Should I be ashamed to say....

This morning I had to take Clifford our big red Dodge 1500 to get the oil changed and some routine maintenance done. I call it Clifford because Clifford never fit in his house and the truck doesn't fit in the garage. :p

Anyway, 5-6 days a week we drive my little gas sipper Dodge Caliber, Gretchen. She is slow but has all the nice bells and whistles and gets 28 mpg. But this morning I realized Clifford is such a joy to drive. The feel of being high up and the Hemi oh lord, no worries getting on the highway with that engine. I feel sad ashamed to say even with its horrible gas mileage (15-16 mpg), all those polutants I know we shouldn't be emitting, humongous tank ($85 fill up) and the fact that it fits no where to park I wish I could drive it everyday. Maybe it is my native Texan blood but there is no liberation in my 4 cylinder! Of course he will still sit parked 5-6 days a week, no changing that.

I am just saying it has become so horrible to drive a truck or SUV (and much of it can't be denied), I feel almost guilty most days owning one as I hear ranting about them but dang there is just too much fun in owning a truck. There I said it, no need to draw the firing squad. I didn't want to start an inflammatory thread just saying.

Anyone else have a guilty pleasure you feel like you shouldn't enjoy this much? Maybe you like caffeine too much, eat fried food, don't like compact flourescent bulbs, watch TV? :p

Everyone has a different set of standards. Good for you for driving the Caliber as often as possible--you are making positive change and that's what matters. I feel guilty when I drive to anywhere under 5 miles from my house, and I drive a VW Rabbit (which doesn't get nearly as good mileage as one would expect, but it sure is fun to drive!).

Taking airplanes significantly increases my carbon footprint, but I allow myself an annual trip to Europe regardless. Next year it'll be Italy--the plans are already being developed. Since I work from home (no commute) and live in a small house that I'm upgrading to modern energy efficiency standards, I figure it's okay to go to places that I love, even if they are far away.

I would like to buy a small pickup truck--a Nissan or Toyota. I would greatly facilitate getting things like mulch from the city leaf recycling program. They don't deliver! I would also keep my little car. I guess I feel a little funny about one person owning two vehicles, but you can only drive one at a time.

I feel kind of guilty about my need daily for both a shower and a bath. I've tried cutting the baths down to not every day, and I fill the tub less than I'd like, but I just can't give them up all together. My skin just doesn't feel right when I don't take my bath at night, and I don't sleep as well.

My last apt had a double size jacuzzi, and I really had issues with that (it took almost half an hour to fill!), but still used it almost daily. At least the tub here is small-ish, and I'm not using electricity to power the motor.

I get my speed jolly's from a motorcycle that gets 55mpg, so I don't tend to feel too guilty about it. :p

My Element - it only gets 21-23 (on a really good day). But, I haven't found another vehicle I can haul kayaks on top of, bikes on a hitch (without scraping) and still have room for "stuff" when going on vacation (at least that gets better mileage). But it's nice to drive;)

CA

Since I'm commuting, I can go several days without driving. But when I do drive, I feel so fast and powerful. The funny part is that's it's a 4 cyl Ranger. No power there!

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Originally Posted by SouthernBelle

Since I'm commuting, I can go several days without driving. But when I do drive, I feel so fast and powerful. The funny part is that's it's a 4 cyl Ranger. No power there!

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I took my '01 Ranger in for an oil change last week, the mechanic looked at it and said "how do you manage to own an almost eight year old vehicle and only have 40,000 miles on it", I said "I ride a bicycle, scooter, and motorcycle most of the time"...he replied "no, seriously, how do you get around?" :p

I'm having a really hard time justifying my desire to have cable TV. I don't watch much TV, but I do like to have choices. I can justify the very basic level, but then I don't get things like ESPN and DIY (This Old House!). I have rabbit ears now and only get ABC, NBC, and CBS--not even PBS. And that will all go away come February anyways.

Why do I fret over these things??

