When I moved to this little town with my itty tiny yard, I sold the Murray rider and got an electric mower. It gets the job done, but it tends to burn out the switches fairly regularly.
Electric weed trimmer too - works great. Generating and transmission efficiencies aside, it's still way more energy efficient to use electric grass cutters than gas powered.
Next step: kill the entire yard and reseed with buffalo grass. It only grows about 6" high and then stops - or so I'm told. No cutting required. Gotta love that.
Muhahahahahahaaaaa! It's the beginning of the end! Muhahahahahahhaaa!
Seriously, these prices are getting crazy. Maybe we will luck out in the future and end up with a fuel glut and the prices will drop back down to $1.59 per gallon.
Weird, it shot way up in the morning and then went down later. It is still high ($134), just not that high. I bet we break another all-time high this week.
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*this is only bicycle trips that directly replace car trips.
Next step: kill the entire yard and reseed with buffalo grass. It only grows about 6" high and then stops - or so I'm told. No cutting required. Gotta love that.
Not quite, but close. I have a patch (mixed with other types of native/low water grasses) out back, in an area that's gradually getting converted to something like a shortgrass prairie. It does stay short, but old stems tend to mat up, so it doesn't really green up until about June. I will probably go to running the mower (electric, of course) across it once a year, in the fall - can't do it in spring because of all the bulbs &c. Or maybe just invite the neighbors' horses over for a snack.
sheep are looking like a good lawn care investment, then eat them at the end of the season.. th city councle would probably fine me .. but id have my grass mowed like they insist and id have some food for the long cold winter
Weird, it shot way up in the morning and then went down later. It is still high ($134), just not that high. I bet we break another all-time high this week.
The oscillation will get stronger before the crash. Obviously the market does not know the state of supply and demand every 15 minutes. They are speculating.
yeah and I heard a comment on MSNBC that OPEC was saying somthing about $170 a barrel in the near future..
wow the CRX at 50+ mpg is looking like its going to be a gas guzzler at these prices.. Maybe ill need to do a enclosed 50cc moped.. that will bring my use down to about 3-4 gallons a week.. my commute would double in time at 30 mph.. but $10 gas doesn't look to far off in the future..
And far too much of the oil comes from unstable regions of the world, which have historically been even more unstable than they are right now. I heard one talking head mention that at any time we should expect oil prices to rise 25% in one day. All that needs to happen is a pipeline bombing, a war between two or more producers or a refinery shutdown.
wow the CRX at 50+ mpg is looking like its going to be a gas guzzler at these prices.. Maybe ill need to do a enclosed 50cc moped.. that will bring my use down to about 3-4 gallons a week.. my commute would double in time at 30 mph.. but $10 gas doesn't look to far off in the future..
Maybe a 50cc swap in the CRX isn't such a bad idea? Just put up with never going faster than 30-mph ever again.
I still don't see any electric cars on the roads yet (but I saw an electric scooter/bike downtown today . Man those things are silent!).
yeah and I heard a comment on MSNBC that OPEC was saying somthing about $170 a barrel in the near future..
wow the CRX at 50+ mpg is looking like its going to be a gas guzzler at these prices.. Maybe ill need to do a enclosed 50cc moped.. that will bring my use down to about 3-4 gallons a week.. my commute would double in time at 30 mph.. but $10 gas doesn't look to far off in the future..
I don't think there will be $10 gas without some serious inflation. With the price of oil where it is now there has to be some serious alternatives coming online in the next couple years. Oil Shale, coal gasification, Oil sands were all profitable in the $60-$80/barrel range. Demand cant go on forever either despite what the media says, electric cars are very much a reality, third world demand may just demand electric cars instead with cost of operation of gas versions getting insane and abundant electricity generating sources available locally.
I am not saying oil will be as cheap as it was last year or anything, but it is going to have to stabilize somewhere, sometime.
I'll have to echo what Duffman just said. Sorry to say, above these prices corn ethanol actually saves money, but fortunately alternative sources of ethanol will very likely become a reality. Oil sands were abandoned as an option until recent years, but now production is cost-justified. Lithium batteries will become cheaper to make every year, and once their life-cycles have ended, recycling will accelerate the decline of prices. I just hope solar technology can make solar energy so cheap that you'd have to be a fool to neglect it.
well see $6 a gallon by the end of this summer .. mark my words.. i hope to hell I'm wrong.. but i seriously doubt it.
6 dollar a gallon gas is $170 a barrel crude price or pretty darn close..
I have been researching these little 50 cc engines you put on your bicycle.. great MPG 150+ but cant ride a bike in the MN winters.. especially for 27 miles to work.. need something enclosed.. At least I still got veggie oil flowing fast.. but int he winters this becomes a serious pain in the butt, it becomes shortening in cold weather.. shortening doesn't work to well even in a heated system.
well see $6 a gallon by the end of this summer .. mark my words.. i hope to hell I'm wrong.. but i seriously doubt it.
6 dollar a gallon gas is $170 a barrel crude price or pretty darn close..
I have been researching these little 50 cc engines you put on your bicycle.. great MPG 150+ but cant ride a bike in the MN winters.. especially for 27 miles to work.. need something enclosed.. At least I still got veggie oil flowing fast.. but int he winters this becomes a serious pain in the butt, it becomes shortening in cold weather.. shortening doesn't work to well even in a heated system.
I think we have nearly topped out for the year. I think a 30 cent increase is possible this summer but that's it (unless there is a bad hurricane hitting the gulf).
But, I am generally very cautious in my predictions and with how crazy oil is now anything is possible.
My prediction on 1/1/08 was US avg gas would top out at $3.80/gallon during the summer.
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*this is only bicycle trips that directly replace car trips.
Oil sands were abandoned as an option until recent years, but now production is cost-justified...
It's unfortunate the environment gets the first beating. Oil sands scream "We give up. Conservation? Who cares, this is survival!" I just wonder how bad it's going to get before it gets better.
In my opinion, when ANWR goes...it snowballs.
Oil is above $143/bbl now. I'm sticking to my prediction of $160/bbl by labor day. I hope I'm wrong.
When oil companies think about deep-ocean drilling, removing oil from sand, and drilling in volatile ecosystems, you know something is amuck. And it's not good .
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