HinesSight

Three good reasons why I want an Arcimoto FUV

I've got an early pre-order number, #129, for the Arcimoto FUV (Fun Utility Vehicle), a three-wheeled electric vehicle that's classified as a motorcycle, yet has some desirable car-like features: seat belts, rollover protection, crumple zones, a roof.

The title of my previous post from early July, "I've got both Arcimoto anticipation and anxiety," reflected my generally positive attitude toward this unique vehicle, and also some concerns.

Since, I've given more thought to the pros and cons of becoming an Arcimoto owner. I still haven't driven one,  but I've come up with three good reasons why buying an Arcimoto makes sense for me -- and also for other people.

As a preface to those reasons, if the Arcimoto was a Hollywood movie "pitch," it would go something like this:

The Arcimoto is the love child of a three-way coupling between a motorcycle, an electric vehicle, and a sporty car.

Now, as noted in my previous post, I'm familiar with all of those Arcimoto parents. 

I've owned both a motorcycle and, more recently, a Suzuki Burgman 650 maxi-scooter. For about a year my wife and I owned an all-electric Nissan Leaf, and we currently have a semi-electric Chevy Volt. I've owned a BMW 325 ix, a Mini Cooper S, and, currently, a VW GTI -- all super-fun cars to drive.

So even though I haven't had a test drive in an Arcimoto yet, I believe I have a pretty good idea of what it will feel like, given my experience with electric cars, two-wheeled motorcycles/scooters, and good handling cars.

This leads me to the three good reasons an Arcimoto likely will find its way into our carport in rural south Salem, Oregon, before too long. (We live about an hour north of Eugene, which is Arcimoto world headquarters.) 

(1) It is considerably safer than a motorcycle. There's nothing more fun to drive than a motorcycle or scooter. Also, nothing more dangerous. A three-wheeled motorcycle like the Arcimoto trades some fun for some safety. As noted above, motorcycles don't have seat belts, rollover protection, crumple zones, or a roof.

A main reason why I sold my Burgman 650 scooter was that I didn't like wearing protective clothing, boots, and a helmet whenever I got on it. Yes, you see motorcycle riders in shorts and a t-shirt, but that isn't smart. Not at any age, and particularly at my age (69).

Like a motorcycle, the Arcimoto offers an open-air feel, plus it has a full windshield and transparent roof. I've experienced riding a motorcycle and scooter, so I know the drawbacks of them. The Arcimoto has key motorcycle plus'es, without the minus'es.

Screenshot from an Arcimoto video

(2) It is more fun than a car. I say this with confidence, because I've watched lots of videos of people test-driving an Arcimoto. Also, I have one of the most fun cars to drive, a VW GTI. I can't say anything bad about the GTI fun-wise, aside from this inescapable fact: 

It's a car. Motorcycle riders call cars "cages" because that's what they are, even a convertible to a large extent. You simply don't have the open-air experience with a car that you'd have with an Arcimoto.

I'm speaking of an Arcimoto without doors, or with quarter panel doors. A fully enclosed Arcimoto will be offered, but that doesn't appeal much to me, even though I live in often cold, rainy Oregon. I want the feeling of being in the elements. If it's cold, I'd wear a jacket; hot, I'd wear shorts. 

One of the things I enjoyed the most about my scooter was how the world was right there.

Even pulling up behind a diesel bus was pleasurable, because the experience was real. Ditto with coming to a stop at an intersection and seeing cyclists, pedestrians, whoever and whatever. All that was right there. I look forward to recapturing that feeling with an Arcimoto. 

 (3) It's as green as any other electric vehicle. I'm a firm believer in human-caused global warming. I know that we have to reduce carbon emissions. Driving an electric vehicle appeals to me, even though the Nissan Leaf didn't meet our needs, for reasons I described here. 

I don't think the Arcimoto makes sense as someone's only means of transportation.

At least, it doesn't make sense for me. We have a dog. I do our weekly family grocery shopping and need a lockable, fully enclosed vehicle for that. But well over half of my trips into town (we live about six miles from the Salem city limits) involve just me driving the VW GTI by myself, with minimal storage needs. 

For those trips, an Arcimoto would suit me fine.

And with the larger battery, I'd have up to 130 miles of range. Our experience with the Nissan Leaf, which had a comparable range, was that cold weather driving reduced the range considerably. But even so, most of my trips into town and back are under 30 miles, so that leaves a lot of leeway.

So I look forward to Arcimoto getting into full production. They still are in "beta" mode, so I'm hoping that the final production vehicle will be even better than the current version -- which already is pretty darn good. 

I'm trying to cultivate my experiencing self, rather than my remembering self

There's nothing wrong with memories, nor with anticipations -- which basically are imaginings of future events which could become memories.

If we couldn't remember the past or envision the future, we wouldn't be fully human. I've read about people who have a brain defect that leaves them almost totally in the present, and they can barely function.

But as I wrote about yesterday on my Church of the Churchless blog, I'm trying to be more attuned to the present moment. 

Partly this is because I've developed a chronic health problem that makes it tough for me to travel. So for about fourteen months I haven't journeyed more than a few hours from where I live. 

So when I remember how much I used to enjoy going to Maui on a vacation, or flying down to southern California to visit my daughter and her family, I can feel sad about my current situation. 

That's one reason I try to remain mindful of the present moment.

