Those were the days I can remember when gas stations had gas wars --lowest I remember 24 cents a gallon. My 56 Chevy hot rod got 8 miles to the gallon if I kept my foot off the gas. Gas just jumped to $2.89 here (ridiculous)YOW...!!!!!
But, I’m old enough to remember when gas was a little less than $0.35 a gallon, and folks still complained about the price back then, too...!!!!!
I'd be disappointed if there wasn't something crazy going on, so I know we can always count on you for surprises!
Glad you could straighten out the lease situation (whew!), but that maintenance guy needs to get out now!
Really, wishing you the best, and you have proven time and again that you're a survivor -- you'll do very well with your latest venture. Some hesitation, second-guessing, etc., is to be expected (there would be something wrong with you if you never questioned big decisions). But seriously, if you could pull off your business during COVID, this latest situation will be a piece of cake for you!
They try to incentivise carpooling or using public transportation or riding a bike....it's an environmental thing. There's a whole chapter in the Rules of the Road book about how to drive in a more environmentally friendly way. So by making it so expensive to drive, they steer people toward cleaner options.
It is hard to compare European countries to the US as many are the size of some of our States. I'm not trying to be political but until we have a viable alternative to the internal combustion engine it is foolish to get rid of it without a replacement people can afford. The only people being hurt are the poor and middle class
It kind of depends on where you are. If you're in a big city like Amsterdam or Den Haag, yes, for sure they have really good transportation options. Where I live, it's much easier to ride a bike if it's close enough. I work about a 25 minute drive from my house, but if I want to take public transportation, I have to plan in advance because there's no bus that goes to my neighborhood unless I order it the day before. You can reserve a seat on it, and then it comes, but if you don't reserve it, it doesn't. It's also only available once an hour. So I have to order it for 2 hours before I need to be at work, then once I get to the station to transfer buses, I have to wait almost an hour for the transfer, then walk a kilometer from the bus stop to my work. It's really not convenient.
That is cool, but it doesn't fix the problem in a place that is as spread out as things are here in the US. In order to have options like riding a bike to work you have to live relatively close to your workplace. In order to have an effective urban transportation system it requires easy access and connections to almost everywhere locally. In other words, population density in one location. Places like NYC are able to have a very complete transportation system because so many people that live in the city actually work in the city and all that is required are spokes outside the city limits to transport people into the City. But even then those spokes are connected to smaller population centers. It seems to me that, from what I have witnessed, which is limited, in Europe. That naturally formed over the centuries. If you worked in the cities you lived in that city and rural living was basically confined to agricultural endeavors that had the job basically be at home. Unfortunately, an automobile connected society like this country really doesn't lend itself to that kind of reality. All that would do here is make oil companies far more wealthy then they are already.
Right, but it's not any different driving to work, or wherever you need to go. Just think of the country as though it's a state....I doubt many people are driving from one state to another to get to work and back unless they live right near the border. So I don't think it's hard to compare them at all. And really, you can't compare one state to another because they are so vastly different. In Wyoming, my job was 40 miles from where I lived and it took about 45 minutes to an hour to get there. But if I lived in a big city, it could take me that long to get a few miles because of traffic and stop lights, etc. Comparing one country in Europe to one state in the US is really no different than comparing two different states in my view.
I live in a less densely polulated part of the Netherlands than what you are talking about, though. I can't ride my bike to work...it's way too far. I used to be able to, because the warehouse was in the town where I lived, so it was only about a 20 minute bike ride for me. But the business moved last year and now I'm a 25 minute drive away, so it would take me a long time to bike that. This isn't the typical touristy part of the Netherlands. That's why I mention carpooling and public transportation. My husband's work is also about 25-30 minutes from our house. There's no one from here to carpool with and he COULD take public transportation, but it would take him a lot longer waiting on trains. So he does drive to work, but he's been working from home since Corona started, so we've saved quite a bit on gas! But a lot fewer people in this area work in the same town where they live. There are some, obviously, but a lot of people also commute, just like in the US. I don't think any of my friends or there husbands work and live in the same city. They all commute.
Yeah, I'm really close to the German border and I do know people who live in Germany, but work here. (Germany is a lot cheaper to live) But depending on where you go, the German border is as close as 15 minutes from me. My work is 25 minutes away and it's only a couple hundred yards to the German border. It would be an easy commute. There are a couple of towns that are split....part of the town is in the Netherlands, and part is in Germany. So commuting across the border in that case isn't an issue.
Almost all small city public bus systems are taxpayer subsidized either by charges to adjoining smaller municipalities or grants from the Federal Government. The bus fees don't even scratch the surface of the expense to operate in a smaller community less the about 200,000 people. Even the money that is collected by fares is just a tip of the iceberg even counting the sale of multi-day passes or Medicare passes.
How did you know what part it was that was broken? (I mean, unless it was a keypad that stopped working, I'm trying to figure out how you could determine what inside mechanism was broken?)One of my Instant Pots died
