Motorcycles and Economics
I saw my first electric motorcycle on the street in front of my house in Central Point the other day. It brought a smile to my face. Slipping quietly by with it's little headlight and flashing lights on the garb of the driver. Just conveyance, with no link to the oil industry, and no noise pollution. As I ramp up my agricultural leanings, this technology points the way to a more sustainable way of living with what the earth has to offer; magnetic and other metal materials, some plastics, and glass.
Back in the day I used to own an old 250 cc Harley Davidson made in Italy. That brought a smile every time I got on it as well and I've thought of finding another one. That might be a lost cause. I checked with the motorcycle and ATV boneyard out in Sams Valley, but they hadn't seen one in ten years. Knew a guy who restored them in Prescott Valley, AZ prior to the '90s when I was living there for a year with the family. He had some parts but nothing left restorable.
I had bought mine from a two-hitch Vietnam Vet and artillery officer who I did some skiing with in Colorado and drinking when I was at Oregon State University. I met him through a dormie hunting partner who is now the head of large ungulate game management for the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife in Eastern Washington, Woody Myers. But Frank Miller was a swashbuckler and kind of an idol for me in those days. He had used that old Harley to race up Pikes Peak in dirt bike ralleys before the Japanese took over that venue. My wife's father used to test the first dirt bikes for Honda in Southern California and would take them on family holidays to the beaches of Baja California. Nowadays he rides a big Harley with his friends even though he is in his eighties.
But that 250 was great to zip out the road on Mitkof Island in Southeast Alaska and go for some 'hooters' 9grouse, sorry fellas) in the spring of the year. Took it to Yakutat in 1971 to get to work when I went up there to work in their new cold storage plant and rode it on the ocean beaches and logging roads. It had wide knobbys that got good traction on the soft sand. It didn't do well in the muskeg, mainly because of the muskeg ponds that would suddenly appear. No, I never went in a pond. I got the nickname 'Bronson' then because I guess I looked like the character in the TV series 'Bronson' who rode around in the hills with his motorcycle and did good deeds. I more recently met the daughter of the leading lady in that series when I was looking for a home care setting for my kids. She was running an adult foster home in Rusch. I thought that was ironic.
But as fate would have it, no motorcycles have come my way since 1970, except the BSA 650 I bought in London and used for a few months in about 1974. A friend in Kodiak has a collection of about fourty bikes, mostly older Japanese bikes. I found that there is a Association of older Japanese motorcycle owners. (Not older Japanese people, the bikes.) Thought about contacting him to buy one, but that electric motorcycle that zipped by the other day really got me thinking of going electric. They make them here in the Rogue Valley now, in a shuttered Walmart store they just move to from Ashland. The company is called Bramo. They started out making electric ATVs for farms and ranches, etc.
The interest I have in electric vehicles I suppose began during the years since the late 90s in Petersburg, Alaska where my two kids got their first electric wheelchairs. I remember an article about a shop teacher in Kenai, Alaska building an electric wheelchair that handled snowy roads and would lift his daughter up like a forklift so she could get things higher up. I've thought of all configurations for a more useful design for Morgan, who has great control of the joy stick that controls his Invacare electric chair. My latest is a electric off-road chair that could tow a mower on the little farm he is now renting in Central Point.
One guy out at a golf course is turning an electric golf cart into an off-road electric rig. Of course the advantage of electric is that you can sneak up on game animals better right from your ride. Hiking is a bitch when you get older and especially when carrying out the carcass. I have a case of macular degeneration now that I'm keeping at bay, but at the cost of not doing any strenuous exercise. I hate that. Weight lifters get it too, from straining so hard. The little blood vessels in the back of the eye start to leak and mess with your vision. You don't want that, let me tell you.
Now that my kids in wheelchairs are not just down the street from me, and hauling stuff on my bicycle out to their farm doesn't much appeal to me, maybe it's time for a motorcycle. The cost of a new electric one might be prohibitive for me for now, but I have my eye in that direction. Probably a more traditional motorcycle is in the cards for now. And it probably won't be a British Small Arms or a Harley Davidson, as much as I would love it to be. Although a combination road and farm vehicle would be nice. But nobody is making that one. Probably a low demand. Especially since some character in a comedic movie used one to get to work as a water boy for a football team.
So, what is the solution for short highway rides and even longer trips on logging roads in Southern Oregon? I always joke about putting a Harley Davidson engine in Morgan's wheelchair to get him more speed. I'm sure he would like some kind of more power for his jaunts about town. The extra speed would have helped wheeling from his old place to ours down 10th street where they forgot to pave the shoulder of the road. He had to drive out in traffic at only seven mph. And they forgot the street lights in that stretch too. Alicia drove right into a parked car once and I think her shin is still smarting, if only in her memory. Fun stories for the grandkids. My one grandkid, Connor, will probably be driving an magnet motor hover vehicle in the year 2030. At least a magnet motor-boat, one of my next projects, after remodeling some rooms in our house and experimenting in permaculture on the little farm. And maybe getting the long term care wheelchair I have a patent on into production. Whew! Good grist for the job-creationist touting politicians around about as well.
