As a native of Asheville (one of the few you’ll find), all this bike talk strikes me as funny. The roads here are narrow and curvy. It’s in the mountains. If riding bikes was feasible around here, people would already be doing it, seeing as we have a huge community of organic/hippie/green/alternative people. I have seen a rise in the amount of mopeds and motorcycles on the roads, though.
*They built a house of straw. The thundering machines sputtered and stopped. Their leaders talked and talked and talked. But nothing could stem the avalanche. Their world crumbled. The cities exploded. A whirlwind of looting, a firestorm of fear. Men began to feed on men. On the roads it was a white line nightmare. Only those mobile enough to scavenge, brutal enough to pillage would survive. The gangs took over the highways, ready to wage war for a tank of juice. And in this maelstrom of decay, ordinary men were battered and smashed. *
We can speculate “Well what if I live 3 miles from the nearest store but the outside is haunted by worms that suck your soul out and I have to wear 7 inch heels because I work as a stripper and I have to bring my cats.” It all boils down to “either you figure out what to do or you don’t.” There isn’t much else to say. However I bet if push really comes to shove you would find a solution.
I’m not even sure what we were arguing about. Maybe that most people have some degree of control over how much gas related crises affect their lives?
Anyway, if I had my way we’d have decent public transit systems so that most people were connected to essential services. But this idea is “unworkable” and “impossible in America” so all I can do is control my own life.
This is good. Is it from a recent dystopian novel?
I think sometimes the problem is not that the leaders talk and talk, it’s that they decide to do something utterly ill-planned. Remember all those people three years ago who were told to get in their cars and drive inland to escape hurricane Rita? They did as they were told. And ran out of gas stuck in the biggest traffic jam in this country’s history.
I had to google it, but I think it’s The Road Warrior.
Buahahahah. 1300sq feet is about 120 square metres. That’s more than twice the size of my little two-bedroom house in London, which probably classifies as an ideal ‘family starter home’ in real-estate speak.
If 120 square metres (plus garden) is ‘really small’ I’d better not buy any property over there, I’d suffer agoraphobia in the living room.
And even sven’s description matches the stories I’ve heard and what you read in Spanish novels set in rural areas in the late 1800s, up to the 1960s. “Going to market” was a whole-day business for a farmer.
slaphead, the room with en-suite I had in Miami, part of a 5-bedroom house, was bigger than my studio in Glasgow - and the studio has a kitchen! Americans have the notion (not always the reality) that for example every child should have his own room. Add (multi-car) garage, everybody getting a driver’s license (and, ideally, a car) before 18, a game room… in my unscientific reckoning, an American takes up between twice and three times the real estate of a Western European of comparable social standing.
Yup. It seemed appropriate under the circumstances. 
I guess the way things are portrayed in fiction and film over there exaggerate what kind of house a typical middle-class person lives in, just as they do here. Or do you not mean to tell me that the spacious appearing house in the Harry Potter movies isn’t true to life?
It’s now being reported in the news that we now have the highest priced gas in the lower 48.
I can’t help but wonder if that’s to drive people to the “drill, baby, drill” party.
I really hate it when I start donning my tin foil hat. It never goes with my shirts.