If the US military were to charge for pushing oil through the gulf, it could be like a carbon tax that should be charged for burning fossil fuels.

As gas and especially diesel prices go up, some, mostly conservatives, call for relief in gas and diesel taxes. Problem is, potholes in the roads. Most of these taxes maintain the expensive highway system. Yes, foreign wars are costly. We can't do this all on low taxes. War taxes, carbon taxes, we may have to pay for what we get.

Whether one believes in climate change, or not, insurance companies are raising rates for property insurance in high risk places from seaside areas of Florida to dry forests of California.

Trump has signed one of his many executive orders broadening the sale of so called red dye diesel to other users besides farm use. I just learned about the existence of this tax free diesel for use on land that isn't the public roadways. Truckstops and other fuel retailers are reluctant about this plan, so says the news.

A red dye is used to better prevent tax cheating if that fuel is found being used where it is not supposed to be. We learn a new thing everyday.

I remember a famous red dye taken out of food. Now I look up in AI to aid my memory. It was Red Dye #2, removed from food in 1976 due to a 1969 Soviet Study linking it to more tumors in rats.

A solution for trying to buy a remanufactured computer in Bellingham.

My next desktop computer is on its way. Ordered from Amazon. Turns out local businesses use Amazon and other online platforms as their retail outlet. I've been learning about how much of retail business is done in the field of remanufactured computers.

AI suggested I go to IPC, a large electronics recycler who deals in remanufactured products. They look like just a warehouse and loading dock, but, supposedly, they do retail for things they have refurbished. Turns out their retail is on Ebay, a large website for buying and selling.

I rang the doorbell at the loading dock. The door rolled open and I ask a young fellow if they sold computers. He said they sell them over Ebay.

I mentioned that in more chats with AI and the AI I was using thanked me for the correction.

Riding my bicycle, I tried Goodwill and Habitat for Humanity. They don't do windows, I mean computers. Habitat for Humanity does have windows.

Office Max only had 3 brand new computers at quite high prices.

Then I decided to try a repair / retail shop across town. At first, the staff person looked like he was asleep, but the sound of the door awakened him.

He was quite friendly as I explained my story. Not a lot of choices there as well, but they service computers. He offered to be the safe place I could have my computer sent to for pickup. Better than my apartment building where it may not get to the right door, or Amazon's often full pickup desk.

Problem solved. I ordered from Amazon.

Chatting more with AI, I discovered that medium sized cities don't have enough resale volume, or choice, to make it worthwhile. It might work in a big place, like Seattle, with businesses like Boeing Surplus.

Many local businesses, in the computer field, have now pivited toward customer service and repair; rather than maintaining large inventories themselves. They tend to use the giant online sellers, like Amazon and Ebay.

Shopping around through traffic is more difficult than shopping online. We do live in a constantly changing world.

Bellingham, like most American cities, has quite a few of these type of choices.

Don't let the grass grow under your wheels. Rush, rush, rush.

New highway pushing forward. My cartoon idea. Drawing by AI. Yes, I know, many worry about AI, including me. It's a useful tool, but, like the automobile, it could also be a curse. One big problem is our feeling that we have to rush into it to keep up with China. There is also the rush, among companies, to keep up with the Joneses. There is the rush among people just to keep up with the cost of living. It could be driving us over a cliff.

Or maybe feet. Picture I took locally.

Traffic cams can make an intersection more fair for bicycles, cars and pedestrians.

Some stoplights are on timers, others sense when a car is at the intersection to inform the system that a car is waiting. If no car, the light doesn't change. Problem is, that system often can't detect a bicycle. Pedestrians get the "push to walk" button.

A better technology, to detect both bikes and cars, is cameras. Well, some people worry about privacy issues, including some speeders who worry. I say, "bring on the traffic cameras for safer streets."

This writing is inspired by a conversation I had with AI, another technology that people worry about.

I often come up with innovative ideas that professionals often don't have the time to converse with me about. A recent brainstorm, of mine, was a way to use microelectronics embedded in crosswalk paint to detect bicycles.

