Motor Rotor

There’s a good moon tonight, I miss the night, I prefer it to daytime, the dawn always has this feeling of melancholy and resignation to it, a pathetic fallacy, seeing one’s emotions reflected in the world around the person.

I like umbrellas and watches, lord I’ve spent a lot of money on umbrellas, I don’t know why any deeper than to say I like them, I don’t have a big collection or anything, maybe 4, but I’m fond of them. My grandfather had a walking stick made out of a whale’s spine, just to clarify to any save the whales groups my grandfather was born in 1884, a thoroughly different time to our modern day.

That does make me think though sometimes, when he was born there were only about 1.4 billion people in the world, my father as well, who is also relatively old was born in 1934 and there were about 2 billion in the world at that time.

I remember reading an interesting article discussing the reasons that international travel took off, (ha), it is in part due to the huge number of aircraft runways built during WW2 which were suddenly no longer needed at the close of the war, oh and of course technological development during the war. It’s strange to think that, whilst the toll on humanity is a terrible thing in a time of war, it tends to be that the greatest advancements in the sciences and arts are directly affected or created by that period of war.

I live in Sydney which becomes a bit of a nightmare at peak hour. Lately I’ve been thinking that the idea of a person owning their own car, just to drive themselves around in is somehow, extravagant, like it shouldn’t be normal, I’m not condemning it, it just seems disparate or something to what we expect in our daily lives. Cars are enormously complicated things, I don’t know the figures but the costs of having cars the world over must be enormous, not just the raw materials and construction and sale and so forth, but the roads as well, it costs something like 700,000k to build 1km of fine grain road. Cars are exceptionally good value, especially second hand, say you buy a new car at $20,000 which is the entry level price for a sedan, the average sedan weighs around 1400kg, so, that works out to be approximately a bit over $14 a kilogram. Once you get into the cost of second hand cars it becomes even more ridiculously cheap, cars in Australia tend to depreciate between 40-50% over three years from new sale. So it comes closer to say $8 a kilogram, and that’s only the start.

Think of the things you can buy in a supermarket for $14 a kilogram, I mean, cashew nuts cost more than most cars do gram for gram.

The perception that petrol is expensive is nonsense, yes it’s gone up in price but it’s still cheaper than many brands of milk per liter, or bottled water or Coca-Cola. For how much work goes into finding an oil site, drilling into it and then extracting it to be taken to the refinery where it’s, would you believe, refined, to varying standards, then it is transported in relatively small amounts per ‘parcel’ the world over by land and sea where it’s then driven further from the local distributor to the petrol station, loaded into those underground tanks, and then put into the car through the pump… and all they ask for is $1.30 a liter. Petrol is excellent value and will still be excellent value at $4.00 a liter and up.

People become very agitated behind buses, since they’re slow away from the lights and they’re perpetually pulling in and out which slows down traffic a bit, but I always think that because of that bus, that’s 50 people who would still need transport anyway so that’s 50 less cars on the road for each bus, I’d rather have the bus than those 50 cars.

I’ve got a firefighter friend who told me that if your car ever catches fire for whatever reason try and drive the car off the road and onto the sidewalk or driveway or someone’s house. The reason for this is the home owner and council rates include the firefighter services, the road itself does not so you’re then responsible for the costs of damage if on the road.

My mind must be stuck on cars today.