Motorcycling, and my love of motor racing.

I save up environmental points for most of the rest of my life, just so I can blow it all in the twisties...

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Originally Posted by tulip

I'm having a really hard time justifying my desire to have cable TV. I don't watch much TV, but I do like to have choices. I can justify the very basic level, but then I don't get things like ESPN and DIY (This Old House!). I have rabbit ears now and only get ABC, NBC, and CBS--not even PBS. And that will all go away come February anyways.

Why do I fret over these things??

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We got the $50 ($10 after the "rebate") converter box. With our rabbit ears, we now get more channels. Might be worth trying - we're pretty much opposed to cable too:)

CA

I generally don't feel guilty about too much.If you can afford it, who cares? Life is too short to feel guilty.

I'll admit to hating compact florescent light bulbs.... I'll put them in the basement, in the porch lights, but forget it, in my actual living spaces. I don't care how much they claim to have made them better the light quality s-u-c-k-s

I'm with you, Eden. I'm not putting them in my reading lamps. I barely tolerate them in the kitchen, but that's where the light is used/needed the most. I can tell the difference in the light, and I don't like it.

Karen

If you move to the west - Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, and some of Utah, trucks and suv's largely outnumber smaller vehicles. Just a different perspective. I guess we have more open air to ruin:confused:
Gas prices have changed that.
I don't like to recycle - it is a pain in the rear. We don't have sidewalk recycling - for some things it is a 20 mile drive to the recyclers. Hate it, hate it, hate it. I recycle newspaper, plastic bags, and aluminum.

Whew, glad to know we can't all be perfect. We have cable and love it. We can't get Travel Channel, Versus, ESPN (bleck the man likes it), Discovery Channels, Biography, History, Science. Oh and to boot we have a ginormous TV my father gave us, I don't know the size but it is somewhere between 55-60". Ridiculous but I didn't buy it and you should see Science/History/Discovery HD. :o

Eden- My husband loves the compact flourescent, I am indifferent. The full flourescents can be a trigger for my borderline migraine. We only have replaced one bulb thus far with the compact so I am not experiencing that yet. We turn our lights on so rarely we have only had one bulb go out in 2 years.

Fly- I live in Texas and I would say most native Texans own at least one truck. It is in our mentality, culture, we need them. Not always sure why but we think we need them. In our case we have had the truck one year today, we used it as a truck for about the 5th time this weekend. Moved a bit of furniture twice, got some dirt, went camping, that is all. My car can handle the weekend camping but not the extended trips where multiple ice chests are taken.

Oh and I like sweets, Mexican food, caffeine with reckless abandon, driving my truck, driving in general, hate recycling (we don't have curbside), still trying to break leaving water running while brushing teeth, take a nightly soaking bath once it cools down out. House is all electric, yard has grass (hey we are xeriscaping as we replace). Jeez, if I listened to the media or some people I am the reason there is a hole in the ozone, water is in short supply and trash not biodegrading. :p

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Originally Posted by Aggie_Ama

Jeez, if I listened to the media or some people I am the reason there is a hole in the ozone, water is in short supply and trash not biodegrading. :p

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We all are the reason.

My husband still has his Lexus SUV. Of course, he bought a Miyata to compensate for the crappy gas mileage. The Miyata gets 30 mpg, so he uses it most of the year, but it gets parked in the winter, when it's snowy or icy. We still use the SUV for hauling around 4 bikes, a canoe, 4 people, and luggage quite a few times during the year. Also, we use it for hauling landscaping and home repair stuff. Around here, it's not so much that you need a truck, but you need a car with 4 wheel drive or AWD. I just happen to have a smaller sedan with AWD. Now I know some people get a long perfectly fine without all wheel drive, but personally, I won't drive in the winter without it. When my driveway, which is a 15% grade, is covered with snow with 2 inches of ice below it, I need all the help I can get, especially the cool "descending" assist that guides you down a steep and slippery hill without having to put your foot on the gas.
Other than the Lexus, we are pretty green around our house. We recycle, bring our own bags to the grocery store, and have had all the windows replaced in our house to cut fuel usage (it really worked). I have cut my driving tremendously, not so much because I am commuting, although I do do some errands by bike, but because I have really stopped going places far away for shopping. Everything I do is within a 7-8 mile radius. I take the train to my classes, so I only drive 8 miles round trip on those days. But, even when I was driving to work, I still drove way less than most of my peers. My car is 5.5 years old and has 40,000 miles on it.

