Eleven Refrigerators

In America, even middle class people own more than one refrigerator, sometimes several. It is pretty amazing, actually. I own three of this model shown above.

I sold a refrigerator the other day. No need to worry about my food going bad, I have eleven more. I realized when I counted them that I really own too much "stuff" and that it is cluttering up my life.

Eleven refrigerators. Is this even possible? How does it happen?

Why is it possible to own so much in America? We are a very wealthy nation - make no doubt about that - and our standard of living exceeds that of nearly every other nation in the world. Don't give me any guff about "Well, in Sweden, they have a higher standard of living" - because Sweden also has a tax rate close to 70%, a limited population, and xenophobic immigration policies.

No, the good old US of A has done the best job of providing the best standard of living for the largest single population in the world. Even people living on welfare here are better off than folks in more than half the world. And yes, your typical person living on welfare in the USA has at least one refrigerator.

Some of the refrigerators we have were actually given to us or were found literally by the side of the road. Functioning appliances, literally given or thrown away. Only in America.

(3) Jekyll - three door refrigerator, (with ice maker) in the kitchen, garage fridge (free), ice maker.

(6) New York, side-by-side (ice through the door) in the kitchen, beverage fridge (bar), guest room fridge (free), studio fridge (free), cabana fridge (cheap), cabana ice maker.

(2) Vehicles: boat fridge (12V/110v), camper fridge

(1) Condo fridge

That totals twelve refrigerators, including ice makers. How the heck did this happen? Again, since many of these appliances were free, it is easy to accumulate them. Why not? Free is a good price.

Of course, you end up paying hundreds of dollars over the years for the cost of electricity to run these machines, so they aren't really "free" at all.

Many folks keep an older fridge in the garage for "beverages" - Dad's beer and maybe soda pop for the kids. Or Mom freezes things in there or they have a freezer to "save money on food" by buying in bulk.

Many of these older refrigerators are energy hogs, usually taken from the primary kitchen when the kitchen is remodeled.

But while it is convenient to have such bulk storage, it is costly in terms of energy consumption and also space consumption. I think as part of our downsizing, we need to bring our fridge count down to two or three.

Now, you may get the idea that I am wealthy from this, but I live a very middle-class lifestyle, like most folks do. It is all too easy to get caught up in owning "things" when they are free or very cheap.

Take microwaves, for example... please!

Microwaves? Um, let's see, one in the house, one in the barn, the boat, the camper, the other house, and the condo. That's six. You can buy these for as little as $29 these days, sometimes less.

The cost of these appliances is so low that they are almost free. We bought one for the cabana at Wegman's for about $25, which is pretty amazing to me. Heck, at that price, why not have one in every room in the house?

But of course, we did not "need" it for our lake cabana (there is already one in the boat, thank you) and we've used it maybe once or twice. And selling it? Well, if a new one is $29, what can you get for a used one, even in perfect condition - maybe $10? If that?

That is the joy and pain of our consumerist society. We literally are drowning in a sea of used appliances. Old computer monitors? Tube televisions? Nearly every American has one laying around these days, with no one to buy them and no safe way to dispose of them.

How amazing, when you think about it. Drowning in a sea of luxury goods. It is like a scene from that animated movie "Wall-E".

I am not anti-consumerist or anti-materialist. But buying and owning things is indeed a form of slavery. Once you own a lot of things, they tend to own you.

The upside of our consumerist economy is that since consumer goods are so cheap in this country, you can live a very comfortable lifestyle, with little work, if you choose to live more simply.

Like with one refrigerator, for example.

Clutter

One problem with "owning things" is that they can clutter up your life.

No one sets out to clutter up their home intentionally. Some decorators and decorator styles, like in the Victorian era, favored a cluttered look. But even then, it was a clean look, not jammed with junk and detritus.

But many homes end up being cluttered as the owners succumb to the need to "keep things" because they are "valuable" or "keepsakes". What they fail to see is that they are ugly and get in the way - and are never used. And when you live in an ugly environment, it wears on your soul. And clutter in your physical world tends to lead to clutter in your mental world. Just keeping track of all the junk you own does occupy a portion of your brain. Letting go of junk can often reduce your stress level.

We see the effects of clutter on our retirement island a lot. People sell off their four or five-bedroom homes "up North" and head down South, bringing four bedrooms worth of colonial furniture to their beach homes. The result is a mish-mash of styles and too much furniture, making for an unattractive and unappealing home.