Traditional detection for cars, at an intersection, is an electronic loop under the pavement. That has trouble detecting the small magnetic signal of a bike verses a massive car. It has to detect through the pavement. It's also hard to repair or replace requiring city crews to dig up the pavement.

Paint is above ground. My above ground idea would be easier to reach. I wanted to see if it had been thought about. Yes, as I expected, there are plenty of people thinking about this. AI sifted through tons of documents to let me know.

Yes, its being considered, but there are a host of technical problems with it. I can go into that, but this is already a long post. Bottom line is, above ground traffic cams work better.

Some people resist the idea of having cameras as if it's "the surveillance state." I don't think I'd want to live in "surveillance China," but I am for safe streets. Who would be against that, except maybe speeders?

My experiment with an AI assisted cartoon.

I have some ideas for cartoon punchlines, but not much skill in drawing. So, I tried out AI to draw a cartoon based on one of my ideas.

Here is what I got. Not bad, but I added a few things and altered the layout a bit using my old graphics program called Neopaint. AI generated what's in black while I added what's in red.

Then I ask, "how much power does it take to generate this image?" It takes about as much a it takes to charge a smartphone. More than just asking a simple question as image generation takes more power. Video generation takes much more power.

Really, not that much except that so many people are using AI, that's a lot of smartphones charging. Still not a lot compared to heating and cooling a home or driving a car; my favorite nemesis.

Bicycling on sidewalk is sometimes safer. There are often more pedestrians on the street than on the sidewalk in our car dominated culture.

In some places it seems safer to bike carefully on the sidewalk. I prefer the street, if there is a space for bikes, but sometimes the sidewalk is safer.

I prefer the street, or road if it has a shoulder.

There's often more pedestrians in the street by parked cars than on the sidewalk. It can be easier to see a pedestrian on the sidewalk than when they are darting out between parked cars on the street, not to mention sudden door openings. I tend to go slow in this type of area.

It seems like almost one out of every 4 cars is backing out when there is nose in parking. Bikes can be squished between backing cars and moving traffic.

Often one has to go to the sidewalk to push the walk button for activating the stoplight. It can be hard for the system to detect a bike on the street.

When making a 90 degree turn, I prefer not using turn lanes, but crossing, one street at a time, to each corner. I'm not in a hurry.

I often prefer the sidewalk to going straight forward down the street in the city's painted bike boxes when cars are wipping across it to make their right hand turns, such as here at Ellis and Lakeway in Bellingham. Still, I'm glad for city painted bike space.

Bulges in sidewalks are good for pedestrians and to calm traffic, but they can push bikes on the street into traffic to get around them. Here on F Street, in Bellingham, a brand new sidewalk bulge with a cut through for bicycles.

Should there be a curb cut here?

At this place in the west part of Longview, Washington the sign recommended riding on the sidewalk. Image taken 2011.

Lots of people walk on trails that are for mixed use. Not that much different than sidewalks. A speedlimit is the best way to keep things safe (if it's followed). This is also the best way to regulate electric bicycles. It's easier to have a speedlimit than to try and figure out what type of motor qualifies for trail use. Motorized wheelchair? How about handicap access? Skateboard? What type of motor does the bike have? How much of it is pedal assist.

I'm in favor of motorized bikes, though I don't yet feel I need one myself. They increase use of bicycling due to their extreme popularity. Almost half the bikes I see, these days, are the motor assisted pedal bikes. Much of US culture is too fast. I prefer life in the slow lane; the name of my blog.

Sign I saw a few years back in downtown Moscow, Idaho.

Riding bikes to shoebox-sized apartments can still be a prosperous vision of the future.

Some Trump supporters might think my vision of the future is riding bikes to shoebox-sized apartments and eating crickets, to quote a DOT spokesperson interviewed on NPR.

Except for the crickets, some of that is correct, but my vision of the future also involves chatting with AI, following the news from space telescopes. Biking around town following the progress of construction projects. Enjoying the sight of new construction. Looking forward to technological breakthroughs like hydrogen fusion. Having lots of friends who are millionaires (these days, just being a homeowner can mean being a millionaire).

