If I can get from Dortmund in Germany to Calais in France in 4,5 - 5 hours (including stopping to fill up), I sure as hell don’t need 3 hours to go across the Netherlands.
I used to drive regularly to Antwerp from Dortmund in a truck and it took between 3,5 and 4 hours.
You wrote “from Germany in the East”, that means Berlin or farther East, Frankfurt/Oder maybe, to “Belgium in the West”, that means Antwerp or closer to the channel. And you said you can do that in 3h. Which is not possible on a road, even if you drive at 200km/h with no breaks. As for NL: The speed limit in NL is 100 nowadays, if you need less than 3h, you’re breaking the law.
But, you’re a truck driver, so I can’t take you seriously. You never received any education. You probably vote right-wing. So fuck off.
So go look at a map. How far is it from Venlo to Eersel? It’s about 65 km. Add a couple of kilometres to the border in each direction - let’s make it a nice round number: 80 km all told.
How slow is your fucking car, you stupid fucking cockwomble.
BTW, the speed limit of 100 kph is only during the day. At night it is mostly 120 kph.
LOL, thanks for admitting you are wrong. Venlo to Eersel is not “driving through NL”, it’s driving through a small part of NL. “Driving through” means at least the median of possible routes, if not even the longest possible route. But I wouldn’t expect anything but trying to cheat from a fucking dirty truck driver, with your non-SI abbreviations and extremist rightwing views.
Germany in the east means: eastern side of the Netherlands, and Belgium in the west means: western side of the Netherlands. I also stated my start and end point for driving a truck, Dortmund and Antwerp. Again, go look at a map.
As you don’t have the ability to look at, and understand a map, I must assume my educational level is higher than yours.
You are about as intelligent as a metre of hard shoulder on a highway.
I have no further interest to converse with an internet troll who is unable to discuss a subject without sinking into insults like a 13 year old in a playground shouting match.
Good day to you, and I hope your IQ level one day rises to match your shoesize.
I meeeeaaan, she lost that actual ton before you started biking her around and she’s still somehow fat. Someone had to say it. You shouldn’t apologize.
Plz dont im so srry. I bag ur 4givness. I hav sweet ethral fools cristal sord in d2. I wil giv it 2 u. My mom wil kil me if I get a nother virus. She mite blame my dad and devors him. Plz. I bag of u!
It’s a stab at fat… I can’t help but feel targeted but I’ll have to wait until the stabbing pain in my chest subsides. The shooting pain down my left arm is lessening already! I’m fine, everything’s fine… just let me catch my breath for a moment.
Old “your momma” joke… Your momma so fat when she sits around the house, she sits “around” the house! Meaning that she’s as big as the whole house or even bigger than the house.
Which someone that fat is morbidly obese.
So the joke is a twist on the joke, with a jab at the fat person, in the form of faux concern over their health.
Sort of in the same vein as “bless your heart” or “he/she has a great personality”.
If you bike regularly, you actually don’t spend more calories. You only see calorie burn uptick when first taking on new exercise, which falls off over time back to your usual normal calorie cost. Because of this, that calorie cost for a biker is calorie intake they’d already consume even if they didn’t bike. It’s essentially free, in contrast to the gas of the car which is always a cost.
There was a Kurzgesat video about this a couple weeks ago. Apparently if you don’t spend calories exercising/biking, your body will find other ways to burn it like increasing your immune system activity (which can have poor long-term effects). There’s an adjustment period when you do start exercising where energy is still spent on sedentary things and the actual exercise before the former is reduced to mostly match the latter.
I have also read that regular exercise can lead to an increase of base metabolic rate by ~5% though, which is like an extra 100 calories per day.
You should always doublecheck Kurzgesagt videos, btw.
They’re not a good sole source due to being heavily simplified (they know this and often provide further reading (you probably also know this (just commenting anyway for general visibility (this should be considered good practice tbh (to be honest)))))
Yeah, I started taking Kurzgesagt videos with a grain of salt a while ago, hence the “apparently.” Their explanation just fit NoName’s assertion pretty well. Never bad to make the possibility of being wrong explicit though!
