I tried explaining this to my friends and they give me the dumbest looks. I hate being driven. Not being in control frightens me, especially when my stupid ass friends are driving. But if I’m driving it’s all good.
Some people are just really bad drivers. I find myself constantly stomping down on invisible pedals when I ride shottie with my gf. Just thinking about it has my pulse racing, no joke. When we first started hanging out I don’t think she understood how into bikes I was. A guy was ahead of her on bike and she sped up I guess to let him know he was in her way then yelled something like “why is he even in the road?”. I almost got out of the car and stopped dating her immediately. Their confusion is probably from the thought that bikes are inherently more dangerous since you’re not surrounded by metal.
I stomp on imaginary brake pedals too!
same here, i drive a lot for work and im really used to how i drive and how close i get to other cars and how long i give myself to stop etc
+1 I’ve only commuted to my current job a couple times, I had to work up the courage. It’s 14 miles each way, with a nice stretch of riding on the shoulder of a California highway. But once I finally did it I realized how nice it is. Well, the ride TO work is nice. The ride home has kinda kicked my ass since I work manual labor and my body is just tired by the time I’m done.
Coworkers are all flabbergasted. A few live less than a mile from work and don’t even think about walking/riding there. And I’ve had a few offers to throw it in the back of their truck and get a lift back. But these are the same people who, on their break, will drive 2 parking lots over to get a snack from the gas station, instead of walking. It’s like 200 feet total…[/quote]
People where I work are like that too. They’ll jump in the car to hit up subway a block away. They offered me rides pretty much every day in the winter, and couldn’t understand why I would ride my bike throughout it. I sort of look at work as a break between rides.
i used to think I was a good driver. And I used to think my ex was not. I was wrong. I’m a horrible driver. They don’t let me drive no more.
Hit me up. I don’t mind.
As for commuting via bicycle, it’s one of the best things about my present job. My prior gig had me driving 40 miles one-way across a bridge in the SF bay area. Gas and tolls for commuting was around $400 per month.
I haven’t got my license, and I now refuse to get it. Some people think that driving is the first path to “freedom” and for me not to accept this makes people think I’m weird. I just found a different type of freedom through a bicycle.
I also see soo many of my (bad) cycling habits transferring to my driving, I’d probably end up being a shocking driver anyway.
Incidentally, a similar thread could be made about people who only ride and don’t drive cars in which I could complain about people’s inability to move stuff around. I’ve a lot of friends, many that don’t drive, and a lot of them with aspirations of doing some form of “art” or other that necessitates moving stuff from point A to B, where point B is usually some place in the desert or some hippie camp-out or something.
If anything, your average backwater redneck motherfucker with the pickup truck has at the very least mastered the logistical details of hauling things around. I’ll leave it up to the reader to decide whether that’s laudable or not.
That’s why I’ve got the xtracycle^^^
This maybe a widely known fact, but just remember that the vegetable oil has to be used in order for it to make car fuel. The frying alters the chemical structure of the oil in a very similar way to how biodiesel is produced from plant oils.
Back on topic, I’ve often gotten offers of a ride home from this bar that I like to frequent when we are heading back to my place after happy hour. We were settling the check and I told one girl that I didn’t want a ride because I would beat her back to my house. A person from her car had just gone to the bathroom and I started packing up my stuff to leave giving me about a 2 minute head start. Since the MUP is a much more direct path back to my house, I was sitting on my couch with a beer by the time they got there. I won a 12-pack from that bet.
[quote=halbritt]Incidentally, a similar thread could be made about people who only ride and don’t drive cars in which I could complain about people’s inability to move stuff around. I’ve a lot of friends, many that don’t drive, and a lot of them with aspirations of doing some form of “art” or other that necessitates moving stuff from point A to B, where point B is usually some place in the desert or some hippie camp-out or something.
If anything, your average backwater redneck motherfucker with the pickup truck has at the very least mastered the logistical details of hauling things around. I’ll leave it up to the reader to decide whether that’s laudable or not.[/quote]
By size my hauling order is as follows: edit:Fanny pack, Mess bag, Ortlieb, Porteur rack, Bike trailer, Any combo of those, In-law’s F350.
Mention biodiesel and the people start coming out of the woodwork with all sorts of crackpot theories. You want to know what happens with oil when stuff is fried in it? Google the following terms, “frying oil surfactant”. You’ll find some neat chemistry info.
Biodiesel is produced by the transesterification of vegetable oil regardless of whether it’s virgin oil or waste oil. It can even be made with animal fats. Here’s a link, go read:
The only thing that frying really does is create a filtering challenge for removing particulate matter as well as trapped surfactants which bind water. Making biodiesel from virgin feedstock is questionably ethical. Making biodiesel from WVO is a damned good idea and represents a conservationist attitude. In either case, while biodiesel is a cool eco-friendly option for some people, it’s not a sustainable option for a significant portion of the population. There’s not enough arable land in the US to produce enough vegetable oil to offset our petroleum consumption. Even if there were enough land, there’s the ethical issue of using a food product as fuel.
