That's it, I'm done.

Yah, but then you're going to want longer range, more power, lighter batteries...

You may be broken, but you're far from done. :)

As electric scooter dealer I would think you already ride electric??
What is the winter like in your state?
MC

I see that a lot in San Diego, more people on bicycles.

What puzzles me is if other areas of the country are like San Diego where I'm seeing a big drop in the amount of cars on the road, then why are gas prices still going up? We must have dropped our gasoline use by a significant amount, and we are the biggest users, so a cut back by the USA should be reflected in the prices. The only thing I can think of is speculators buying oil futures are bidding the prices up.

Deron.

I see that a lot in San Diego, more people on bicycles.

What puzzles me is if other areas of the country are like San Diego where I'm seeing a big drop in the amount of cars on the road, then why are gas prices still going up?

Retirement funds are dumping losing stocks and investing in oil futures since they think they are almost as good as gold at this point.

China's population has also discovered cheap cars now and is approaching the one-car-per person (instead of per family) "american" standard.

Gas might drop back to $3 someday but I doubt we'll ever see it below that - the public has accepted it too much and the corporations will take advantage of it, even if their costs drop.

Next we gotta worry about "peak water", sigh.

...Next we gotta worry about "peak water", sigh....

Peak Everything: Waking Up to the Century of Declines goes into this in excruciating detail.

The peak oil paradigm also applies to other resources. Water, farm land, uranium, natural gas, coal, iron, etc...

I think there's a deeper issue at hand. That so many of our things are derived from a destructive pattern. What I mean is the pattern of a) extract raw material, b) turn it into a product, c) throw it away when done with the gizmo ... This is a destruction pattern, because it's about destroying raw materials because "throw it away" doesn't consider any form of reuse.

e.g. once you've burned gasoline how can you reuse it? You can't, because it's been destructed.

The natural world is full of constructive patterns that don't involve destruction. The natural world reuses everything. An animal or a plant dies and there are a zillion creatures who come along and reuse every part of that dead creature. Somehow the natural world survived very well for zillions of years without getting to a point where it created its own destruction.

Well, can't exactly agree with one of those statements. Nothing in our world is ever destroyed. It simply changes form. That's a very big misconception in our society and it leads to illusions about alot of things. The gasoline that you burn changes into heat energy, other gases, etc. Just wanted to make that correction. ;-)

Gushar

Very true. It seems to be man that likes to convert things into a form that is useless to man or nature. We just love combustion. We'll burn it all eventually, but for now we just burn stuff that is (was) cheap. Then we will move on to the next cheapest, untill all the carbon is in the atmosphere. Hopefully some of the burning will be done to make solar colectors and windmills.

...Gas might drop back to $3 someday ....

Boy the optimists sure don't quit do they?

UK: 8.62 / gallon
SPain and Germany 10 - 15 % above that ....

What makes you think we aren't facing the same fate?

One more question:

Doesn't it puzzle you that the germans and dutch can pay almost 9 bucks a gallon, pay a top income tax of 56 %, a sales tax of 17 % --- and still smile??

The Mighty Dollar has lost it's "Internal Buying Power" - the only reason we still can afford gadgets is China.
The housing market tells another portion of this sad tale.

The Oil Guys are going out of business - but they take ALL of our money with them - smart huh?
Then they can come back as renewable energy companies and earn even more. (Sounds apocalyptic? Yup.)

I no longer care what the price of gas is. :)

Update: the popping sound is not the crank bearings, but the bearings in the pedals. I also found out that I cannot remove the bearings from these pedals because there is no nut on the end to remove - the zarkin thing is like a giant rivet. So now I have to go find replacement pedals.

You could try to press some grease into the pedals, that sometimes works.

Mr. Mik