I've experienced riding in a Rivian all electric truck, it was fun and interesting. I've also been on all electric buses and the Skytrain in Vancouver, BC. I look forward to the days of safer, self driving cars. Among my favorite travel destinations are the observation floors of tall skyscrapers.

Part of my view from observation deck of Columbia Tower in 2025 during a transit / bike trip to Seattle.

My vision of the future seems bright and prosperous to me. I still find biking a friendly way to follow the construction sites and serendipitously meet up with friends along the way. It's a more interesting way to stay in shape than working out in a gym.

As bike information is being removed from Trump's Department of Transportation, a DOT spokesperson told NPR in an emailed statement, "This is a common sense approach despite the Left's belief that everyone should ride a bike to their shoebox-sized apartment to eat crickets to achieve a phony climate agenda." <

Detached homes bring detached cars.

It seems like the biggest hurdle, for electric vehicles, is the battery. It's still better than gasoline, but it has its problems of cost, chemicals, weight and so forth.

Battery technology can improve, but in the meantime I still like Seattle's electric buses that run from overhead wires connected to the power grid. No need for the battery. Yes, the bus has to be attached to a wire system. Eventually, private cars could be attached to a road based charging system, so I read.

Still, I got to thinking about the concept of attached, versus detached. Attached trolly buses are more economically viable in areas where there are less detached single family homes. This relates to density.

Detached homes are usually less efficient for heating and cooling as well. Detached homes lead to more detached vehicles. I connect the dots.

The fast lane versus the slow lane.

I call my online presence theslowlane. Here's the fast lane.

From an Idaho Department of Transportation Facebook post.

New law alert

Heavy trucks can now travel up to 80 mph on Idaho highways, matching the speed limit for passenger vehicles where posted. The goal of the change is to reduce crashes caused by speed differences between passenger vehicles and large commercial trucks.

Even with the updated speed limit, safety still comes down to drivers making smart decisions behind the wheel:

. Don’t linger in truck blind spots

. Give large vehicles extra space

. Allow more stopping distance

. Be patient when passing

Big trucks need more time and space to react and small decisions can make a big difference on the road. Some trucks, RVs, and people pulling trailers can't go 80, so continue to watch out for slower moving vehicles.

Years ago, Montana used to have no posted speed limit for cars on certain highways. I biked through that state several times during cross country bike tours and survived thanks to wide shoulders and light traffic volumes. Trucks still had to go slower.

Image from 1997

I think they now have a speed limit again.

Back then, the speed limit was "reasonable and prudent." This was determined by law enforcement at the scean when someone was pulled over for speeding.

I remember talking to a waitress, while eating in a Bellingham restaurant, who said she was given a ticket for speeding in montana when she was driving at 100 mph.

Yes, I prefer the slower pace, but most Americans value speed. It may make sense to have the same speed limit as cars. Slow trucks mixed in with fast cars might create more hazards due to impatience when passing. Also Americans do like quick service in the flow of products.

At the same time, trucks tend to be unpopular among the general public. This unpopularity is another case of people "wanting their cake and eating it too." As long as automobiles and highways remain our main transportation system, trucks are part of the mix.

Someone jokingly wrote this in chalk on a Bellingham bike path.

Redefining progress and the American Dream.

Hearing a radio interview about career opportunities for today's young people brings me back to my first years out of college as if nothing ever changes.

It's said that this generation may be the first to have lower standards of living and smaller homes than their parents. I heard that before and I keep thinking, smaller homes, but maybe better social lives?

Since my college days, I've been thinking that we are running out of room on planet Earth. If not actually running out of room, at least economic development has been constrained by more and more regulations. These regulations are attempting to protect the environment, such as farmland preservation, wetland rules, zoning and so forth.

If not actual limits to growth, we have imposed red tape limits which is basically what people, on the right, keep harping on. I still think most of these limits are there for good reasons. Yes, we do need to protect the environment. Still, this does have an effect on the ease of attaining economic growth and prosperity.

For years, I've kept thinking it's a tradeoff. We can live better without necessarily consuming more space on the planet.