Do you have too much clutter in your life? Ask yourself these questions:

1. When you go into a room or down a hallway, do you have to twist or contort or do a two-step to get around an item of furniture or some box or other possession?
2. Do you end up dusting a lot of items in your home, or worse yet, letting them get dusty?
3. Are all the horizontal surfaces in your home - desk tops, table tops, counter space, and the like, all "spoken for" so that you can't set something down without moving something else?
4. Is your garage barely large enough to fit your car, or worse yet, you have to park your car outside?
5. Are there "choke points" in the walking routes in your home that are narrower than 36"?
   

Clutter can not only make your home less attractive, it can be physically damaging as well. Twisting and turning to get around items in your home can force your back into odd positions and cause you to throw your back out or other physical ailments. And yet many people have their homes set up in such a way that you have to do a limbo act, just to open a closet door or to get something off the shelf.

Studies have shown that it literally is harder to think in cluttered rooms full of junk. The visual distraction and psychological inertia from all that junk tends to clutter your mind as well as your physical space.

Of course, the opposite of clutter is what we often call spartan, named of course for the Spartans, who favored a very uncluttered look. Most of what we call "modern" design favors this sort of clutter-free look, with large airy spaces where it is easy to move around, and furniture and architecture with little in the way of bric-brac and fussy details. While the dramatic "modern" look may not be for you, there is a happy medium, I think, between the austere and the junked up.

As I noted in my previous posting, we recently sold a number of items that were cluttering up our barn. I was tripping over the roto-tiller and the utility trailer, and the kayaks took up entire shelves in the barn. Suddenly, it is easy to walk around in there, find things, and work on projects.

And that is the insidious nature of clutter - you often don't realize it exists until you take it away. And once it is gone, you feel a sense of relief - like gas releasing from a vessel to occupy a larger space.

Unfortunately, clutter tends to re-assert itself fairly quickly, if you let it. It is all too easy to let items accumulate by "just setting them down here for a moment". Before you know it, last week's junk mail is piled up on kitchen counter and boxes of junk are in the living room. And that big piece of Empire-style furniture that you "just had to have" is blocking the closet door from opening all the way.

It is hard to give up on "things" as they seem so important and valuable. After all, we scrimped and saved to buy them - selling them seems like giving up, or a defeat. So-called "heirlooms" handed down seem valuable because of their "history," but often they have little real value or even sentimental value to you. We think things are valuable because someone else said they were. But from a personal perspective, they are largely useless items occupying space, of value only in their potential resale price.

Our move to Jekyll is not easy. There is so much "stuff" that we own and each piece seems too good to "just give away" by selling. But in reality, most of it is not necessary to our existence - in fact none of it is. And if we stuff our smaller home with heavy furniture, it will not be a pleasant place to stay. Keeping stuff because it is "valuable" but not really useful makes no sense at all.

The other problem with clutter is that it is the incipient first stage of hoarding disorder. As I have noted before, hoarding disorder does not spring upon people from nowhere. It starts small and works it way up, like most mental illnesses. So the unread pile of junk mail sits, then grows, as the hoarder thinks, "there may be valuable coupons in there, but I don't have time to read it just now" and before you know it, the county health and fire inspectors are condemning the house.

Selling on Craigslist, part Deux

I sold over $1000 of merchandise over the weekend on Craigslist. Correct pricing and a clear listing help.

Since we have decided to move to Georgia full-time, it is time to sell off things up North. And we have a barn full, let me tell you. Do we really need four Kayaks and six bicycles? A rototiller? It all has to go.

Funny thing, too, is that it all sold within two days. Mostly schoolteachers buying it, too - the only people with money in Central New York (forget about all those horror stories you've heard about "underpaid school teachers" - many make $100,000 or more, with seniority, particularly in places like New York State! This, plus full benefits!).

As in any transaction, you can sell things if they are priced correctly. For many small items, under $20, listing on Craigslist is simply not worthwhile. You are better off selling such items at garage sales, where someone might buy on impulse. No one is going to get in their car and drive miles and miles to buy a used coffee maker.

But items $100 and up, particularly if they are bargain priced, will sell. I see things listed all the time on Craigslist or the Pennysaver, that are clearly overpriced. The seller has some broken piece of shit he wants to get rid of, and offers it for sale for $5 less than retail, and wonders why it doesn't sell. "I want to get MY price" they say - and they always say it. See my posting about "constipated commerce".

