I'm a Car Guy...
always have been always will be. I grew up loving cars. My father was in the auto industry & raced cars. I own a cool vintage car, love road trips & the interstate highway system. I actually like driving though not so much in the city. Who really does anyway?
I'm also a cyclist and have been since my youth in the 1970's. I worked in bike shops & as a bike mechanic. This year I'll end up riding over 8000 miles. Again. I raised my sons to be avid cyclists. One works in a bike shop & is an intern at Chainlink. The other refuses to get a drivers license.
So am I Schizophrenic? Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde? Am I sleeping with the enemy? Can you support Palestinian statehood & Israel?
I've been a member of CL since we numbered in the hundreds & I've seen it all on this forum so if you must flame me try & be creative.
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Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Jeff Schneider on -
Cars are great tools, and can be great art/design/engineering. I grew up loving them, too. I just really hate not having the choice NOT to use one; I hate the gross OVERuse of cars that goes on in this country. But the engineering, the history of cars is just very cool.
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Permalink Reply by in it to win it 8.0 mi on -
My wife and I took a road trip throughout the Southeast this Summer. Was great! We went to Asheville, NC; Charleston, NC; Savannah, GA; Orlando, FL; Atlanta, GA; then back home to Chicago, IL.
What fun; and 2,700 miles together on a road trip.
Our "2nd" home is at her mom's in Orlando. Buried deep under packing blankets in the back of our X3 was her Trek Navigator that we were taking to our "2nd" home to complete our stock of bikes in Orlando. Now we have enough bikes on both ends to enjoy whenever we wish.
Of course, my enjoyment here in Chicago is riding to and from work every day. Beats the hell out of driving into the loop!
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Permalink Reply by James BlackHeron on -
$10/gallon is around the corner.
Cars are transportation to me. If I want performance I get on my motorcycle. No cage can come close to even a cheap motorcycle in the price ranges I can afford. Motos are dangerous too so those needing to scratch that urge should get on the track. Speed demons and stuntars on bikes (or cars for that matter) are the bane of modern civilization. Get on a track or stay home, bozos.
That said, I know a thing or two about autos and have done nearly all my own work on my cars (and motorcycles) for years. Cars are an expensive, resource-wasting, people-killing/maiming technology. (motorcycles too) It has it's place -but the price is high on both individuals and society. There really isn't a lot to love about cars. I do like being able to jump in my old Camry with 326k on it and driving it 3-4 states away without having to worry about the fact that no trains/planes go to where I want to go. But that's about all I use mine for these days. Last year I drove under 3,000 miles in mine.
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Permalink Reply by Duane Waller on -
James, I too think of them as strictly transportation now. Strangely, when I began work at the antique auto place, I loved cars and everything about them. But as time wore on, I got really tired of cars (and their fanatic owners). The only cars I find fascinating anymore are older, more unique automobiles. I was lucky enough to be able to have worked on this one, Dean Martin's 1962 Dual-Ghia coupe. The car was sent to us to ready it for auction. It still had the plaque on the dashboard from Dual Motors stating it was Dean's, and it still had it's original 7-speaker radio! 7! That's crazy for 1962. There were also latches built into the back seats that held leather suitcases.
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Permalink Reply by Michael B on -
Wow. Here's mine:
1970 Mercedes 280SL
Duane Waller said:James, I too think of them as strictly transportation now. Strangely, when I began work at the antique auto place, I loved cars and everything about them. But as time wore on, I got really tired of cars (and their fanatic owners). The only cars I find fascinating anymore are older, more unique automobiles. I was lucky enough to be able to have worked on this one, Dean Martin's 1962 Dual-Ghia coupe. The car was sent to us to ready it for auction. It still had the plaque on the dashboard from Dual Motors stating it was Dean's, and it still had it's original 7-speaker radio! 7! That's crazy for 1962. There were also latches built into the back seats that held leather suitcases.
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Permalink Reply by Peenworm Grubologist on -
I'm not necessarily gonna jump on someone just for having a car, but the suggestion that you need a car if you have kids is gonna be a problem.
AM said:Besides, some of us have kids and other members of the family that aren't able to hop on a bike and ride 10 miles for transportation purposes.
