Divvy My Ride Blog

I was startled to hear  on NPR that a higher fuel standard for the future cars might actually be a bad thing!

This just goes on to show that there are two sides of every coin.

The logic goes like this: Every time we fill a gallon of gas in our cars, a part of the proceed goes to the Federal Highway Trust Fund.

So if we fill less gas there would be less money in the future to fix the potholes, repair the road or even built mass transit systems.

I guess the only option would be increase the % tax that is paid per gallon. (do I hear people shouting already )

Read more on Market Place

http://www.marketplace.org/topics/sustainability/new-fuel-standards-could-lead-higher-gas-prices

From the New York Times today.
John Lennon would be so pleased.

A happy new year to all the carpooler out there.

Panorama from the Stanford BASES competition’s final in last year

Scene at the parking lot of a reputable Silicon Valley company. BTW if you don’t know what “desis” mean, it is a self-endearing, self-deprecating term that Indians use to describe themselves. ;)

The very moving story of Gunther Holtorf’s 23-year road trip from the BBC magazine.

Check out the video http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-18910560

No matter which side of the Climate change debate you are on, it is pictures like this that are gut wrenching.

It is hard to believe that at times we have done so much damage to the world around us.

Reminds me of the famous lines from the Matrix Movie

AGENT SMITH talking to MORPHEUS

“I’d like to share a revelation that I’ve had during my time here.  It came to me when I tried to classify your species.  I’ve realized that you are not actually mammals.

Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment.  But you humans do not.  You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area.”

Hope we can do better than this.

Mayank

I found these stamps at my latest visit to the local USPS Office. Usually this time of the year, one find stamps with holiday themes, but what caught my eyes were these stamps with green messages. Really cool, what you might also notice is that there were 15 unique stamps, and no repetition.

I know my holiday cards with have these on this year!

mayank

Found this very interesting article in USA today.

Carpool is a necessity and a headache for parents today. As a founder of a carpool site, I can vouch for this first hand. We thought that carpooling would be important for people commuting for work or traveling between cities. But to our surprise, the biggest demand for carpool solutions is from parents trying to solve the challenge of hauling their kids to soccer games, swimming and other group activities.

-mayank

Read more at: The carpool: a staple of modern parenting

The BASES 150K Challenge is a prestigious Competition hosted by the Business Association of Stanford Entrepreneurial Students. The Product Showcase part of the competition let’s entrepreneur show a demo-able prototype product to the entire bay area, and the most powerful Silicon Valley investors.

BASES 150K Challenge

We were selected for the final round, but unfortunately we didn’t win the competition. Still it was fun participating. Here is a picture from the venue. Many thanks to Poorvi and Dinesh Patil (two close friends) for help with the final entry.

BASES Product Showcase Venue

In the business world this is a called arbitrage. When you can make profit out of selling the same products to two different markets! Frankly I would like to call this a SCAM.

Here is an example of a flight ticket between San Francisco and New Delhi on two different websites. One is the United.com website in the US and the other is the Lufthansa.com site (in US or Europe?) The flight #, times and destinations are exactly the same. Yet miraculously the price on Lufthansa is $6,939.54 and the same flight on United costs $3,715.40. The funny thing is that since both these airlines are part of the Star Alliance, they should at the least show the same price. Before you cry foul, I must also qualify that both the fares were taken within minutes of each other.

The Air Fare SCAM Game

The Dutch charge $9.80USD/Gal for gasoline (converting for liter to gallon and the currencies) and with prices that high no wonder folks bike every where.

If you are curious as to what happens in the winter, trust me they are unfazed by the snow.  See this next video

Hello All,
A good friend’ wife is suffering from Leukemia (blood cancer) and she is in desperate need of a bone marrow match.
If you are of Romanian, Eastern European descent, and haven’t had your bone marrow matched, please consider doing so.