We sold two Kayaks for $250 and $275. Cheap? Well, we paid $200 apiece for them 10 years back. And that was after selling a Canoe we bought for $200 for $400. So if you think about it, they cost $100 each. And they are 10 years old. A bargain for the buyer, and we had several callers lined up to buy them.

Could we have gotten another $50 for them? Perhaps. But then they would have languished for days, weeks, even months, unsold. When the point is to sell, you have to sell.

Similarly, we sold a roto-tiller for $350. New, it cost us maybe $500 and that was five years ago. Today, they sell for $700. A bargain for the buyer, to be sure. But expecting to get what you paid for it is not realistic.

A utility trailer went away for $350 as well. New, this cost $500, five years ago. Today, they sell for $600 or more (Hmmm.... is inflation around the corner?). So it was a bargain for the buyer, but really not much depreciation for us.

Craigslist is free, and they allow you to upload up to four photos for free. Use that feature. People are less likely to respond to an ad where there are no pictures, particularly if they have to drive any distance.

Also, if your weekly travels take you around town, offer to deliver items. People don't want to drive 20 miles out of their way to buy something, and if you are heading their way, why not drop something by?

Finally, put your phone number in the listing. You'll get more of an instant response this way. Many people are worried that putting your phone number in the listing will result in junk phone calls. But listing your phone number is NOT a waiver of your rights under the "do not call" act. So when that guy from Vegas calls offering to sell your car for you, tell him to piss off.

One problem with Craigslist, as I have noted in the past, is that some folks will call and ask you to "hold" an item for you. My policy is simple. If they are en route to see me, I will hold it until they get here and then allow them to make a decision. However, I will not "hold" items for days, weeks, or whatever, as such people generally are big talkers and never follow through with the purchase.

I explained this carefully to every caller (or e-mailer) and they all were good with it. A promise to buy "next Tuesday" doesn't cut it when I have three callers wanting the item TODAY.

We are starting the long, arduous process of selling things on Craigslist and eBay. It is time consuming, but it is a necessary task.

But with each item sold, I feel a little more liberated and less stressed. Possessions end up owning you, instead of you owning them. They require care, maintenance, and upkeep, not to mention keeping track of them. Things left to sit rot and decay. And when you find that you are not using a "precious possession", you tend to feel a little guilty for having spent all that money and never used it.

The Kayaks are a case in point. We are so busy these days with other projects (boating, cars, pottery, travel, gardening, etc.) that our oft-discussed plans to go Kayaking in Central New York never come to fruition. Owing too many things can often mean you have no time to do any of the things you want to do - as your attention is divided among so many different projects.

So, as much as I hated to see them go, they have not been used in over a year. And besides, we have two more in Georgia. And there are places which rent Kayaks, too, if we decide to go here.

Owning less, doing more. It is a better idea, I think.


We have more to get rid

The Schwartzenbaum's New Kitchen

You can remodel a kitchen without spending a lot of money. This kitchen "makeover" cost only a couple thousand dollars.

We recently took a road trip, which meant staying in hotels (we didn't bring the camper) and one of the hotels had a television. Why people watch television is beyond me. Everything is an advertisement for consumption. But of course, we had to watch, right? It is like a drug.

On a "home show" (the sole reason we are in this Real Estate mess right now) they did a "kitchen makeover" for the Schwartzenbaum's. They had a nice enough kitchen, although the melamine cabinets were a little cheap-looking and the color scheme (black and white) was a bit dated.

First tidbit: When remodeling a kitchen, don't be tempted to do trendy schemes. What is popular this year will be out of style next year. Stick with something classic, as kitchen appliances can last 15-20 years with proper care and cabinets can last 30-50 if they are well made. Ripping out a functional kitchen because it is "outdated" makes no sense at all.

So the Schwartzenbaums were going to tear out a perfectly functional kitchen that would be useful for at least a decade more, mostly for style reasons. They were not changing the layout or functionality, just changing the cabinet styles and the colors of the walls, countertops, and flooring.

Total cost? $25,000 to $35,000. Ouch. Just for appliances and cabinets, basically.

On the plus side, they decided to go to all-white appliances and keep the newer stove. That saved about $500 right there. White may not be trendy like stainless steel, but it also is an enduring color and won't be dated five years from now (like stainless is already starting to get). So kudos for them for saving the stove, anyway.