Also, the motivation for my earlier comment comes from my experiences with folks touting a car-free lifestyle that really just weren’t capable or responsible enough to maintain a car (fuel it, insure it, register it, pay citations, arrange for parking, etc). Car-free is awesome if it’s a conscious choice, however I might be annoyed if you call me when you need to move to a new apartment. Some folks truly and honestly want to be car-free and can devote the effort they might otherwise spend on a car to addressing the challenges of being car-free and self-sufficient like Jake or Rusty.
Maybe not if I pay gas plus some, make you dinner and supply your fav brew.
What is needed to turn something like canola oil into biodiesel is esterification in the first place. Canola oil is mostly oleic acid which is un-esterified. The high heat that things are fried at in the oil causes all kinds of free alcohols in the food (of which there is a list as long as my arm) the esterify the acidic portion of the fatty acid.
To make biodiesel all the do is take things like canola oil and esterify them with methanol or ethanol, which ever they have lying around. Why they need to esterify the fatty acid to make it work as biodiesel is an engineering question, and I’m a chemist. Apparently here is the answer: linky
Doing the esterification yourself is actually pretty easy, but all the research is going into how to esterify the fatty acids in vegi-oil without the heat that you generally need to drive off the water produced in the reaction.
[quote=Maringue]What is needed to turn something like canola oil into biodiesel is esterification in the first place. Canola oil is mostly oleic acid which is un-esterified. The high heat that things are fried at in the oil causes all kinds of free alcohols in the food (of which there is a list as long as my arm) the esterify the acidic portion of the fatty acid.
To make biodiesel all the do is take things like canola oil and esterify them with methanol or ethanol, which ever they have lying around. Why they need to esterify the fatty acid to make it work as biodiesel is an engineering question, and I’m a chemist. Apparently here is the answer: linky
Doing the esterification yourself is actually pretty easy, but all the research is going into how to esterify the fatty acids in vegi-oil without the heat that you generally need to drive off the water produced in the reaction.[/quote]
I’m not sure what your point is? Yes, it’s true that biodiesel by definition is transesterified vegetable oil. It is also true that the process of transesterification is done to reduce the viscosity of the vegetable oil so that it can be burned in engines designed to run #2 diesel. Finally, it’s true that the process is fairly easy. Basically it’s done by mixing lye and methanol into vegetable oil and then physically separating the resultant glycerol and transesterified oil.
You claim to be a chemist, but I’m not sure exactly what that means. I’m curious about your particular qualifications as a chemist? Are you working as a chemist? Do you have a degree in chemistry or biochem? Is it a PhD or Master?
This thread is well and truly fucked at this point.
Actually, some degree of forethought is really all that’s necessary. “Hey, I’m moving next month on X date, if I buy you dinner or beer or something, can you help out with your truck?” That usually works rather than, “I’m moving this weekend and as a result of my car-free lifestyle I have absolutely no means to move my burdensome material possessions, please, anybody, help!”
It’s funny to watch people’s expressions when you’re filling up your truck after having helped them move and they see the total climb well over $100. Fortunately, I don’t accept cash in return for favors.
Cue science fight. maringue I’m not sure that it really matters and I think it’d be pretty rare for someone to try to use new vegetable oil. By my estimates, vegetable oil (even bought in bulk by the case) is more expensive by the gallon than diesel or unleaded gasoline would be (I get $16 per gallon but math isn’t my forte) so why would I even think to pay for vegetable oil when I can get it as a waste product from fast food places down the street or from a student group for free. I’ve made biodiesel before (it was over two years ago though) and I think the esterification drives the process or at least makes it more readily move forward. The ester is readily replaced to form the biodiesel but that’s all really fuzzy.
There’s a few places around the bay area, specifically Rotten Robbie, that sell B20 at the pump with a credit card. The biodiesel component is made from virgin oil. It definitely smells different, too.
My only point here was that if you are running used cooking oil in a diesel engine you can do this without modifying the engine, just don’t throw in some unused oil when you are in a pinch for some fryer oil and muck up your engine. Since people actually seem realistic about using biodiesel/used cooking oil I just wanted to raise that point in case it wasn’t known, not start an argument (I know, that’s so un-internet of me).
As per my qualifications, I’m actually a PhD organic chemist working in a drug design lab working on prostate cancer therapies.
[quote=Maringue]My only point here was that if you are running used cooking oil in a diesel engine you can do this without modifying the engine, just don’t throw in some unused oil when you are in a pinch for some fryer oil and muck up your engine. Since people actually seem realistic about using biodiesel/used cooking oil I just wanted to raise that point in case it wasn’t known, not start an argument (I know, that’s so un-internet of me).
As per my qualifications, I’m actually a PhD organic chemist working in a drug design lab working on prostate cancer therapies.[/quote]
I’m pretty sure that’s not true, I remember reading that you CAN use unused oil in a diesel engine.