The Oil Drum

The Yamaha XT225 Serrow is a good motorcyle and will probably cost you less than that Vino if you can find one a little used. Especially over its lifetime as scooters tend to be a little shoddily built. You should also consider a Yamaha Virago 250, Virago 535, Honda rebel 250, Suzuki GS500, and Suzuki Savage LS650. All of those are well built and fairly light bikes, the GS500 is considered one of the best commuter motorcycles and all of them should be available for <$2,500 lightly used.

Silly. That's what landmines are for!
~Durandal (http://www.wtdwtshtf.com/)

Er, well, one of my recent "investments" is a Trek 8200 I think? Mountain bike I bought for $100 from a bum in downtown Prescott, I don't think it's stolen or, at least it's old enough that the original owner doesn't care. Really decent bike, with scratched/chipped paint for that battle-wise look. The word around here is the goat heads are so bad, the way to go is to get those "solid" tubes from Wal-Mart and just run those. Which I plan to. I can get around nice flat Chino Valley really well on something like that.

In the motorcycle area, the Vino 125 was one I was looking at, any Yammie 250 or so dual purpose bike will be good, and the Yam 250 Virago is a real winner. I was looking at financing one of those with insurance for $85 a month, of course the thing to do there is pay it off ASAP but that can get you out of your car and the car sold right away then put your car payments into paying off the bike.

A well cared for fairly modern bike will last a LONG time.

But, but, but .... what if the marauding band of mad-maxian styled neophyte bandits all get malaria and really bad water and die before they can get going on a good run of pillaging and slaughter?

:) :) :)

What then,huh? --- Huh?

:) :) :)

I do think that all the tough-talking hard guys will melt in the face of disease, thirst, hunger, self-inflicted wounds, and of course the guns that others (also would-be hard guys) point in their general direction.

Back to the biking stuff -- it really works! If you can't do the HPV (Human Powered Vehicle) method, try some electric assist.

If that does not work, try the next step -- NEV with solar charging.

Or try a motorcyle or motorized trike. There are a variety of small motorised vehicles out there sufficient for local transportation of people and small loads of cargo.

If one truly needs to drive on the highway or haul really big loads, then it seems to me that the options are a bit more limited and the sustainable options might be a bit pricey.

Some folks do OK with biodiesel delivery vehicles "peace Coffee" here in minneapolis went from using bikes only to using a biodeisel truck when the routes just got to heavy and far-flung to make the bikes-only transport workable.

Here's a page on their van:

http://www.peacecoffee.com/van.htm

Here's one on pedal delivery:

http://www.peacecoffee.com/pedaling.htm

It takes a village to avoid pillage, and I guess we have to move around some of the categories in our minds before we can sustainably move ourselves and some stuff around.

...and so on, and so forth ....

Ah yes, the SUB or sport utility bike is thus born. Quite why these things have to have such wide and clumsy tires is beyond me when a traditional dirt bike of early seventies vintage could race the length of Baja in less than 24 hours on a 3.00/21 front and a 4.00/18 rear. Unless you are living near a large sand dune which cannot be gotten around, the wide tires are just silly.

A 250cc motorcycle should be capable of an average 60 mpg or more; at low speeds the motor is way too big, but at higher speeds the cubic factor of wind resistance and the severely non aerodynamic nature of the plot makes the 250ccs work pretty hard.

Europe gets around just fine on 50cc mopeds. I've toured around Spain on 50cc machines and didn't find that my life was rendered incomplete by only going thirty or forty miles in an hour. The Honda Cub is still in production after nearly SIXTY years or continuous production. Must be a record. Viva Soichiro! Mind you, his design - and a lot of his others too - borrowed heavily from Italian designs of the early 50's, but he made it happen in the global marketplace.

Let's not forget that this little masterpiece was one of the first serious products exported from Japan after the war. Now if we could just come up with a diesel version running on chicken fat......with electric start, keyless entry and cupholders...no, wouldn't sell well in the Dakotas.