Tearing up the tile floor just to change color was a costly move, however, and added a lot to the cost of the makeover.

Hiring people to do all the work was also costly. Things like painting and basic electrical work are not expensive to do. However, if you are not handy, you do have to pay. And pay.

The finished kitchen looked good, and with solid wood cabinets and neutral appliances, should be serviceable for decades to come (unlike the cheap and trendy black/white melamine kitchen the previous owners installed). But it was not cheap!

However, the entire project got me to thinking as to why Americans are so obsessed about kitchen and bath remodeling. The home improvement TeeVee shows tell us these are desirable things, and after a while, people start to believe this. The Schwartzenbaums kitchen was perfectly functional, and with a coat of paint and new cabinet faces, could have been made to at least look better. Why the need for solid wood cabinets and granite countertops? Why tear out and start over?

Probably, in one word: Status.

People buy many products based on status - the need to impress people they don't know. And we all do it, so don't pretend for a minute you don't do this, too.

Status is why people buy a Lexus instead of a Toyota, even though the cars may be the same underneath, come off the same assembly line, have the same engines, drivetrain, same options and everything else, other than a few "luxury" features, a fancy name, and $10,000 added to the price. Why would anyone pay more for the same car? In one word - Status.

A fancy car says "I have money, I am important, and moreover, I am BETTER THAN YOU!"

But of course, everyone else has a fancy car, so it doesn't matter. Or people don't notice. Or if they do, they say, "Who is the jerk-ass in the Lexus?" So it all really means nothing, but we all still chase that golden dream of impressing people we don't even know.

And the same is true of kitchens. People hope that everyone will "Oooh" and "Aaaah" over their new fancy kitchen. And because I know my friends expect this, I do it. "Ooohhh! Is that GRANITE? How nice!" Heck, they just dropped $30,000 on it, they should get some payback from it (other than microwaving their restaurant take-homes).

And that is the rub, too. Many of the folks owning "gourmet" kitchens are hardly gourmands, or even have good taste. I've seen this first hand - people who spend a hundred grand on a kitchen and say things like "Outback Steak House is my favorite restaurant! I just love the bloomin' Onion!"

No, they really do that. It is pretty sad. They think a chain restaurant is "good food."

And on the other hand, I've seen people who are wonderful cooks, who spend their lives devoted to food, making great meals on little more than a hot plate and a toaster oven. They don't have bubkis, but when it comes to making good food, they kick-ass.

Sure, fancy gear is always nice. But a functional stove and a well-laid out kitchen beat the "all show and no go" kitchens that most designers seem to come up with.

Before you drop tens of thousands of dollars into a showplace kitchen, ask yourself what the real reasons why you are doing it. And don't say "to add to resale value" because, as I have noted before in this blog, a fancy kitchen won't add more than its cost to resale value. You might recover 50 cents on the dollar - if you are lucky - particularly over time. Particularly in this economy.

You may find, upon examining your motives - in your quietest of moments - that the real reason you are remodeling is for status.

Get off the status-seeking bandwagon. Turn off the TeeVee. Stop trying to impress the neighbors or theoretical people you don't even know. Work with what you have and make a kitchen that is functional and useful.

The photo above is of our kitchen in our summer home. Pretty nice, eh? When we bought the home, the Merrilat cabinets were 15 years old. The appliances were functional, but black, not our first choice. Our initial instinct was to tear it all out and do it over in more modern materials, including a granite countertop, fancy tile floors, and solid wood cabinets. And of course, all new appliances.

But then we stepped back and thought about it. New cabinet knobs made the cabinets look more craftsman (and the faces are solid wood). The cabinets are in good shape, and surprisingly well made. A lively brick colored texture paint brought color to the kitchen. We replaced a down light with some track pendants (cheap and easy to install). Cabinet top florescent lights were replaced with rope lighting for a subdued lighting effect. The split system A/C was painted black to look more modern and to blend with the other appliances. We added a portable island from Lowe's to extend the countertop and add a cutting block. And we replaced the carpet with inexpensive engineered hardwood flooring.

Total Cost? Probably less than $2000, not counting the Stickley dining set! The point is, you can do a "makeover" without spending a ton of dough. All it takes is some imagination and resisting the urge to tear everything apart and starting over.

The Schwartzenbaum's kitchen is nice, but they replaced existing cabinets with the exact same size and shape cabinets in a different finish. Perhaps new cabinet faces could have done the job for a lot less money - in terms of material cost and especially labor.