Examples of this come from social progress in personal fulfilment and community life. Progress in gay rights is one example. More use of public transit, versus the space hogging private automobile, is another example.

For the entirety of my adult life, at least, cities, such as Seattle, have delt with traffic congestion. I keep thinking we could solve that, but people have just acquiesced to it instead; for the most part.

Back in my days right out of college, the big issue was lack of job creation. Industry faced red tape limits. Mining was going overseas and so forth. We faced the energy crisis with gas rationing during my college years. Since then, new technologies have brought more fossil fuel energy from fracking and so forth. Innovation and substitution has brought new wealth around the limits. We've had the tech boom.

Lack of affordable housing is a big issue now, whereas back in my past, it was more the lack of jobs. Today, there are more jobs, but they don't pay enough to afford the same space in housing.

Somehow, I still keep thinking we need to make fundamental changes in the way we define as the American Dream. I still think life can be better now than in (for instance) the 1950s. "Better" can be defined in different ways. Information and personal choices can be seen as wealth. Free time can be seen as wealth.

We need to think differently about the definition of the American Dream. Just taxing the super wealthy isn't going to solve this problem. Yes, I'm for taxing the rich, but even just taxing the super rich still has consequences for all consumers. Today, people are worried about Washington State's wealth tax chasing away the super rich and businesses with them. Will this impoverish our state?

We may need to learn to redefine what wealth means. Can one have a happy life while not necessarily living in a bigger house than their grandparents lived in?

Maybe no motor vehicle signs should be updated to say no fossil fuel vehicles.

On trails, there is often a sign that says, "no motor vehicles." Now with the advent of electric bikes, skateboards and even wheelchairs, the sign should say, "no fossil fuel vehicles." Electric motors tend to be quiet and okay; especially if the vehicles are not going too far over 15mph. It would be hard to ban motors these days. I'm glad to see them as more people are discovering bicycling.

Will a greener China be the adult in the room during Trump's visit?

China's government may look like the adults in the room when Trump visits China. They are quickly transitioning toward green energy while the US government is rededicating its efforts to fossil fuels. China still does burn lots of coal, but it has over 1 billion people to serve. While China progresses past that, the Trump Administration seems to want to go back to the past.

Coal trains do travel through Bellingham on their way to ships, waiting in Canada, for Asian ports, but China is making progress with solar, railroads and so forth. Their system may be more authoritarian than ours, but it's less likely that populism will push China erratically. As for war in the Middle East, China seems well prepared for oil shortages in the long run. Less reckless in its foreign relations.

Temporary suspension of gas tax might be a bad idea in the long run.

Temporarily suspending gas tax could bring long range problems. Increasing the debt or less funding for roads. We seem to be having a repeat of the fossil fuel crisis in the 1970s. I don't drive though I admit I eat food delivered by truck and prepared by folks who drive to work.

Here in Washington State, the high state gas tax gets complaints also. We may not get lots of road bang for the buck as some state money goes into salmon habitat restoration. We can't have it all. Whales in Puget Sound are large animals and they use the salmon for their food.

Maybe someone could do a historic photo exhibit to memorialize the graffitti rock that was recently removed from I-5 south of Bellingham.

Coming into Bellingham on I-5, there has been a famous rock painted with many layers of expression over the years. It's commemorated graduating classes and lots of other things.

There is now a local controversy as the rock has been destroyed. It basically fell victim to salmon stream restoration. Washington State has been ordered, by treaty obligation, to remove culverts under highways for improving salmon passage.

There's lots of construction for daylighting streams along I-5 and other roads and paint flakes from the rock can be poison near streams.

Some folks had wanted the Department of Transportation to move the rock to another location, but I guess that was determined too expensive. The rock was broken up instead.

The rock basically fell victim of contradicting demands from various constituencies of the public. Salmon restoration versus an affordable highway system. Keeping gasoline taxes from going through the roof while maintaining highways. I guess much of the highway budget, these days, goes to habitat restoration in this state. So much of life is about tradeoffs.

Since I don't drive, the rock hasn't been real important to me. I do remember some car and bus trips into Bellingham, during my college years, seeing a few of its graffitied presentations.