But that’s because that fuel is used to do much, much more work. if you scale down the unit to, say, a scooter (50cc) it will last much longer. Most scoots have 1gal tanks and they can get over 100mi per tank.
That being said everyone will think you lost your license due to drunk driving so to prevent this you should replace alcohol in your life and simply drink gas.
Real ones will switch to drinking biofuels because they’re better for the environment.
Ethanol is a good option.
Pro-tip: make sure it’s not denatured and is purified—it’s less dangerous for consumption that way.
No, drink diesel - more calories per gallon, even though it costs more per gallon, too. The calorie difference is more than enough to offset the cost difference.
Gross metabolic efficiency is gonna be around ~25% so you’re best off measuring kilojoules of work as an approximation of calorie burn, and then compare that to how many gallons of gas would be consumed when in a car, but you’d still probably wanna drink the gas
One thing to account for is that humans are very inefficient at converting food into energy output. Only about 25% efficient to be precise. So you need to eat about 4 times more calories than you end up outputting into the bicycle.
The same thing applies to ICE cars, their engines are also very inefficient. EVs however reach an efficiency of 80-90%, they only end up using more energy than a bicycle because of how much faster you usually drive them. But if you drove an EV at the same speed you would ride a bicycle they would be vastly more efficient. And that’s not even accounting for the amount of energy used to produce food in the first place, which is a lot higher than the energy content of said food.
The superior choice is obviously an electric bicycle though when you want to have the most sustainable transportation, you get all of the efficiency gains from a battery operated motor, whilst still having the low weight and drag of a bicycle
That’s not accounting for the inefficiency of turning heat into electricity in the first place (turbine generation is about 90% at utility scale) or turning photons into usable electricity (photovoltaics are at about 20%). And with turbines, you have to account for the inefficiencies in processing the fuel to get it to that point.
The whole universe is just an entropy generator and we’re gonna lose a lot of useful energy as we try to manipulate it.
Yes, I was purely referring to the efficiency of the battery and motor. Producing food also requires a significantly more energy than the food ends up containing
This is why we need good public transit on top of good biking infrastructure. The two working together let’s you get anywhere a car can go while not taking a lot longer.
Yea I get that, plenty of weebs out there that don’t want to acknowledge/don’t care to learn the downsides of Japanese society.
Just working 12 hour days is enough for me to be glad I wasn’t born over there. Great place to vacation though, especially since the yen is dropping so much.
It used to be just weebs, but in the last few years I’ve seen plenty of “normies” (for the lack of a better term) getting into weeb culture, I.e. travelling to Japan for a week, encountering a vending machine that has hot drinks, and from then on basically becoming Japanese ultranationalists in the way they think Japanese culture should be opposed on all others. While knowing basically nothing about it. It’s strange. Especially for an European person.
That’s sorta hilarious lul. Reminds me of the ones who go visit India and are all namaste when they return.
Incidentally, I found a panty gacha machine when I went, not used panties thankfully. My girlfriend rolled and got the legendary blue stripped pantu ones.
You’re not wrong, but that’s not going to work over the entire country. There’s just too much space to cover; the country would go bankrupt trying to provide mass transit everywhere that it’s needed. So while this could be, if you could convince people to actually do it, a solution in urban areas, it’s never going to work out in the thousands of miles of country and they have the exact same problems. They just have less traffic and more empty space to cross.
I just spent a week in Texas in places that had plenty of people living and presumably working close together. The infrastructure is a hellscape of concrete and asphalt and monstrous pickup trucks. It has nothing to do with being a big country and everything to do with culture and policies.
We didn’t go bankrupt making a car-centric infrastructure, we won’t go bankrupt building adequate mass transit and micromobility infrastructure. In fact, we will probably profit greatly in myriad ways.
Acktually a fair few counties in the US have gone bankrupt building car-centric infrastructure, because it’s ruinously expensive and doesn’t even come close to being covered by the taxation they put on cars. Mass transit and bike infrastructure costs are miniscule in comparison and sometimes even actively gain money.