Recessed lighting is all the rage right now (after people tore them out in the 1980's as being energy-inefficient!). But rather than drilling holes in the ceiling and spending hundreds, if not thousands on electrician's bills, consider inexpensive track lighting that any home owner can install - even pendants.

And rather than tearing up a tile floor (which can last 50 years) to replace black tile with grey, consider working with an existing color by altering wall paint or lighting.

The point is, you have options - other than spending tons of money. And spending tons of money won't pay back, in terms of resale value or functionality. And no, no one is impressed with your fancy kitchen. It doesn't say anything about you as a person. In fact, it says less, in many ways.

And as for granite countertops, they are very nice looking, but ask someone who owns them about glass breakage. Stone is very unforgiving of your dishware, and even setting down a glass too hard can result in shattered glass spraying everywhere - a real treat when you have company and food is laid out all over. Yes, it is impressive to look at, and it looks expensive. But in today's economy, we all know it is not really all that pricey. If you have functional counters that are easy to care for, that is a real plus. Tearing them out to install granite to impress the neighbors, is, well, kind of dumb.

And as for impressing people, sometimes that sort of thing can backfire. It is possible to be overly intimidating with expensive things in your home. People feel uncomfortable when you throw your success and status in their face. Folks who you might otherwise call friends, might be turned off by your over-the-top kitchen and fancy cars. You may run the risk of being called a materialistic yuppie...

The photo below is of the kitchen above, before we remodeled it. It was a clean, functional kitchen, but not to our tastes. But rather than "tear out and start over," we ended up doing a makeover ourselves, without having to hire anyone (other than for the flooring) and without having to spend a lot of money. In retrospect I am glad we didn't waste 20 or 30 grand doing what the Schartzenbaum's did. Because the end result would have been about the same - except that I would be that much more in debt.

You can live better by living stingy!

The same kitchen as above, "before".

Motorcycles

Motorcycles are a lot of fun, but hardly a practical or safe means of transportation.

You see them all the time on the road. Young men on "crotch rocket" motorcycles, going by at 80 or 90 miles an hour, with no helmet, and little more than shorts and a t-shirt on. We call them organ donors. If you fall off a motorcycle with such little protection, bad things happen in a real hurry.

And for many young men, this is often a fatal or life-changing experience. Super-fast motorcycles can be bought cheaply from Japan, and easily go from zero to 100 mph in a few seconds. Even the best reaction times are no match for an oncoming car turning left into your lane.

And that, in short, is the standard motorcycle accident - the car turning left into you. Yes, it usually is not the "fault" of the motorcycle rider (although usually the rider is going far too fast for conditions). An oncoming car driver decides to turn left and doesn't "see" the motorcycle, and the two collide.

The reasons for this sort of accident happening are various and well-documented. People tend not to view the single headlight of a motorcycle as a "vehicle" and it does not register in their brains. Or, if the motorcycle is going very fast, they cannot judge the closing speed, and assume that they have time to turn, thinking the bike is going as fast as some lumbering SUV.

Many motorcyclists put pulsing or flashing headlights on their bikes, in an effort to "wake up" car drivers and hopefully prevent such a fatal collision. But it still happens with too much regularity.

I've owned a couple of bikes and been in a couple of collisions. I was not seriously hurt, although I have a compressed disc in my neck as a result, which, as I age, is giving me some trouble.

I can tell you firsthand that the left-turn-in-front-of-the-motorcycle thing is a real issue. It seems like every jackalope out there wants to kill you when you are on a bike. They all want to turn left, it seems, just as you are oncoming. It's like they have "kill a biker" tattoo'ed on their foreheads.

And that's why I ended up selling my bikes and getting out of the game. As a practical means of transportation, a motorcycle leaves a lot to be desired. If the world was populated only with motorcycles, it would be great. But the world is populated with little old ladies who can barely see, or worse yet, "important people" who have to text, phone, eat, drink, and do all number of things will ostensibly driving their cars.

Safety gear helps. A good set of leathers will help reduce road rash when the inevitable happens. And it is inevitable. You know the old saw about there being two kinds of bikers - those who have been in a wreck, and those who are going to be in one.

A helmet protects your head and really is necessary, all this ABATE talk notwithstanding. Even a fall at a low speed can be fatal if you land on your head. That's why even bicyclists wear them (or should).