During the 1980s, soon after bicycling was allowed on rural shoulders of I-5, I stopped by the rock to hike up there. At its base were slabs of paint that had broken off. Each slab consisted of, possibly hundreds of paint layers in various colors. I took a slab home for souvenir. Eventually, I threw out that slab as it was crumbling and leaving a mess of paint flakes.

Recently, I got to thinking that good way to memorialize that rock is to collect pictures of its various paintings over the years; possibly for an art exhibit. Maybe someone has already thought of that.

A new sculpture could be placed in some public spot with the surface covered by various pictures of the original rock. Photos could be glazed into ceramic tiles covering the surface of a new boulder in some Bellingham park.

While I have none of my own photos from that famous I-5 Bellingham rock and I didn't keep that crumbing paint slab I found from the rock in the 1980s, I have found other souvenirs along roads. I still have a pile of warning signs that must have fallen off a tanker truck. Here are a few of those changeable metal signs. I wrote about the rock's demise in an earlier post.

I tend to ride less on I-5 shoulders, these days, than back in the 1980s after it was first legalized. Back then, the wide shoulder was, and probably still is, safer than many roads. The 55 mile per hour speed limit was still in effect from the 1970s, oil crisis. Today, traffic is flying by faster and there is probably twice as much traffic in this region as there was in the 1980s. More backroads have been improved since then as well.

Could stagflation bring back the alternative thinking of the 1970s?

It looks like US and world economies are returning to the stagflation that defined my college years in the 1970s. Inflation and stagnation at the same time. Rising costs for fossil fuels and other natural resources drove inflation along with a slowdown in the economy.

That was also an era when we started to try and adapt the economy to a limited planet. Alternative energy, transportation and alternative lifestyles were coming into style.

Since then, more oil was found and technology was able to create new kinds of wealth. A turn toward more "traditional" values for a growing economy remained in mainstream thinking. An economy still dependent, for the most part, on fossil fuels. This has brought us to where we are now.

I'm fairly disappointed that we never made the changes, on a real large scale, that were talked about 50 years ago. There have been lots of innovations around the edges, but mainstream life and business practices haven't really changed that much.

Now that we face another fossil fuel crisis, I wonder how it will pan out? Will the spirit of idealism and change that existed, in my little bubble during my college years, come back into style?

It's not just that there are too many people on earth, it's also the way people wish to live.

There are too many people on earth if over half of the people want to live the so called American Dream of single family homes, car ownership, free parking. Population is one factor, the other factor is how people wish to live. What type of lifestyles and societies are people aspiring to have?

There is more than one variable in this equation. One is number of people while another is how we live. Other variables include technology, which can either improve the situation or make it worse. For instance nuclear technology can be used for weapons or for peaceful low carbon energy.

Avoiding traffic when rockslides block roads to Bellingham.

Rains and a rockslide has temporarily closed north bound lanes of I-5 south of Bellingham diverting some I-5 traffic through a few Bellingham streets to get back onto I-5 north of the slide. An alternate route called South Samish Way goes right past Lake Padden.

On my bike, I found a way to avoid that traffic, but still see it. I went south on the shoulder of S. Samish to a residential street near Lake Padden as the traffic was headed north. Then I veered off to the right to quieter residential streets down into the Fairhaven District and then back home.

Even Old Fiarhaven Parkway was busy, but I avoided most of the traffic and was able to cross at a light.

Next day I went to our Lake Padden Sunday walking group and biked to that event a different way than normal.

Quiet back streets to Old Fairhaven Parkway and then under I-5 to Connelly Ave. Then the second right to Padden Creek Trail which was not a ratrace at all.

This reminds me of April 2025 when another road to Bellingham was blocked by a rockslide. Chuckanut Drive was blocked for several months.

I almost never ride south of Larabee State Park on Chuckanut since it is way to narrow for bicycles and fairly busy.

Since the road was blocked to through traffic, it was an opportunity to ride on it with less traffic out as far as the road closed sign.

This is the only time in my life that I ate at the famous Oyster Bar Restaurant on Chuckanut Drive.