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Permalink Reply by GabeW (not the other Gabe) on -
Cars are expensive, but not necessarily any more expensive than any other hobby that one might be passionate about. There are plenty of cycling enthusiasts with more invested in their bike stable than I have in my garage. Of course I'm not talking about someone who thinks they need a SUV to commute on the highway everyday to get to work and walmart and then pay a mechanic for everything that breaks. And I'm not talking about someone investing in an antique with pedigree or history, although that can be done cheaply too. My friend has a ferrari for less than it costs to own a new hyundai. I'm no common example and neither is he, but it was the same price for me to drive to work (gas and insurance included) as a CTA monthly pass. Now that it's going up, driving is cheaper for me from Evanston to the loop. And if I'm smart about when I go I have a very pleasant cruise up lakeshore without traffic. I get as much joy out of the activity of driving that route as I do riding the path in to work. My maintenance costs are the same whether I bike or take transit since I'm pushing the car hard other times on a track.
For me there is a huge community aspect to it. I have two kinds of friends now - lifelong/old friends, and subaru owners. Rick called it a scooby (common in UK, subie is more often used here but if you like F1 then you're obviously more worldly, haha), not many cars have established nick-names. It's men and women of all ages and our kids and parents too. Plenty of female teams in the Rally America series, and often times husband/wife drivers/navigators or navigators/drivers. And no offense, but the atmosphere at car events (the ones I go to - club meets, stage rallyes, TSD rallyes, scca rallyx and autox,) have been more welcoming than cycling group rides, swap meets, and crits that I've gone to, or at best equal.
As for safety, if I can thread a car between two orange cones while at the limit of grip and often times just a little past that, pushing the car on a moist, recently disqed, soy bean field right after harvest then there's absolutely NO reason why anyone would run into any kind of incident on the road. Cars are quite capable of being kept in control at high speed, so low speed traffic situations should never get ugly. Drivers ruin it. The last time I did bike the drive I saw more ambulances and vehicle to vehicle collisions in those few hours than my entire career of commuting to and from work in my car on that same bit of road. Congestion, excitement, and distraction cause accidents. I actually think that if there was more of a car racing culture here that the roads would be safer. When you know what you're doing, where to do it, and get to do it, then the desire to do it in the street goes away as your awareness of how a car at speed behaves goes up. Our culture is that of status, not performance. Which is evident when you go to a scca event and the loud built up "tuner" cars finish behind the guy with a fairly stock looking POS he picked up at the junk yard and just tightened up a bit, then drove the wheels off of.
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Permalink Reply by James BlackHeron on
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^^^^What Gabe said^^^^
The same goes for motorcycles. Racing a motorcycle on the track or off-road dirt bikes is a great hobby and doesn't have to be any more expensive than many other hobbies.
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Permalink Reply by Kevin Wright on
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Michael, I suggest you think more about motorcycles. I grew up a car guy and still am, but I learned to love motorcycles in my late teens and am now a certified instructor for the MSF. I also love bikes. There is an uneasy relationship between bicyclists and car drivers. Most people absolutely despise bicyclists. It's a fevered and pure hatred and I'm sometimes afraid to tell people I bike. But then on the other end you have the people like the commenters on this thread who think cars are the devil and want everyone who owns a car to perish in a fire. What I like about motorcycles is that instead of being disliked by one group or the other you can simply be hated by BOTH groups. It has some of the best aspects of bicycling (being outside, maneuverability, lower eco impact) and the best of cars (fast, not as much work as cycling, can make it home after a 14 hour day when your legs and feet are dead to the world). It's also really cheap. A good used bike will cost you $2000, insurance is about $180 per year, and you get amazing MPG.
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Permalink Reply by Barry T on -
I love bikes and am an avid cyclist (over 8300 miles this year so far) and also a car guy with a 1966 GTO convertible 389 ci tri power with 4 speed
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Permalink Reply by El Dorado on
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I have learned to appreciate the gift of driving & automobiles. Having my drivers license suspended/revoked for nearly a decade due to a "a few' DUI's, I was forced into the world of biking. Surprising, I continue to enjoy commuting at times by bike. Oh, and I stay off the booze also.
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Permalink Reply by Nicholas Tkaczuk on -
Eight-thousand miles a year on a Bike? You're definately not schizophrenic. You can be many other things; car guy, motorcycle across south america guy, even stamp collector guy. But anyone who travels 8000 mile on a bike is most certainly a bike guy.
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