Sure, I could go to one of their little dog and pony show innovator programs and give all my ideas away to some Californian with a big bank account, but that doesn't help this area. Or me and my family. Is what really is fulfilling is helping the community, like my wife was telling of her chipping in when a guy at check-out was short a couple of bucks. She said she caught the clerks eye and she just slipped the extra money over without the guy knowing. Lasting sweet taste. We need more of that. I'm about tapped out helping my kids with their special needs and doing the thing I like best, blogging and innovating. Someone else that has the heart for commercialization in the valley is needed. And not a heart for taking all the profits either.
Not to say I haven't found machine shops that won't do the work for a reasonable fee. There just isn't the incubator facility needed for small innovators, or some such mechanism for an innovator to pick business partners and not be made to feel like a sideshow or a golden goose. But if a politician is going to get elected on a platform of job creation, he needs to have a plan. It's way too easy to just spout the buzz words, 'job creation,' or 'economic development.' I know, because I used to work in economic development in bureaucracy before. As an entrepreneur too, I sure know what doesn't work.
I keep recalling the story of the ED type in Kingman, Arizona who was the essential ingredient in helping start 41 new businesses there. Kind of like Oppenheimer, who was the man with the plan to make an atom bomb. He had all everything in his head, like a one man Google Search. Serendipity does happen and businesses do get started, but more are going broke these days than starting it seems. Maybe someone will get it someday and start helping to put all the innovations that are on the shelf into the public domain.
I organized and did a one man Inventors Fair in Petersburg, Alaska right before moving to Oregon in 2000. It was amazing the number of people who had an idea under their hat in the little town of 3,000. Inventors and entrepreneurs however, are chronically loathe to divulge their ideas. There definitely needs to be a mechanism where they can select the help they need from a menu of advisors and angel funders without divulging the essence of their life's work to everyone and his uncle, including foreign manufacturers. There really are industrial spys running all over the place. The essence of their life can be snatched away in a heartbeat, even with a patent. A patent that is about as good as the paper it's written on, unless you have more lawyers than the next person, which most innovators don't. And the fear is that even if you go the Steve Jobs route, you could get fired in a heartbeat like he was. Something's gotta give.
One of my last stabs at staying in Alaska was to propose a 'business development office' to help the innovators and jump-start a light industrial sector in a predominantly fish harvesting and processing town. Reliance on one industry is risky, and who knows, maybe Fukushima will be fishing's death knell. Anything could happen. And in the agricultural world, if the big biotech companies are successful in putting all the little farmers out of business, and then GMOs are proven to even the most ardent supporters to cause serious health issues, which some researchers have already done, then it's curtains to the whole of agriculture for a time.
With all the risks aside, and just structurally speaking, I'm convinced a more local and extended family structure is better for business. More companies are buying back their stock, many are making their companies employee owned, and non-profits are sprouting like alfalfa in the spring. I've dabbled in forming corporations and an LLC for my wheelchair endeavor and every time it just leaves a bad taste in my mouth to put it mildly. There is no lack of people in an extended family who need work either. And by extended family I also mean trusted friends as well. Not that there doesn't need to be some structure however. But remember, corporations as a business model have only been around a very short time. There is also a very old form known as a 'Corporation Sole' in which the OFFICE is the head of it, not the person in the office. They exist all over, but not listed on State web sites because they are non-profits.
Well, here's a blurb about the subject of Commonomics. I thought was relevant to the topic, also since folks are getting more perturbed about corporations and government social engineering experiments. You've heard the term 'White Elephant.' It's an expensive government boondogle, usually undertaken for the sake of that nebulous term 'economic development.' That term should be scrapped; it doesn't imply any particular thing to be accomplished, so invariably State and local ED jobs are just a way for folks to get a job in the business network they create.
"Aggregate counts of economic activity like gross domestic product, or GDP, give all activity equal value. The cultivating of an urban farm, which may involve little paid work and consume few bought materials, is less “productive,” in GDP terms, than paving that farm over.“When grain prices go up, that’s good for GDP but terrible for hunger,” says Joshua Farley, a professor in community development and applied economics at the University of Vermont. ”GDP is an excellent measure of cost; a terrible measure of benefit.”To even start a new conversation, we need new measurements. As the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE) puts it, it’s time to start “measuring what matters.”
A small farm family is happy and well fed just like a well paid CEO. Or even healthier and have more leisure time and play toys than a nurse at a hospital like my wife. They get dirt under their fingernails, so what? Does that disqualify their labor output from the equation? And what of their smaller carbon footprint and lower impact, nay, even benefit to the ecosystem we all live in, even the CEOs and politicians who are trying for the reverse. Think locally made electric vehicles and fertilizer.