Too bad the world is still so dependent on oil.

I recently saw an article saying Trump was right about the need to drill baybe drill. Totally missing from that article is the idea of using less oil. Article was critical of Europe for not developing it's oil and gas resources as much as USA has done. Europe remained too dependent on Russian oil and gas until too late when trouble broke out over Ukraine.

I agree in one way that the way to reduce fossil fuel dependency is to work on the demand side, rather than trying to crimp supply. Much of the environmental movement has been about fighting drilling, fracking and pipelines, while that usually leads to right wing backlash from consumers still dependent on fossil fuels as supply tightens and prices rise.

It's better to work on the supply end, such as promoting solar energy, less car dependency, public transit, less greed, less population growth and more compact neighborhood planning.

European countries have done a much better job at this than USA. Still it was not enough as Europe was dependent on Russian and Middle Eastern energy sources. USA became less dependent due to domestic fossil fuel production.

Maybe USA is also just luckier with more oil and gas under it's ground.

Early on, after the fall of Soviet Union, it looked like Russia was trying to do better at human rights so European energy purchases from Russia could have seemed like a good way to help a neighbor. Later on, Puttin turned more authoritarian, anti gay and so forth. European nations were slow to realize the bind they were in.

Alternative transit is better than the car. Though cleaner than gas, electric car sales are slumping in USA.

Riding on the top floor of a double decker bus in the less congested HOV lane south of Everett, WA.

The dream of US cars going electric has slowed down, according to some videos I found. Trump's removal of subsidies has a big effect and consumer demand is soft, especially without the incentives. Some car companies are pivoting back to gasoline.

I think batteries are the costliest part of transitioning to electric. China does things cheaper, but not in the US.

Portable batteries, that provide the huge amount of power needed to drive a car, must be a difficult technology, so far. Lithium ion batteries are affordable for small uses like phones.

The electric motor, itself, seems okay. Less moving parts than an internal combustion engine. It must be the battery that's difficult as well as having Trump in office.

I'm more a fan of alternative transit than automobiles anyway. Electrification doesn't reduce traffic congestion, pollution from tires, space needed for parking, sprawl and accidents. The self driving car might be able to help with these other things; except maybe tire pollution. Technology comes to the rescue.

Since the battery seems to be the hardest technical part in electrification, I still think about Seattle's electric trolly buses that run from the overhead wires. That bypasses the need for a battery.

Maybe that's one reason why hybrid car sales are still strong. The drive motors for the wheels are easy and the battery can be much smaller. Energy still comes from a gas motor, though it can be smaller than in earlier car technology.

I may not be a car expert, but I think about science and technical things a lot.

Overpopulation is still a big problem because so many people's aspirations clash with a crowded planet.

I still think overpopulation is a serious problem, though my thinking is nuanced. If more people lived my lifestyle, it would be less of a problem. I live car free so I don't use much space for parking at the places I visit. I live in a studio apartment with 97 other units in this building. It works out okay. I use less energy for home heating and transportation and I'm not a big consumer.

My lifestyle isn't for everyone, but if more folks adopted similar lifestyles, overpopulation would be less of a problem. Folks in developing countries and so forth, who aspire to live more the "traditional" American Dream makes accommodating our 8 billion+ world population difficult. Some folks worry about lower birthrates leading to less young workers for financing growing retirement generations. Yes, lower birthrates require economic adjustment.

As much as people complain about overwhelming immigration, it is a source of talented, young workers wanting to move to countries that more respect human rights. Young workers tend to want to escape war and repression. In an ideal world, this could be a benefit to open societies, but it has, instead, become a liability.

Immigration, that has overwhelmed affordable housing and infrastructure, has lead to a shift toward more authoritarian rightwing politics in many European nations as well as here in USA. My view of humanity has become more cynical, given the negative reaction to immigration. It seems to prove that there are, basically, too many people; if not too many people, at least too many, given our current planning and lifestyles. I can understand some anti immigration sentiment, given lack of affordable housing and so forth, but I would like to think that better planning of our landscape is possible.