Gunnar Rundgren på resa / on tour

To travel by bike is nice. To travel with a 50+ old bike is even nicer. For me, those bikes stands for a highlight of human technological development. The bike is still just amplifying our body's movement. One turn with the pedals bring me five meters instead of just 80 cm. And that with a very limited input of materials, energy etc. I would say that there are few other human innovations that are as good as the bike, it serves billions all over the planet, without causing major environmental problems or resource over use. Compare that with the car.......Ivan Illich calculated some forty years agot that the actual speed for a car driver is about 7 km, which is more or less walking speed and half or one third of a bicyclist. That is if you count all work that is accumulated in the making of the car, the infrastructure, the petrol etc. And the awkward thing is that the more people have cars the slower they will move, so it is only when used by an elite that they are "really" effecient. Still almost no politicians have the courage to question the holy automobile (and we ridicule hinduism for holy cows, isn't it worse to worship a Mazda?). With increase petrol price there will be a correction of course, and all the alternative fuels will only be a marginal contribution and too expensive to allow most people to drive cars, and they become even more elitist than today (some people seem to believe that mosty people on this planet have a car already.....I am happy they are wrong.

Sorry for ranting here. Coming back to my fifty year old bike: I did buy a bike computer for 7 Euros in Sweden. I knew it was stupid, but it was so little money anyway so who cares?...? And of course it lasted only a week. I throw it away. I think the bike and that computer represents they high of industrialism and the low of consumerism. Some fifty years ago, most industrial companies produced stuff that lasted. And at that time they were managed by engineers and NOT by economists or their cousins marketing people. It is hard to know who to blame. Since then we have had the consumer revolution (which meant that the old idea that you could get any Ford as long as it was black has been transformed into the idea that you can get it in two million versions - if Ford still exist of course, I am a bit off-line from the news flow here), and supposedly consumers are driving this development for cheaper, louysy stuff. Clearly there are unfortunately an inherenent consumer behaviour to look for bargains, for cheaper price etc..... But who is really to blame for this development. Why should our societies which are just getting richer and richer make worse and worse products? More to come on this I believe, but I also welcome any comments on this. Where has quality gone?