I had worked for a company that had an exercise room complete with showers so I would brave the Knoxville roads of Gleason and Dean Hill without sidewalks or even shoulders and ride my bike to work. It wasn’t terribly long lived but biking was certainly an option. In January 2010, I took a six week contract locally which required me to be in an office downtown. After purchasing a wardrobe, I began commuting from Rocky Hill to the campus area of Knoxville. I considered the KAT, k-trans, the Knoxville busing system but KAT had recently removed the route that came within a half mile of my house. To get to a bus stop, I’d have to walk an hour (3 miles) with half that distance having no sidewalks or shoulders. Knoxville is extremely unfriendly to bicycles and pedestrians.
Our cars all died. Over the years we have gone from a multicar family to a single car family then burst to a three car family and are now back down to one functioning vehicle with three dead vehicles (plus one dead motorcycle).
Yesterday, I was supposed to take the van to the wife during lunch and she would return me to work. Instead I brought it to her just before her appointment and my daughter’s activity. She implored me just to drive back to work and she’d make phone calls to find a way home. Instead, I picked up a bus schedule, scrounged a dollar bill, four dimes, a nickel, and five pennies, and within minutes I was sitting on a KAT bus. For the record, buses will accept more money than the fare ($1.50) but gives change as bus credit so a $5 bill gets you 3.3 rides and they don’t take credit cards. I asked the driver instructions on how to depart the bus near my destination and she to me when I should pull the cord (which rings the driver). The ride was comfortable and relaxing. The other riders were sane and only toward the end of the trip did two passengers come in stinking of cigarette smoke. Twenty minutes later I was departing the bus. KAT only drops passengers at official stops so I found myself with a bit of a hike to get to the office. The walk was 10 minutes. $1.50 and thirty minutes traveled me from West Knoxville to campus without the wear and tear, gas, or tension of driving my own car.
Overall, I have not been on a KAT bus in over a decade or two and believed that it just wasn’t a viable means of transportation due to lack of stops and infrequency of pickups but I found that the commute wasn’t much different than driving myself. If anything, I may become a commuter who drives to the mall then rides the bus downtown. Hopefully KAT will extend a route down Northshore and the bus will become an even more viable option.
Teach them automotive maintenance young
My 16 year old son is driving now. Some good friends cut him a deal. They gave him a 1991 Ford Tempo GL and, in exchange, he drives their son to school. The only problem is the Ford Tempo isn’t running right now. The radiator is too gunked up. When I was 16, you could have given me the biggest lemon in the world and I would have spent every waking moment cleaning it, tuning it, staring at it, and driving it to Timbuktu. My 16 year old son doesn’t seem interested in the car in the least. Before we knew this car was coming into the family, I offered to lethelp him repair the Jeep but he wasn’t interested. This is not limited to my son. The 16 year old populace, at least those we know, seem genuinely disinterested in driving. I think we need to rename them Generation Xbox.
So, I set out to replace the radiator myself. And, surprisingly, ended up with a great helper. My seven year old stepped up, and single-handedly removed the air filter and all the connecting pieces.
And that lollipop is not cigarette inspired. Just a coincidence, but funny!
Sending her to Costa Rica
My ten year old girl has this wonderful opportunity to travel to Costa Rica. This is where she will be:
