Spiralling fuel costs can bite my bum

The SMH reported this weekend that:

Rural people spend, on average $160 a week on filling up and running their vehicles. By contrast, people living in major cities spend around $134 a week on their cars.

Transport is the third biggest single expense of urban Australians, with food and non-alcoholic drinks their second largest expense (housing costs top the list).

Hell, I am lucky to spend that much on diesel a month, let alone a week. Where on God's earth are these people driving to? Broken Hill and back?

Now I understand why I can afford to eat really good breakfasts in fancy cafes almost every day of the week and people look at me like I am a complete wierdo. Instead of stuffing fuel into my car, I am stuffing food into me. The costs work out about the same, but I get a lot more pleasure out of feeding my face than sticking a nozzle into the fuel tank and filling it up.

Heck, when I was driving a lot for work I was clocking up a bit over 25,000km per year, which ate up about 2600 litres of diesel. Even at $1.50 a litre, that works out at only $78 per week. Either the average driving is driving an awful lot of kilometres per day, or they are driving some inordinately fuel inefficient vehicles. I am just stunned at the amount of juice that average drivers are sticking in their cars. Yes, there are those amongst us that drive really, really long distances through the countryside for work each week, but what about the average Joe and Jill who live in the suburbs? Are they really driving that far?

I like my car. It's comfy and well appointed. I don't mind driving long distances in it. Driving Sydney to Brisbane on my own is not too much of a chore. Same goes for driving from Sydney to Hotham, or Sydney to Melbourne. But I don't like it that much to spend half my flipping life sitting in it. Driving 25,000 km at an average speed on 100km/h represented over 10 complete days behind the wheel. Given that there is no way that I averaged 100 km/h on all my trips, it means I probably spent 20 days a year looking through the windscreen. 20 days. That's not 20 8 hour periods - that is 20 x 24 hours. Surely there must be better things to do with my life, like catch up on rack time. Or blog.

Especially since time behind the wheel is a good time to lay down some lard. Hence the love of the bike. Every minute in the saddle is a minute of adrenaline. Driving a car is not living. Pedalling like crazy gives me the kind of jolt that reminds me why we are alive.

I should have taken some snaps of the bogan cars outside my window this morning. The local hoons seem to favour the WRX for some reason. I have yet to find one that does not have some sort of crap hanging from the rear view mirror. Do they factory fit that dangly shit before it rolls onto the boat from Japan? I don't mind the dark blue ones, but there was one out there today that was the colour of pale piss. No, not the kind of Monaro yellow that you get from too much Berroca - I mean weak, pale piss. What is it with these guys? Don't they even have the sense and taste to choose a good colour for their pox-ridden bogan toy?