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here's what you can do with a RailPass:
http://www.trainsamerica.co.uk/image...assMapcopy.jpg
and here's the complete railway system for the US:
http://www.railmaps.com/catalog/cont2007a.GIF
that's not nearly enough to cover everything and more work will be required to reach more people, especially in the west, but still, a lot of it is already there.
(for comparison, see germany: http://www.spec2000.net/rr_site_pages/germanmap.gif )
08 Xp's are only 400lbs plus everyone i know that has an older sled has done mods to loose some weight.... plus the weight maximum increases with the sports suspension, and adding air bags. plus when was the last time you got pulled over and checked for your gvw?Quote:
Originally Posted by PNW Skier
Besides the engineer in me knows that they have at least a 3x safety factor built into those numbers too ;)
And it's not like this is an all or nothing proposition. We're not going to eliminate the need for cars anytime soon, but we can take steps to reduce their use.Quote:
Originally Posted by WWCD
Not exactly on topic, but WTH...Quote:
Originally Posted by GoNads
It depends on the trailer. Some trailers have been designed specifically to create more "tongue weight" by moving the axle back from the balance point. This transfers the weight to the rear wheels, which results in better traction.
Though this won't help during early or late seasons when making approaches on beat up logging roads, however it does mean that you can use a smaller vehicle that still has enough towing capacity to transport sleds.
Right??Quote:
Originally Posted by Patches
Gallon of milk here is $4.29
Gallon of regular gas: $3.85
Forget the Oil Companies....the friggin' COWS have been price fixing for DECADES.
Check skidoos website and it'll tell you the "official" dry weight of a 153 800 is 429 pounds. Add 60 pounds (gas is ~6 pounds per gallon) of gasoline plus the weight of your coolant, brakefluid, oil, and you're close to if not over 500 pounds. I'd love it if a sled weighed 400 pounds ready to go but it's just not how it is. If you've gotten yours down to 400 pounds fully fueled ready to go then that thing must be a blast to ride!Quote:
Originally Posted by Gunder
It is true that what the truck can handle carrying increases 75 pounds with your sport suspension and even more with the airbags but DOT and the police couldn't give a crap what you've done to your suspension, all they read is the sticker on your door. I've looked into this as I wanted to upgrade my truck to a dually so I could pull a toyhauler that grossed out at 17,000 pounds.
All that said no, I've never been pulled over to a scale and you probably never will with a deck on your tundra. Just sayin', you're technically overweight and a cop having a reallly really bad day can give you a ticket if he/she wanted to. I'm sure you're right as well, they do engineer these trucks to take much more abuse than the numbers suggest.
edit - Oh and Nads called me whining about how her ramp is at least 100 pounds. She's probably right, it takes two of us to use that awkward thing. so my 40 pound guestimate is probably a little low. I was just thinking of My other buddies ramp that one person can take in/out and put on to the deck.
Look at Cuba.
Do you people even live in the real world? Cops don't pull you over for the weight in your truck you fucking idiots. Try going outside and experiencing reality for a moment.
See a cop having a day like you are just might ;)Quote:
Originally Posted by Liberal Genius
Actually my biggest concern about running around overloaded isn't the cops or whether the truck can handle the weight. It is that if you get into a wreck and they prove you're overloaded it's much easier for other other party to sue you in this fine country.
Grandpa is encouraged that some of you display an awareness of Peak Oil and our unsustainable way of life, but saddened that most of you are quibbling over irrelevant or marginal matters such as 4-stroke snow machines and 3/4 ton pick-up trucks.
$4/gallon gas in the US merely represents the early stages of gasoline price increases. The upward price pressure resulting from Peak Oil are compounded by China's and India's increasing use of automobiles. Human population has more than doubled since Grandpa's birth, and human resource consumption has multiplied at a substantially higher rate. We will likely see $6, then $8, then $10 gas in the coming years. By 2050, and maybe sooner, flying on an airplane will cease to be commonplace and available only to the rich and the military.