Back in the day I used to own an old 250 cc Harley Davidson made in Italy. That brought a smile every time I got on it as well and I've thought of finding another one. That might be a lost cause. I checked with the motorcycle and ATV boneyard out in Sams Valley, but they hadn't seen one in ten years. Knew a guy who restored them in Prescott Valley, AZ prior to the '90s when I was living there for a year with the family. He had some parts but nothing left restorable.
I had bought mine from a two-hitch Vietnam Vet and artillery officer who I did some skiing with in Colorado and drinking when I was at Oregon State University. I met him through a dormie hunting partner who is now the head of large ungulate game management for the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife in Eastern Washington, Woody Myers. But Frank Miller was a swashbuckler and kind of an idol for me in those days. He had used that old Harley to race up Pikes Peak in dirt bike ralleys before the Japanese took over that venue. My wife's father used to test the first dirt bikes for Honda in Southern California and would take them on family holidays to the beaches of Baja California. Nowadays he rides a big Harley with his friends even though he is in his eighties.
But that 250 was great to zip out the road on Mitkof Island in Southeast Alaska and go for some 'hooters' 9grouse, sorry fellas) in the spring of the year. Took it to Yakutat in 1971 to get to work when I went up there to work in their new cold storage plant and rode it on the ocean beaches and logging roads. It had wide knobbys that got good traction on the soft sand. It didn't do well in the muskeg, mainly because of the muskeg ponds that would suddenly appear. No, I never went in a pond. I got the nickname 'Bronson' then because I guess I looked like the character in the TV series 'Bronson' who rode around in the hills with his motorcycle and did good deeds. I more recently met the daughter of the leading lady in that series when I was looking for a home care setting for my kids. She was running an adult foster home in Rusch. I thought that was ironic.
But as fate would have it, no motorcycles have come my way since 1970, except the BSA 650 I bought in London and used for a few months in about 1974. A friend in Kodiak has a collection of about fourty bikes, mostly older Japanese bikes. I found that there is a Association of older Japanese motorcycle owners. (Not older Japanese people, the bikes.) Thought about contacting him to buy one, but that electric motorcycle that zipped by the other day really got me thinking of going electric. They make them here in the Rogue Valley now, in a shuttered Walmart store they just move to from Ashland. The company is called Bramo. They started out making electric ATVs for farms and ranches, etc.
The interest I have in electric vehicles I suppose began during the years since the late 90s in Petersburg, Alaska where my two kids got their first electric wheelchairs. I remember an article about a shop teacher in Kenai, Alaska building an electric wheelchair that handled snowy roads and would lift his daughter up like a forklift so she could get things higher up. I've thought of all configurations for a more useful design for Morgan, who has great control of the joy stick that controls his Invacare electric chair. My latest is a electric off-road chair that could tow a mower on the little farm he is now renting in Central Point.
One guy out at a golf course is turning an electric golf cart into an off-road electric rig. Of course the advantage of electric is that you can sneak up on game animals better right from your ride. Hiking is a bitch when you get older and especially when carrying out the carcass. I have a case of macular degeneration now that I'm keeping at bay, but at the cost of not doing any strenuous exercise. I hate that. Weight lifters get it too, from straining so hard. The little blood vessels in the back of the eye start to leak and mess with your vision. You don't want that, let me tell you.
Now that my kids in wheelchairs are not just down the street from me, and hauling stuff on my bicycle out to their farm doesn't much appeal to me, maybe it's time for a motorcycle. The cost of a new electric one might be prohibitive for me for now, but I have my eye in that direction. Probably a more traditional motorcycle is in the cards for now. And it probably won't be a British Small Arms or a Harley Davidson, as much as I would love it to be. Although a combination road and farm vehicle would be nice. But nobody is making that one. Probably a low demand. Especially since some character in a comedic movie used one to get to work as a water boy for a football team.
So, what is the solution for short highway rides and even longer trips on logging roads in Southern Oregon? I always joke about putting a Harley Davidson engine in Morgan's wheelchair to get him more speed. I'm sure he would like some kind of more power for his jaunts about town. The extra speed would have helped wheeling from his old place to ours down 10th street where they forgot to pave the shoulder of the road. He had to drive out in traffic at only seven mph. And they forgot the street lights in that stretch too. Alicia drove right into a parked car once and I think her shin is still smarting, if only in her memory. Fun stories for the grandkids. My one grandkid, Connor, will probably be driving an magnet motor hover vehicle in the year 2030. At least a magnet motor-boat, one of my next projects, after remodeling some rooms in our house and experimenting in permaculture on the little farm. And maybe getting the long term care wheelchair I have a patent on into production. Whew! Good grist for the job-creationist touting politicians around about as well.