So you strap on your space-suit and put on your space helmet and..... you are isolated from the very environment you set out to enjoy. The great outdoors, with the sun shining and the wind in your hair - you ain't getting that on a motorcycle most of the time, unless you decide to ride without safety gear.

So, instead, you ride around with a bucket on your head, muffling the road noise and even limiting your field of vision. The loudest thing you hear is your own breathing. The fantasy of riding footloose and fancy-free, like Easy Rider is just that - a fantasy.

And once you are on your bike, where can you go? As a young person, I liked to go out to socialize. This meant going to bars - even biker bars. The problem is, while you might be able to drive a car after having a beer or two (and be under the legal limit for intoxication), on a bike, even a small amount of alcohol can impair your balance and reaction times. And since everyone else out there in their cars (usually drunk) is basically trying to kill you, it can make life miserable for you as a biker.

Because of this, most "serious" bikers would never think about drinking and riding - even a small amount. So that kind of sucks the fun out of life, unless you are a Mormon.

I just returned from a trip up the entire length of the Blue Ridge Parkway and Skyline Drive. Many folks take their bikes there to ride, as it is a relatively "safe" place to ride a motorcycle. There are few intersections and few cars (on weekdays) and the chance of a fatal left-turn car collision are smaller. Many folks actually trailer their bikes to locations such as this, just to ride in peace.

You can't blame them. Riding in city or even suburban traffic is not relaxing or enjoyable. You have to be vigilant at all times for the left-turning soccer mom who is sipping a latte and on the cell phone. Riding on the Interstate is the worst - blown around by truckers (who increasingly, are texting while driving, so much for the "knights of the road"!) and cut off by distracted vacationers.

Hard core bikers, of course, take this all in stride. They don't mind getting that 70 mph insect in the face (fun, when it is a bee or wasp) and having the inevitable collision. My hat is off to folks like that.

But for the rest of us, motorcycles are not really a realistic, cost-effective, safe, or practical means of transportation. A toy? Yes. A ride to work? Occasionally. But since they are a seasonal, fair-weather form of transport, they are not really cost-effective. And many bikes out there are costly - more than the cost of a new car.

If you buy a "cheap" motorcycle, you may find it interesting for a while. But eventually, the urge to get a bigger, more "serious" bike prevails, and you end up wanting to go large - such as a Harley. It is up-or-out at that point. For me, it was out, as I could not afford to spend $10,000 or more on a motorcycle, and the rate of return, in terms of enjoyment, was diminishing. Been there, done that. I had no desire to adopt this as a "lifestyle".

I also saw many of my biker friends get hurt, visiting them in the hospital, or attending their funerals. Some of the esoteric healing practices used on motorcycle injuries were things out of fright movies - external braces and bolts to rebuild shattered legs. Metal plates in the skull. You name it. And my friends who survived, well, laying there in the hospital, they'd be looking at new bike catalogs - hoping to buy the ultimate bike with someone elses insurance money.

And yea, in most cases, they were laid low by the left-turning car driver.  It is like some sort of sick comedy how regularly that occurs.

I was fortunate in that I was not injured too seriously.  A driver cut me off and I ended up on the hood of his car. He was a 20-year veteran of the Connecticut State Police and a Harley rider for decades as well. He was so apologetic as I climbed off the hood of his Oldsmobile. He said "I can't believe I hit a biker!"

I couldn't either. If I got hit by a cop - and a Harley rider to boot - what are the odds of being hit by all the truly clueless people out there? Pretty much 1:1.

So I sold the bike for about what I paid for it (got lucky there, bought it cheap in the dead of winter, two years before) and walked away from it.

Years later, I bought a secondhand sidecar rig for about $4000 on eBay. I had a lot of fun with that in the Keys and other vacation places. But once again, it seemed that every car driver was out to kill me with their stupid left-hand turns (two wrongs don't make a right, but three rights make a left - remember that!). We enjoyed it for a while, but I found that riding it on city streets was taxing and stressful. The fantasy of the bucolic enjoyment was replaced by the nervous reality of bad car drivers, often literally forcing you off the road.

The end there was that jackass smoker who tossed his butt out the window (Jackass smokers, and I am being redundant here, like to make a big deal these days about flinging their butts in a dramatic way). The lit butt flew up into my helmet and burned me. At the next light, I let him have it, and he just said "fuck you" and drove off.