Explosive growth in human population, development and consumption has been fueled by easily extracted oil over the past 150 years. Cheap oil has not only provided fuel, but also is the basis for most commercial fertilizer and thus the exponential growth in food production (see http://http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Revolution) and resultant population surges in developing nations.
The levels of human consumption (i.e., the current lifestyles of the developed nations) are unsustainable, even if we make the most optimistic assumptions about alternative power. The Energy Returned On Energy Invested ratio (EROEI) of easily extracted oil is absurdly higher than any other portable fuel. While there may be alternative means of producing energy with high EROEI ratios (e.g., wind and solar power), they are necessarily limited in scope, not portable and thus cannot support the infrastructure designed for the exploitation of cheap oil. Although acknowledging that coal has a favorable EROEI ratio, it is a terribly dirty fuel. Natural gas -- upon which the eastern US power grid is very dependent -- has a relatively high EROEI ratio only if transported by pipeline from its source to the use, but North America reached peak natural gas years ago and the discovery of recent natural gas reserve will likely buy us a few more years, a couple decades at the most.
We were warned, but those harbingers were muzzled by the machine of capitalism. M. King Hubbert accurately predicted in the 1950's that the US would experience peak oil by 1970 or 1971. When Grandpa was a younger man, the US Congress and President Jimmy Carter enacted legislation which would have required CAFE standards of 50mpg+ by the year 2000, and initiated grand scale mass transportation infrastructure. But, sadly, applying delusional Ayn Randian notions that unbridled capitalism and greed represent the panecea for all problems (including those resulting from unbridled capitalism and greed), President Ronald Reagan and Congress relaxed the CAFE standards and granted tax incentives to encourage use of large trucks for personal transportation. And in the name of personal liberty they eschewed mass transportation and propped up a failing automobile industry. And now we fight oil wars, sold to the gullible masses as the War on Terror.
The coming age of dwindling resources is the issue of our time -- but it is not limited to oil. In India, for example, huge farms are mining fossil water, which will soon be depleted, thus leading to massive starvation, suffering and instability. The soils of the earth are being sucked of their nutrients and not being replaced (yet we engage in the folly that those soils will support crops to produce biofuel to support our SUV's). As these resources fail, millions of people will suffer and die awful deaths, and others will revolt in unseen numbers.
Modern civilization is a wound up machine, lubricated by cheap oil, that will unwind itself in the coming years. The wise will learn to live simply, to appreciate the wealth of the natural world and to eschew the trappings of consumerism. But most will live in hyperreality (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperreality), seduced by the Spectacle (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_of_the_Spectacle).
new product idea for the $4.50/gallon era: ski holsters for mopeds.
4" PVC pipe on your bike rack or on the back of the moped. dead simple.Quote:
Originally Posted by hygog
:rolleyes:Quote:
Originally Posted by PNW Skier
an increasingly common sight? (scoots up at Timberline lodge)
http://img511.imageshack.us/img511/7407/img1960vt6.jpg
Grandpa knows the score
http://www.sfu.ca/~andrewf/norm.gifQuote:
Originally Posted by grandpa
This is another problem...we use a shit load of energy just keeping all these lights on.Quote:
Originally Posted by WWCD
I was trying to tell my Dad yesterday why gas costs so much. One reason is that oil is a finite resource and demand has increased. Another is that we hit Peak production in the 1970s. All the "easily" found oil has been found; it just gets harder. Furthermore, we have yet to see the price of pollution tacked onto gas. Once we have a real executive branch which uses the EPA as it should, the gas tax will make driving prohibitively expensive. Suburbs are done.
You make valid observations.Quote:
Originally Posted by jepilot
US oil peaked in 1970-71. There is disagreement regarding the timing of world peak oil. Some believe it occurred within the past 2 to 3 years, some believe it as much as 12 or more years in the future and others are somewhere in between.
Yes, suburbs as we know them are likely doomed. Some experts believe that suburbs may eventually metamorphose into densely populated string developments, with condo residences, served by mass transit. Plats full of mini mansions and starter castles may become ghost towns.