(Oh, I wish I could have a car with low mileage! My 2 yo Element rolled over 63,000 on my trip east last month.)

We have an energy saving car in the driveway, a '96 Honda Civic that belonged to my middle son and is now my youngest's, who is still too young to drive it. We keep it insured and licensed so we can have a car for zipping around town. It gets 38 mpg, still, at its age.

My husband is very tall, with flexibility issues in his hips, so our cars will always have to accommodate that. I wanted a Honda Fit but he doesn't fit. He fits in the Civic, and can drive it, but it is uncomfortable. He fits in the Element, but doesn't like to drive it. All of our cars need to be usable by him--you never know when we may be down to one car.

His personal vehicle is an F150, his first truck. Before that he drove big sedans, like a Grand Marquis. The truck and the sedans get roughly the same gas mileage (and they're making the sedans smaller now), so we might as well have a truck, which is more useful. I don't feel guilty about it. His hips will disable him some day, and there's no reason for him to be uncomfortable while he drives.

Me, on the other hand--I drive 5 miles below the speed limit to save gas, and got my Element up to 28 mpg on this last trip! :) :D

Karen

I got 92mpg on my scooter last week...as opposed to the crappy 16mpg I got shopping with my Jeep. I'm going to try to ride that dang scooter until it snows!

Well my car was purchased in April 2006 and has 55,000 miles on it. We travel, a lot. In a good month we are home less weekends than we are gone, it makes us happy. Happy people are healthier, right? The truck has 18,000 on it but we did 3,000 miles of that on trips the car would not have been appropriate for. Of course his last truck started to get 18-22 mpg after he broke the engine in (after 30k) so we are hoping that might happen. The fuel displacement on the Dodge Hemi is a load of BS for fuel savings though (changes to 4 cylinder on the highway).

My husband is 6'2" so truly most fuel efficient cars will not work for him comfortably. He drives the Caliber but he has to put the seat completely back and only have 1" clearance for his head. Me? I could drive a mousetrap since I stopped growing at 12 (a towering 5'2").

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Originally Posted by Pax

I'm going to try to ride that dang scooter until it snows!

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LOL! :D :D

Newspaper......I'm going to cancel my subscription. The writing is horrible.
And may as well cancel cable t.v. too. Oh wait, can't get ABC on the dish network. Gotta watch LOST you know. :o

I love driving a truck. I will drive a truck over a car any day. I do not like having to crawl out of a car when I can step out of a truck.

Trucks are fun

I haven't had to drive a car to work in close to 10 years. I do drive on the weekends but I do so little driving now it is not comfortable. I would love to do all my weekend errands on the bike but I haven't convinced my DH yet. So, that will come one of these days in the future.

My guilty "pleasure" (tho it's certainly not that): a 60-mile round-trip commute to work. I do work at home once a week when I am able to, but I still feel bad driving that much. And we drive to our sailboat, 3.25 hours each way, for vacations. Bad, but not as bad as the pre-boat vacations we used to take, which usually involved driving to Florida, New England, and such.

DH and I try to make up for our carbon footprint by recycling ferociously, using compact fluorescents all over the house (the newer ones really do have a warmer light, I was surprised), re-using as much as possible, not purchasing junk we don't need, composting, growing some of our own veggies, buying locally whenever possible, and all that good stuff. But I sure wish I could bike to work. Hopefully someday -- our life-long goal is to be car-free eventually.