Here is some info on bone marrow matching:

Bone marrow matching
Please register as a marrow donor for her or anybody else in need at http://www.marrow.org/JOIN/Join_Now/join_now.html It’s super easy. They ship the registration kit to your home, and you don’t even have to donate blood to be registered
Join Now – online registration for Be The Match Marrow Registry

and a Flyer from our friend,

Everyone knows that gasoline is considered a commodity whose price is determined by the vagaries of free market (aka demand and supply). At least every one is told so.

And yet all of us have been feeling the pain of the rising gas prices over the last 3 months, as prices have gushed from ~$3.00/gal to $4.35/gal. I have even switched over to biking to work twice a week just to “stick it up to the man”. Yes, there is a instability premium due to the middle east revolution/unrest. The obvious question is how much is this “premium”? I would say that the unrest in Yemen and Syria while barbaric, should not affect the crude price. Lets look at the top 15 producers of Oil. (I am not looking at top exporters of crude oil to the US, because the prices are obviously a global number).  From the CIA website

Oil Producers, CIA facts 2011

None of these places have had their oil production disrupted by the recent unrest. Right?

So the almost $30/bal ($110 vs. $80) premium we are paying seems a bit unreasonable. Now look at what happened this Thursday. Oil prices plummeted by a whopping ~8% in one single day. Yes, this is a commodity we are talking about. Did the demand drop by a astounding 8%? or did they find a giant pool of oil? neither did all the problems in the Middle East get solved. Nothing.

Oil Prices, 5th May, 2011

My take is that there is a lot of money sloshing around and people are speculating with Oil futures and prices, unfortunately you and I have to bear the cost of all this. Still there is one way to stick it to the oil Co, carpool, bike, walk and let us all use less OIL…

People always say that Beverly Hill Los Angeles is glamorous and  I would   probably agree to them, but when it comes to dazzling, nothing beats South Beach Miami.  It is hard not to be overwhelmed by the opulence (cars, home, yachts). Here is a picture from my recent trip there.

Entering South Beach, Miami, Florida

Prices of gas in Northern California have already hit an wallet draining $4.14/gal. which means that my 12 mile daily commute to work already costs me $2.75 each day!

That is why I have pledged to bike to work at least once a week and probably more when the rains stops. The bike ride to my workplace  is a roughly 30minutes (including the changeover) vs. the car commute of ~20minutes, so it is actually not that bad a deal. Plus the added benefit of free exercise. With that in mind I have also been building my biking capabilities (who knows my commute could be 20miles each way on day :D ) and recently  I hit a personal record in terms of distance 37.5miles (60km)! here are  the details of that epic bike ride.

The Epic Bike ride

ps: by the way runkeeper and runtastic pro (I like this better) are both really great apps for iphone to track physical activities.

The recent spike in the gas prices, has many of you searching for the cheapest gas station. But the ubiquity of smart-phones means that instead of searching on the internet, people are using their iphones! The gas buddies app on iphone had surged to 3rd most popular app on the app store 2 weeks ago, by the time I took the picture, it had receded to the 9th position. Still very impressive.

GadBuddy App Iphone

Our cars often reflect our choices because they are usually the 2^nd big ticket item after a house.

While some of us like to keep our cars well oiled and manicured, there are those who consider it just a mode of transport to go from point A to point B.

But not matter was it is a big personal asset!

Which is why I was so surprised when I came across an article on the web that talked a gentlemen in San Francisco who had converted his car into a black board (for just $80) for people to scribble.

Now if this was India, it would have been covered in political posters and vulgar graffiti, thank fully things are not that bad out here in the city by the bay.

Read more @ Cars as Chalkboard or check out pictures of the car at http://chalkcar.com/

Wishing a Happy and Prosperous New Year to the users of our site.

Sharing with you all a picture of the San Francisco City Sky line taken in from Sausalito, CA (Across the Bay)

A picture from the last look out on the Koke’E State Park, looking at the Na’Pali Coast

Napali Coast, Kokee State Park, Kauai, HI