In addition to post-peak crises, our infrastructure suffers because we spend money on war, corporate subsidies and wasteful pork projects instead of repairing and maintaining the grand infrastructure built mostly by the government in the 30's, 40's, 50's and 60's. The eastern US's dependence on natural gas to power the grid is fragile. In summer during business hours, the grid runs at near maximum capacity and much of the infrastructure is old and subject to failure. Cananda believes that it is in post peak NG, and half of Canada's NG is sold to the US to power the eastern US grid. The cost of NG fueled electric power will increase dramatically in the future. America and the rest of the developed world has relied on electric power to fuel economic development. Laissez-faire capitalism is premised on the foolish notion that there are no limits to growth, and muzzles anyone who suggests that such limits exist. Indeed, the corporate controlled media -- that collectively failed to question, and thus consented to, our current oil wars -- will dismiss anyone uttering the term "peak oil."
The New Years Eve Party of Modern Civilization will end, and we will awake to the decades of dwindling resources with a terrible hangover. Pardon my metaphors. The world's current wealth has largely resulted from cheap oil. The world will become less wealthy and very unstable in the next several decades. The concentration of wealth in a small elite class will contribute to civil and social instability. Those with wealth may seek protection by the military and police state. The Bush neo-Gilded Age may well evolve into a world where the executives and major shareholders of multinational corporations will ally with the military elite to form a new military-industrial complex of an order never imagined by President Eisenhower. Those controlling the multnational corporations will be enabled by each generations' further detachment from nature and reality, and increasing embrace of industrially reified images. These things will result from cheap oil and the wild capitalism that has been fueled by greed and hubris, and enabled by religious superstition. Welcome to Dystopia.
Grandpa, you're a real bummer.
I hope your doom and gloom is wrong.
I practice for grandpa's dystopian future by waiting for the Marte lift to open.
This is not entirely accurate. There are huge untapped oil fields even here in North America. The issue is that the production was either not viable at oil prices ten years ago, or the land is protected, and frequently both. Oil shale in Canada and the United States exceeds proved reserves in the Middle East, the issue has been that it is not economically viable with oil under about $90 a barrel (don't quote me on that exact dollar figure, that's a range). With oil undoubtedly remaining higher, these untapped reserves become viable, and North America has the potential to become a production powerhouse. The issue is gaining usage of the land from its respective governments. Sadly, the American people have their price, and there will come a price point for gasoline when the "conservation" (quoted because the quasi-environmentalism in this country is laughable, not because I hate the environment) ideals will fall, and we will drill in ANWR. The question is becoming what point that is.Quote:
Originally Posted by jepilot
Regulating industry and exercising government control over the sole industry which has the power to destroy the global economy is not a wise choice of action. The government would arguably be better advised to reduce taxes on gasoline to ease the strain on our wallets, and potentially fortify the economy for the banking troubles we are not yet out of. Increasing gas tax, and creating a windfall profit tax is a surefire way to stick it to the middle class, and further devalue our currency.Quote:
Originally Posted by jepilot
Grandpa is factually pretty much dead on.
As an aside, another common theme that I see is that we want all countries to welcome free-trade. With that comes Western culture ("Westoxication" if you want to get Khomeini-esque) creating the desire for economic development. That spurs the need for energy, and now a country that wants very much to be like the US is being told by the US that it can't use so much oil because our prices are getting too high. I think it's bullshit. We WANT too much. A friend of mine has been pissing me off lately talking about living "the simple life" but he's right. Think also about the fact that most plastics are made from petroleum. I'm typing on a computer which is probably 75% plastic. Bottled water? Not only does it take petroleum to make the bottle, but also to ship it where it needs to go.
It's not just cars.
No you're the idiot, cops can assign blame in an accident based on weight, and I've had friends in Canuckistan pulled over and ticketed for having a sled deck with two sleds on a half ton. They know it just can't hold it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Liberal Genius
^^^^^well, that's just another reason to invade Canada.