My guilty pleasure is paper towels. :o When I'm working in the kitchen, I can go through scary amounts of them. I can't help it, I hate cloth towels in the kitchen. The other day I realized that it's gotten even worse now that we process raw dairy and have been doing so much canning. I have to be virtually bad bacteria free in those tasks, so it's worse than usual.

I am torn between using recycled paper towels that only come in the big size or using non-recycled paper towels that are cut into smaller sheets so I use much less.

I do recycle just about everything that I can't compost. Our trash bin is small and we don't even fill it every week. 95% of our lights are CF, all our windows are new, we just bought a smaller older house, we updated the insulation and weather-proofed the outside, I just sold my Prius (one less car on the road!), we grow about 20% of our own food and are working on getting that to 80% (organically), I don't fly, I bike to work when I can and if not, we carpool... I'm really, really good - but I do have a paper towel problem. :p

Marcal paper towels (available at Staples) are 100% recycled, a large proportion post-consumer, and they come in the half sheets. The TP is a little rough, but it's fine for me. As long as I don't have food poisoning :rolleyes: (ok sorry TMI).

Yeah, canning. I like to have home grown and home-preserved produce, but I'm under no illusions that home canning is environmentally friendly. The energy inefficiency is pretty much staggering, actually. A couple of paper towels to wipe the jar rims doesn't amount to much when you're leaving two burners on the stove maxed for four or five hours... never mind the water consumption.

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Originally Posted by OakLeaf

Marcal paper towels (available at Staples) are 100% recycled, a large proportion post-consumer, and they come in the half sheets. The TP is a little rough, but it's fine for me. As long as I don't have food poisoning :rolleyes: (ok sorry TMI).

Yeah, canning. I like to have home grown and home-preserved produce, but I'm under no illusions that home canning is environmentally friendly. The energy inefficiency is pretty much staggering, actually. A couple of paper towels to wipe the jar rims doesn't amount to much when you're leaving two burners on the stove maxed for four or five hours... never mind the water consumption.

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I disagree. I certainly don't use much water (I recycle the canner water over and over again) and once we get our PV panels up, the electricty usage will be minimal. In the meantime, I am only doing waterbath canning so it's like 40 minutes including warm up time, tops. I then keep the pot warm with towels while I'm prepping the next load instead of running the stove. I also use the crock pot whenever possible (for apple butter and the like) instead of heating up the stove. Everything else I use is hand powered (peelers, food mill, etc). It takes awhile, but it's not exactly a fast process anyway.

I guess my thought is that while the action of canning using power grid electricity may not be environmentally friendly in and of itself, if you compare it to the mass-produced canned goods shipped from somewhere else in the world, it's a step in the right direction. It's local, it's fresh and it's organically/sustainably grown. Plus, the more food I put up now, the less travel I'll have to do in order to eat come December. Way less fossil fuels burned in the long run...at least, that's what I'm thinking.

Thanks for the tip on the Marcal towels. I'll have to see if we have a local Staples!

GLC, I wouldn't worry about your use of paper towels with all the other things you are doing right. Funny, though, I had the paper towel thought today, too. I like Bounty, I don't like flimsy paper towels that just don't pick up!

I had a brief moment of guilt when I looked at my trash that was full of disposed shop towels. I don't like using rags when I paint and use those tough blue shop paper towels. Guess I'm a member of the paper towel club. :o

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Originally Posted by Crankin

I generally don't feel guilty about too much.If you can afford it, who cares? Life is too short to feel guilty.

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My sentiments exactly!!! :D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D

I have an F150, V8 that is monstrous and gets crumby gas mileage. I love her though. I can't imagine not having her in my life.....:rolleyes:

I tried to commute on my bike for several weeks earlier in the year. It just didn't work. The roads here are horrendous, especially the main road I have to take to get to work. So, I take comfort in the fact that it is only 5 miles (one way) to work and I don't go anywhere during lunch unless I absolutely have to.