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         |  Ceri JC
             from Jefferson City (United States) on 2007-10-02 14:15 [#02127473] Points: 23533 Status: Moderator | Followup to Drunken Mastah: #02127458 | Show recordbag
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 | I'm not allowed to disclose my job at the moment due to a company-confidential project I'm working on. Trust me, it's
 nowhere near as interesting as it sounds on the back of
 this, it's just fairly standard IT consultancy.
 
 Basically it amounts to, a small number of people with the
 skills to do it and both the people doing it and the clients
 being scattered all over the place. It's not as simple as
 having the workers nearest the client go to those jobs. One
 particular skill for example, I know of only 4 other people
 amongst those who do this job, so obviously the job dictates
 where you go. There are other people with this limited skill
 in the marketplace sure, but not with the same necessary
 core skills as me and the other 60-100 people.
 
 I know my situation is a bit of an extreme case, but even
 during the middle of a weekday, I regularly encounter jammed
 motorways. I can't believe all these people are going on
 holiday or retired or that they are choosing to do this for
 fun. When I stop at services, most of them are wearing suits
 and probably do similarly specialist work in other fields.
 As I say, I don't pay for fuel so it doesn't really bother
 me, it's my employers that it costs.
 
 I'm also sorry that I disagree with the notion everyone can
 car share. I tried it for a bit in my old job (I am actually
 a lot more "green" up to the point where it becomes
 unworkable, than my posts would suggest), but it didn't
 work. There was  only one other guy who lived anywhere near
 my house. He was up for car sharing, but nice a chap as he
 was, was really unreliable, would often go in late and then
 want to work late to make up for it, etc. I'd often end up
 sitting around kicking my heels stranded at work waiting for
 him to finish, or if I was the driver, hanging around
 outside his office waiting for him to finish. I'm not
 talking 5-10 minutes, I mean 30-45 minutes, regulary. It
 soon became apparent that the cash saved wasn't offsetting
 the aggro so we called it off.
 
 
 
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         |  Ceri JC
             from Jefferson City (United States) on 2007-10-02 14:28 [#02127480] Points: 23533 Status: Moderator | Followup to Drunken Mastah: #02127462 | Show recordbag
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 | "Again, comparing a bike to a toyota prius hybrid FFS. That's hardly fair."
 
 They compared it with a bike for sensationalism as there was
 a perception of bikes being green (when in reality most
 modern ones are not much different to normal cars in terms
 of pollution out the exhaust, although this is offset by
 less fuel being burned). If they compared a normal car with
 a hybrid they'd have had similar results. Why didn't they
 compare an electric bike with the prius?
 
 "Why haven't you got an electric bike if there are ones on
 the market?"
 
 Inital cost is high (about £2.5K over a petrol one) and
 even I don't do the miles to recoup that cost through saved
 petrol costs (and I don't pay for fuel, so I'd be footing
 the cost for no benefit, save the environmental one). People
 who use bikes solely as weekend toys certainly wouldn't.
 
 At the moment they are only really any good for dirt bikes,
 due to limited tank range. Basically you can either have
 50mph for 100 miles, or 100mph for 50 miles. Seeing as I
 regulary do 400 mile round trips (and occassionally 900
 miles ones), they currently lack the range needed. It'll
 improve as battery technology invariably improves.
 
 Speciality: I'm pretty competent home mechanic, I do all my
 own servicing and can fix 90%+ of the stuff on my bike
 myself. Even so, I like knowing that I can take it to a
 dealer for really tricky stuff, or if I can't fix it. This
 means having to have a dealer who knows electric bikes. In
 time, this will change, but at the moment, unless you live
 in London, you will probably be miles away from one.
 
 They're also quite dangerous given the lack of noise, so
 people and cars regularly chuck themselves in front of your
 front wheel.
 
 On the plus side, no need for a licence/insurance on
 electric vehicles on UK roads at the moment (legacy law from
 mobility scooters)!
 
 
 
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         |  Ceri JC
             from Jefferson City (United States) on 2007-10-02 14:29 [#02127481] Points: 23533 Status: Moderator | Show recordbag
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 | Anyway, this is supposed to be pics of bikes. This is my mate's bike, same sort as mine, but prepped for track use,
 rather than hacking the length and breadth of the country.
 Schwing!
 
 
 
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         |  optimus prime
             on 2007-10-02 14:30 [#02127482] Points: 6447 Status: Lurker
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 | somebody post the tiny head pic. 
 
 
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         |  WooferAttack
             from Milano (Italy) on 2007-10-03 01:48 [#02127603] Points: 12920 Status: Lurker
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 | wow, this is what i call... "an essential topic" 
 
 
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