Ask
Dr. Druid . Day 48
Hypermiling
vs Hyperdorking
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Hurray. A
daily chance to practice your best deft attention skills and come to
the rescue of your beloved & beleaguered planet at the same time.
What a deal.
Hypermiling is smart eco-driving. As
with most skills, it will take a day or a week and a lifetime to Get
Good. Send Inner Perf to Fiji for mas grog The basic of Hypermiling
is that you evolve from a leadfoot to a sugarfoot . With accomplished
hypermiling, you'll be hypersmiling all the way to the Make the
Planet Happier And Be Less of a Mindless Wasteful Boor Bank.
30 years ago, when I was still a huge
baseball fan, I did a spate of listening to the radio. There was a
gent who did segments on random interesting stuff. In one segment, he
told us out in RadioLand that if each driver who stopped at a light left
one car length between them and the car in front of them, when the
light turned green, the entire line could gently roll at once, and
traffic movement, traffic flow, would be greatly more pleasant &
efficient.
Roy Harrigan from Dorset, Vermont was
a childhood friend of my first husband, M.Fay. Harrigan was a lunatic
genius. He invented a 300 mph submarine. He shot rats thru the walls
with the Luger he kept to the right of the spoons by his placemat at
dinner. He declared that terrified deer tasted better than killed
calm deer. I saw the Luger routine myself while eating venison at his
house. Roy was seriously nuts.
Shaefe Satterthwaite from Tenafly New
Jersey was an ecologist in 1966 before there were ecologists. He gave
me Star, a prize milking goat, for my wedding. There's the memorable
pict of me in my wedding dress milking the goat because no one else
knew how to milk a goat. (A month later Star escaped from her tether
and was impounded by the police for eating all of the mayor of
Manchester Vermont's prize peonies the week before the annual Garden
Tour.) Satterthwaite drove a Saab which had great gas mileage. He
drove tirelessly up & down the East Coast to obscure meetings
about saving wetlands. Satterthwaite loved his swamps.
Satterthwaite could read a
topographical map. We'd set off for a hike and it was no nonsense.
He'd lead with his great walking stick and high-laced old hiking
boots. You marched with Satterthwaite.
I hiked once with Harrigan. It was
charming. He said, “If you kill yourself, you'll only get to the
top of the mountain five minutes sooner.” Holy moly, the hiking
styles were so against the auto-prejudices. It is always in all ways
a treasure hunt, life. You do not know what who or what's gonna toss you
the gold doubloon this day.
I learned about the deep swamp
patterns of the planet's needs from sweet Satterthwaite. I learned to
travel calmly from loonland Harrigan.
So whenever I see a redlight, I take
my foot off the accelerator and coast or roll -- the most points in
my Secret Driving Game coming from hitting a light rolling.
If I have to gently stop, I leave the
car's length space or cushion between me and the vehicle in front of
me. Depending on the line, I start to roll or creep when the car(or
two) in front of the car in front of me starts to roll. This allows
me to accelerate smoothly instead of jerkily and obviates dumb
jackrabbiting, a signature move of the hyperdork.
My most honored stepfather John Porter
was a bit of a Thoreauian. After philosophy at Princeton, he went
farming in Maryland. We were just at the transition from the huge
Percheron farm horses to John Deere, Farmall, and Allis Chalmers
tractors. John Deere tractors were bright green and ponderous.
Farmall were red and reliable. Allis Chalmers were orangey yellow,
zippy, and temperamental. The Allis Chalmers could go 5 mph maybe
while the John Deere could go 2 mph. You cannot imagine how obscenely
expensive tractors were. It's why farmers are 100% always in
major-league debt. I think a big tractor was $20-$30,000. John was
very big on “taking care of the machinery,” on not cowboying
around, of being aware of the effect of gentle turns on the
unromantic but essential underpinnings of a car, a truck, or a
tractor.
So I knew we made impacts on the
planet. I knew that it was smart to take care of the machinery. And I
knew that aggressive driving would only get you there 5 minutes
sooner. These influences wove to make me a smart, low-impact driver
for forty years. But what I didn't have was a Darn Cool Name for it.
So when I heard of “hypermiling” recently, I was truly tickled. I
now drive smugly along and grin sneerily to myself, “I'm a
hypermiler” and think of bumperstickers like Hypermiling Leads to
Hypersmiling. Instead of road rage, I have road glee as I get into
the Hypermiling Zone and do my little earnest part for the planet.
Then dear The Blue sent me an
etherogram with “Hyperdorking” on it! What's the opposite of
smart, eco-driver hypermiling? Hurtle-&-brake, gas-guzzling,
exhaust-spewing stupid hyperdorking.
After the light turns red, all of the
gas spent still accelerating in order to sit at the light going Zero
mpg is Utterly Wasted. It is twice evilly stupid. That precious gas
is lost to future useful motion. That gas turns to anti-people &
anti-planet toxic emissions for no reason except ignorant and
arrogant hyperdorking. Piffle. These people are a menace.
Anyone who drives so belligerently is in a pathetic lack of
self-esteem and self-confidence. Like all bullies, hyperdorking road
bullies use belligerence instead of brains. As they gun past you
(often in an SUV or a shriek-yellow Hummer), you can now have the
pleasing holler of “Hyperdorking!” to justly condemn their
selfish gigadumbness.
Your being a hero as a driver, a
hypermiling samurai, means restraint and skill.
Tomorrow we'll get into more details
of hypermiling and into why I'm not an Xtreme Hypermiler. And,
perhaps, another deliciously righteous anti-hyperdorking rant, or
twain.
This very day begin to catalog where
you are on the leadfoot/sugarfoot scale of hypermiling vs
hyperdorking. Are you already gliding like a samurai swan through the
hectic traffic, an eco-hero hypermiler? Or are you hurtling &
braking, impatient, stupid, an eco-loser, a vehicular villain, an
hyperdorker? Keep track.
///!!\\\
Notes:
..mas
(mahss) is 'more' in Spanish;
..A
friend & I have been debating between the best 'opposite' of
'leadfoot.' Featherfoot fits the weight feel and is cool, but there's
something so beguiling –sweet?-- about sugarfoot.
..Remind
yourself if necessary about Inner Perf on Day 5, Inner Perfectionist
to Fiji;
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Ask
Dr. Druid, 55 Days from Lead to Gold, Secrets of Alchemy You Can
Use, a druid shaman’s playbook
.. Intro;
Prologue;
Day
1; Days
2 & 3;
Day
4; Day
5; Day
6; Day
7; Day
8; Day
9; Day
10; Day
11; Day
12; Day
13; Day
14; day
15 Review 2;
Day
16; Day
17; Day
18; Day
19; Day
20; Day
21; Day
22; Day
23; Day
24; Day
25; Day
26; Day
27; Day
28; Day
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31; Day
32; Day
33; Day
34; Day
35; Day
36; Day
37; [Day
38]; Day
39; Day
40; Day
41; Day
42; Day
43; Day
44; Day
45; Day
46; Day
47; Day 48;
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the
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