I did feel grown-up when my book won an award that made an impact.
Death Monsters, as a native San Franciscan bike rider can attest, known as cars or automobiles by most folks, have become outrageously over-priced and no are longer filled with the simple promise of freedom to turn the ignition and go wherever we want to go on-demand from our driveway or garage.
We taxpayers paid 50 billion of the 800 billion T.A.R.P. money to bail out General Motors–which then took our latest state of the art duel-engine strategy an high-mileage EV tech to the SAIC corp in China. The money was supposed to help domestic car production, but all the Buick’s and Chevy Bolts went to China–along with our proprietary engineering. The only thing GM on these cars was the logo or sticker–and they can be found driving on the roads of far-flung countries–except the US.
The CEO of GM just sold 40 percent of her shares recently. She knows what any recent owners of the Escalade, Silverado, and Yukon platforms know. GM no good. Truth be told, the delicate nature of these complex power plants needed extreme care with first mile driving and the understanding of changing-out the oil that was placed in these vehicles from the factory–to avoid burnt and clogged engine pistons and inside cam moving parts, which could not only fail in cold weather, but destroy the guts of an engine with the zero-twenty oil inside–from the factory–if the engine was started and left idling before pulling-out. Knowing that a slow ten to fifteen m.p.h. in the first two miles of driving–could have save a lot of troubles at the 30,000 mile mark.
Anyway, one of my side missions is to plug mass transit–and even reduce student pickups by parents after school–to just use a fast pass. I find it hard to believe that more people don’t see the freedom offered by a fast pass–with money saved for other stuff.
The Dao of Doug: A Bus Driver's Perspective 