I was specifically addressing people commuting to their job and traveling within their immediate area. That kind of stuff could definitely be covered by biking and better bus/light rail investment without having to go everywhere. The only people who wouldn’t be covered by that are people living in the country and they are a minority compared to those living in suburbs or near big cities and could still be served by public transit using park and ride stations if they have to travel to a bigger city. They would just drive to the closest park and ride station and then use the public transit to travel within the metro area. Of course if they’re traveling entirely within less populated country areas then public transit won’t serve them that well but at that point you can just use cars as a backup. But public transit investments could easily serve the majority of people for their daily travel needs and even if they do have a high cost the economic benefit of making it easier for people to commute to work and to cities for fun day trips will create more economic value over time being a net benefit in the long run.
Some lucky few still get to build up an emergency fund, possibly retire, or even become independently wealthy, but yeah, most of us are working class stiffs.
Get a closer job or move closer to your job if it’s a good reliable job. I did and it’s fucking wonderful! Riding gets easier and easier as you get stronger and better cardio too.
Took me a long time, a lot of work, and some luck but I can’t recommend it enough. Most days I ride my bike or skateboard, but even walking doesn’t take long. I only resort to a car if I’m too injured to ride/skate/walk far or the weather makes it too dangerous (which is rare, I’ve ridden through more storms than I can count lol, icy conditions suck though).
And park directly in the immediate front of the building I’m visiting. No circling around and around without finding a space to park my overly expensive rust box. Just arrive, lock the bike to a post and be there.
Totally different experience in that aspect alone.
I can’t bicycle anywhere. Well, at least my commute would be certain death, There is a nice bike trail a few miles away but I’d have buy a bike and a rack for my car to haul it over there. Can barely afford the car.
Depending on your personal circumstances you might not need a rack. I always just take the front wheel off (quick release) and shove my bike in the back seat
Given that’s a greentext, legitimately expected anon to somehow get injured or killed by some not paying attention driver on unsafe road or something. Glad he didn’t.
I do think it’s funny that America has the worst traffic in the western world, yet in Europe we can get by just fine with roads built by people that even the Romans considered to be ancient.
That’s because Europeans invest in all forms of transport, so you don’t get people who can’t fathom the concept of taking any trip from point A to B in anything other than a car.
Edit: not sure why I’m getting downvoted. I think Europe does it way better if that wasn’t obvious
Would be great if Europe actually invested in all forms of transport. Where I live, the rail system is run into the ground instead of getting maintenance and expansion.
I mean there has been some work done to those roads in the meantime and it’s not remarkable you chose to build them on the quickest way to go from A to B while keeping construction cost in mind…
It would take me 3 hours to get to work on a bike, and 3 hours home. I’d love to be able to do it, but Vancouver is expensive and I don’t want to waste my free time biking in 30° weather
Where do you live, Chilliwack? Lol. I get it though heat sucks. I’m in Kelowna and bike whenever I can, but I’m not showing up to dinner or a meeting drenched. Errands or casual hangs though sure why not. It is a little less soupy humid here so even 40° isn’t awful as long as you’re moving and have a breeze.
4am is technically “before sunset”, but I assume you meant “before sunrise”.
I used to live in central Florida (so not even the benefit of the ocean climate) and I rode my bike everywhere and I lived in a house with no AC. I was young and high all the time, which I guess made being soaked in sweat and stinky all the time bearable. Somehow I still got play from women - apparently I was cute back then and I was hyper-fit, at least. Absolutely no fucking way I could stand that shit now.
If it’s cheaper to live in the middle of nowhere, with water and electricity and internet needing to be piped all that way out there, and the gas bills, and the road wear, then the government has failed. High and medium density housing costs the government less in maintenance, stimulates the economy, and is cheaper to build. Any functioning economy would price those homes cheaper. If you’re saving 300,000 by costing the government all that extra money and polluting the environment, someone fucked up on a colossal scale.
“But they’re so expensive, I’m not paying that much for a bike! I’d rather pay 10 times as much for cheap car that’ll sell all my text messages to data scraping companies while polluting the environment and destroying my future.”
