My Daily Impact, November 16-24, 2011

This is post number 37.

Happy Thanksgiving. It has been over a week again since posting. I am sitting at a McDonnalds having coffee and writing this. I had to convince the guy at the counter to serve my coffee in my cup instead of using one of their disposable ones. He was nice enough to comply; he will not be assimilated yet!

I drove my van down here with the Honda scooter inside. Astro did not have quite as much room to wander around, but he did not seem to mind. The temperature was cool enough to use only the windows, and the gas mileage seems to be good. I will have to wait until I fill the tank before I know for sure.

I took a long ride on the scooter last night. I wanted to park in South Miami, and walk around for a while. There was no parking available, and even if there was, there was no two-wheeled vehicle parking. I will make sure that I just did not see any before I write a letter to city hall. The same was true of Coconut Grove. I would be happy to pay a reasonable rate to park my scooter; four or five can fit in a regular parking space, so the price should be about one-third or one-quarter of regular car rates.

I have had mixed results with my quest to stop eating so much meat. There is still that Ikea bacon, and my friend Kenny and I went to Golden Coral for the buffet. I had about a half of pound of Steak, some chicken and some fish. I did do well on other days by having veggie curry at the Thai restaurant, and salad at Sweet Tomatoes.

The amount of garbage which I generate continues to be small. There were only two small plastic grocery bags in the can for the past week. Most of that was yogurt cups, snack wrappers, and other packaging from my food. I try to limit the purchase of over=packaged food, but I do not buy enough fresh stuff to do that yet. Maybe I can start a garden co-op with my neighbors. It can't hurt to try.

Grid power use is very low this month, and I hope to keep the total below 60 kilowatt-hours. I still owe the truck a good, full charge. I drove to Ikea with my neighbor, Peggy on Tuesday. At least I kept her from using her truck and her gas. I need to find the truck a new owner. I do not use it enough to keep the batteries in good working condition. It really likes to be driven and charged daily.

There are 20 batteries to try to keep fresh. It seems that the older that they get, the easier it is for them to loose charge when sitting. I may need to drive it a couple of days in a row to refresh them.

Each battery weighs about 75 pounds. That means about 1500 pounds of extra weight to push around. There is some savings from a lighter motor and no gas tank, but it still will not win any races!