Sure, I could go to one of their little dog and pony show innovator programs and give all my ideas away to some Californian with a big bank account, but that doesn't help this area. Or me and my family. Is what really is fulfilling is helping the community, like my wife was telling of her chipping in when a guy at check-out was short a couple of bucks. She said she caught the clerks eye and she just slipped the extra money over without the guy knowing. Lasting sweet taste. We need more of that. I'm about tapped out helping my kids with their special needs and doing the thing I like best, blogging and innovating. Someone else that has the heart for commercialization in the valley is needed. And not a heart for taking all the profits either.
Not to say I haven't found machine shops that won't do the work for a reasonable fee. There just isn't the incubator facility needed for small innovators, or some such mechanism for an innovator to pick business partners and not be made to feel like a sideshow or a golden goose. But if a politician is going to get elected on a platform of job creation, he needs to have a plan. It's way too easy to just spout the buzz words, 'job creation,' or 'economic development.' I know, because I used to work in economic development in bureaucracy before. As an entrepreneur too, I sure know what doesn't work.
I keep recalling the story of the ED type in Kingman, Arizona who was the essential ingredient in helping start 41 new businesses there. Kind of like Oppenheimer, who was the man with the plan to make an atom bomb. He had all everything in his head, like a one man Google Search. Serendipity does happen and businesses do get started, but more are going broke these days than starting it seems. Maybe someone will get it someday and start helping to put all the innovations that are on the shelf into the public domain.
I organized and did a one man Inventors Fair in Petersburg, Alaska right before moving to Oregon in 2000. It was amazing the number of people who had an idea under their hat in the little town of 3,000. Inventors and entrepreneurs however, are chronically loathe to divulge their ideas. There definitely needs to be a mechanism where they can select the help they need from a menu of advisors and angel funders without divulging the essence of their life's work to everyone and his uncle, including foreign manufacturers. There really are industrial spys running all over the place. The essence of their life can be snatched away in a heartbeat, even with a patent. A patent that is about as good as the paper it's written on, unless you have more lawyers than the next person, which most innovators don't. And the fear is that even if you go the Steve Jobs route, you could get fired in a heartbeat like he was. Something's gotta give.
One of my last stabs at staying in Alaska was to propose a 'business development office' to help the innovators and jump-start a light industrial sector in a predominantly fish harvesting and processing town. Reliance on one industry is risky, and who knows, maybe Fukushima will be fishing's death knell. Anything could happen. And in the agricultural world, if the big biotech companies are successful in putting all the little farmers out of business, and then GMOs are proven to even the most ardent supporters to cause serious health issues, which some researchers have already done, then it's curtains to the whole of agriculture for a time.
With all the risks aside, and just structurally speaking, I'm convinced a more local and extended family structure is better for business. More companies are buying back their stock, many are making their companies employee owned, and non-profits are sprouting like alfalfa in the spring. I've dabbled in forming corporations and an LLC for my wheelchair endeavor and every time it just leaves a bad taste in my mouth to put it mildly. There is no lack of people in an extended family who need work either. And by extended family I also mean trusted friends as well. Not that there doesn't need to be some structure however. But remember, corporations as a business model have only been around a very short time. There is also a very old form known as a 'Corporation Sole' in which the OFFICE is the head of it, not the person in the office. They exist all over, but not listed on State web sites because they are non-profits.
Well, here's a blurb about the subject of Commonomics. I thought was relevant to the topic, also since folks are getting more perturbed about corporations and government social engineering experiments. You've heard the term 'White Elephant.' It's an expensive government boondogle, usually undertaken for the sake of that nebulous term 'economic development.' That term should be scrapped; it doesn't imply any particular thing to be accomplished, so invariably State and local ED jobs are just a way for folks to get a job in the business network they create.
"Aggregate counts of economic activity like gross domestic product, or GDP, give all activity equal value. The cultivating of an urban farm, which may involve little paid work and consume few bought materials, is less “productive,” in GDP terms, than paving that farm over.“When grain prices go up, that’s good for GDP but terrible for hunger,” says Joshua Farley, a professor in community development and applied economics at the University of Vermont. ”GDP is an excellent measure of cost; a terrible measure of benefit.”To even start a new conversation, we need new measurements. As the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE) puts it, it’s time to start “measuring what matters.”
A small farm family is happy and well fed just like a well paid CEO. Or even healthier and have more leisure time and play toys than a nurse at a hospital like my wife. They get dirt under their fingernails, so what? Does that disqualify their labor output from the equation? And what of their smaller carbon footprint and lower impact, nay, even benefit to the ecosystem we all live in, even the CEOs and politicians who are trying for the reverse. Think locally made electric vehicles and fertilizer.
posted by Alaskacafe at 8:45 AM
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