Sure, but that doesn’t allow me to bring home a family worth of groceries, or let me drive 4-5 hours away to see family for the holidays, or give me a way to drop my partner off at the airport with three suitcases for work conferences, or a way to get my 110lb dog to the vet.
The bike is not a replacement for a car, not even if it’s an expensive e-bike.
If those are your use cases, then you would probably want to get a Dutch bike (>5k); specifically for a big doggo, groceries and suitcases. Unfortunately there are no North American companies currently making cargo bikes as good at replacing cars as the Dutch ones. Though most people do perfectly fine with North American versions, even with children (but not big doggos lol).
The only good reason to drive a car in the situations you listed is driving it to another city, which would very likely not be feasible with an e-bike. Unless that trip is taken up every weekend, the best (and cheapest) way to accomplish that would be to rent a car.
A good e-bike is certainly a good replacement, unless you focus on certain situations like driving 4-5 hours out of town. Everything else it can do just as well and even make it easier and less stressful.
Do it. I took up cycling last year (although I learned as a kid) and now it’s literally my favourite thing to do ever. I’m also the fittest I’ve ever been.
There are videos on youtube that can help. Tom Scott did one where he learns to ride a bike as an adult. He seemed to get the hang of it pretty quickly.
You’re going to do great. Keep the seat low and push with your feet to get the feel of coasting, just like kids learn. Small steps and you’ll be riding in no time. Depending on where you live, see if there are community bike groups you can volunteer at - these are great for learning about bike maintenance, and some places will let you build a bike for yourself from donated stuff for your time. Bike shops are pretty much universally supportive too.
For what it’s worth, I think you already did the hard part by coming here and expressing interest :)
Absolutely go do it! Riding a bike is one of the simplest joys in life once you get the hang of it. I live ripping around doing all my errands on it. I have a reasonably nice vehicle but really I only drive in the worst of the winter, or to get out of town to do some activity. In the summer that activity is usually mountain biking, go figure!
Have fun commuting 30 miles to work on that thing. Especially when there’s 8 or 10 inches of snow, -10 wind-chill, or there’s a thunderstorm rolling in. I’ve seen people do it; they look absolutely fucking miserable and it’s a miracle it doesn’t kill them.
Respect to those folks. A miserable ride is often rewarding because it’s one of those lows that is eminently temporary and gives you an appreciation for the highs, especially if you are dressed appropriately so as not to catch a cold or some such. Kind of like shoveling snow for that sweet sweet mug of hot chocolate on the sofa afterwards. But yeah, also a good city will provide alternative options for its citizens, trains, buses, rideshare even. If a 30 mile bike ride is the only alternative to driving from place A to place B, your government doesn’t want you to have any kind of freedom to choose how you get from place A to place B, if there are no affordable housing options or good job opportunities that change that equation, your government is working on behalf of the big car manufacturers and dealers to keep you enslaved in debt to them, which is pretty fucked up
You may have misread the history. The man is having fun with his current commute and he does not seems to be looking for some sort of a change in his routine.
You may have misread the history. The man is having fun with his current commute and he is does not seems to be looking for some sort of a change in his routine.
Actually, in a way, you did! You said “get a life”, which indicates you think I don’t have one. Me giving you information about me shows that I do have one. So now you’re more informed than you were before!
Nah… don’t worry. I know I never check twice the messages I wrote on social media. They are bound to be full of mistakes. Plus my french autocorrector modifies my english. Still, if I write to be read I should try to be readable (^_^)
We don’t know that. Maybe he was genuinely trying to help me improve my English, maybe he was genuinely having a hard time reading me bc of my mistakes. Even if it was about being clever there is no point for me or any of us to react with negativity and ruin our mood.
Lets be forgiving. It will make our life better. 🫰
Children in Norway ride their bikes to school every day, even in the snow. Are you saying you’re weaker than these literal children and need your climate controlled box to keep you comfortable? You can also choose to live closer to work if you want. Surprisingly most adults get to choose where they live.