I sold the bike for more than I paid for it on eBay. I was lucky - again. Cheaper bikes tend to depreciate like mad. Even a few thousand miles is a lot for such bikes. Even larger bikes, like Harleys, depreciate, particularly in this recent recession. So, like a boat, RV, or other "toy", the cost per mile of ownership can be pretty staggering, even if they get decent gas mileage.

Again, these are toys. If you enjoy them, more power to you. But if you are toying with the idea of a motorcycle as a serious means of general transportation, forgetaboutit! Buy yourself a secondhand car instead. Want the wind in your hair? Get a convertible - I have three. When I ride by motorcyclists with their "brain buckets" on, in my convertible, I wonder who is really enjoying the freedom of the road more.

Mopeds and scooters bear special mention as these are often bought by people looking to use them as transportation devices. The accident rates for these are higher than traditional motorcycles, usually because they are bought by people who are not experienced in motorcycle riding. They look easier to ride than a motorcycle and ordinary citizens get lulled in by their apparent simplicity and lack of power as indicia of "safety".

But again, the danger is not in the bike itself, but in the car that hits you. So a low-powered moped or scooter is no safer than a crotch rocket. In fact, the lack of speed is an additional safety concern, as you are constantly being tail-gated and passed by cars, often being run off the road in the process. When I was a kid, I had a moped, and it was twice as dangerous as any motorcycle, in my opinion. And yea, you will get into a moped accident, several times, if you own one. Ever see a moped that is NOT dented? Maybe when they are new at the dealer...

Many resort areas rent mopeds and scooters to tourists, who have no biking experience. In many cases, you don't have to have a motorcycle license to ride these "small" bikes. As a result, they often end up wiping out these little bikes and often end up being hit by cars. Drinking and scootering, in particular, is a problem in some resort areas. I am sure you have seen the "ban moped rentals" bumper stickers on some folks' cars. Each sticker is a story - usually a sad story - about the end game from a moped rental.

But, like so much else in life, advice in this regard is rarely taken. Telling a 20-something male that spending a ton of dough on a crotch rocket is a bad idea is usually a waste of time. He has a new job and a W-2 and the man at the Ninja dealer can get him into the lime-green baby shown above for hardly anything per month. Heck, I know that at that age, I was all into it...

And paramedics will tell you about the messes they have to clean up as a result. A smashed crotch-rocket, usually with the paper temp tags still on it, and a mangled young body off in the weeds or wrapped into the grill of a car.

We had such a recent experience on Deer Trail Road, which is aptly named. A young man, late at night, doing 90 mph on the highway, zooms by. A few seconds later, the sickening sound of flesh hitting flesh at speed. He hit a deer at nearly 100 mph. The bike slides down the road, relatively unharmed. The young man, wearing nothing more than a helmet, t-shirt, shorts, and sandals (!!) is found in a tree, quite dead.

It is a story repeated over and over again. And the sad part is, it is a story not told often enough in public. A line or two in the paper, perhaps an obituary. Only spectacular accidents make headlines, and even then, only occasionally. The more run-of-the-mill type, where a driver turns left in front of a bike, are usually not even mentioned, particularly where the motorcyclist is only "injured" (a euphemism for months of hospital time, surgery, and rehabilitation).

In Central New York, it is almost a dark comedy in this regard.  The local biker club will hold a memorial "poker run" to commemorate the death of some fellow biker, who died last year - during another "poker run".  It seems that each event generates a new death to celebrate next year with another commemorative event.  And yet the folks doing this fail to see the irony of it all.  It is like those Hispanics who build memorials on the Interstates to their loved ones who died in a wreck there, and then they get run over while putting flowers on the memorial.  Both groups are candidates for the Darwin Awards, to be sure.

The point of this blog entry is not to dissuade you from buying a bike.  Just as you can't persuade a marijuana user to stop smoking pot (they have to figure it out on their own) you can't convince a biker of much of anything.  If you've got the bug, chances are, you'll do it, no matter what people say.

If you are thinking about buying a bike or scooter as daily transportation, however, maybe you might want to think about a secondhand car instead - more practical, more useful, more comfortable, safer, and cheaper in the long run.

And if you've gotten into biking and are finding it less and less fun, then go ahead and get out. All this nonsense about "I'll never sell my bike" is just marketing baloney from the manufacturers (who don't want to see the market flooded, as it is now, with used bikes).

FWIW.