Another reason is I've found that paying close attention to what is happening right here, right now, makes time slow down for me. And since I'll be 70 in a few months, it makes sense to suck as much time as possible out of the years I have left to live, rather than having them speed by in a blur.

(I realize that it can sound sort of strange to speak of manipulating time. However, while clocks in everyday life run at a constant speed, leaving relativity theory aside, our subjective sense of time does vary considerably.)

In the past I've blogged about the interesting differences between our experiencing self and our remembering self. I put it this way in "Do you want life to be experience, or memory?"

The thought experiment is this: consider a vacation that you're planning. Then imagine that after your vacation is over, all of your photos and other mementos of it will be destroyed. Not only that, your very memories of the vacation will be obliterated through an amnesiac drug.

Would you still go on the vacation? If you have trouble answering this question, this points to a need to adjudicate a conflict between your experiencing and remembering selves.

In a milder sense, my wife and I face this conflict whenever we go to our habitual vacation spot on Maui, Napili Bay. Mostly we sit on the beach, not doing much of anything except enjoying the warmth and people/ocean watching. I boogie board, as I've done many times before; my wife snorkels, as she's done many times before.

When we return home, we don't have many travel stories to tell. No adventures to relate, no "you won't believe what happened..." tales.

However, we hugely enjoy our not-much-of-anything experience while we're on Maui. The lack is when it comes time to answer someone's question, "How was your vacation?" If it was important to us to entertain our friends and relatives with a fascinating slide show of our travels, we'd head somewhere that would buttress our remembering selves.

As it is, we favor our experiencing selves. So probably we'd be more likely to take a pleasant vacation that ended in amnesia than people focused on memories, photos, vivid stories, and such would be.

Now, in my current difficult-to-travel condition, I'm not even able to take my experiencing self to Maui.

So my experiences are going to be even less appealing to my remembering self, which seems to bear a close resemblance to the narrative self, that chatty part of our mind which takes direct experiences, adds interpretations to them, and tells stories about them to both ourselves and others.

Most days I don't have a whole lot to say in response to a question like, "Have you done anything exciting lately?" My honest answer would be, not really, unless you call going to my Tai Chi classes, grocery shopping, walking the dog, exercising, watching TV, reading, working in the yard, writing blog posts, and such to be exciting. 

But I try to keep in mind that even when I was able to travel, those trips didn't take up much of my life each year. Most of the time I was doing just what I do now, unexciting stuff. 

What's changed, really, is that now I don't have recent memories of traveling here and there, nor do I have anticipations of future distant travel, because that isn't going to happen given my health condition. Thus my experiencing self hasn't changed all that much, while my remembering or narrative self has. 

It's a hard habit to break, recollecting pleasant memories and envisioning future enjoyable experiences. I've been doing this my entire life, so focusing more on the present moment is a challenge for me.

However, this feels like something I need to do.

Otherwise I'm going to have regrets about what I'm now unable to do -- travel easily, or far. My present moment experiences are fine. As I said in yesterday's blog post, echoing a Sufi saying, my new adage is I'm a child of the present moment, who finds delight in small things. 

Obviously at 69 years old, I'm not really a child.  

But I aspire to being able to take childish delight in the ordinary things of life that surround me. My experiencing self can enjoy these small things. My remembering self, or my narrative self, won't have much to say about them. No big deal.

I'm already wordy enough. More present moment experiencing and less mental chatter about the past or future is what I need right now.

(Here's a link to someone else's well-written words about the experiencing self and the remembering self.)

Great 2018 investing analysis: "Do facts matter anymore?"

In these Trumpian times it often seems like we live in a post-truth world where reality is whatever someone wants it to be. But investing is one area where facts can be ignored for a while, but eventually always come back with a vengeance.

So when I saw that our investment advisor's most recent quarterly musing about how things are going both internationally and here in the United States was titled, "Do facts matter anymore?," I read it more closely than I usually do. 

Since I'm pretty sure this analysis only goes to clients, I've blacked out the name of the investment advisor, along with one other identifying word. Here it is in PDF form, complete with my orange highlighting. 
Download Do facts matter anymore?

I'm a long-time investor who has learned one basic truth over many years: believing you are smarter than the markets, or other investors, is foolish. Here's a couple of blog posts I've written about the logical conclusion derived from that truth: invest in index funds. 

Index investing lets me relax in a stock market crash
Index investing rocks and Jim Cramer sucks

Since basically all I do these days investing-wise is rebalance our portfolio to keep it at roughly a 50-50 balance between stock index funds and bond index funds, I don't pay much attention to "gurus" who claim to be able to know where the markets are heading.

This includes the quarterly investment analysis that comes from our advisor (who I need to be able to invest in Dimensional Fund Advisors, DFA, funds -- since they aren't available to individual investors who don't have a financial advisor).

After all, index investors like me aren't really concerned all that much with which way the economic winds are blowing, since we're content with riding out both scary storms and pleasant breezes.

And at the opposite end of the investment philosophy spectrum, day traders, and commonly now, millisecond traders who rely on lightning-fast movements in a financial instrument to make their money, also aren't concerned with long-term trends, just whatever works to make some quick profits.

So the analysis prepared by my investment advisor is a throwback to simpler times, written on paper, mailed out quarterly, a reasoned discussion of what various facts, figures, trends, and such mean to investors with a lengthy time horizon. Again, here's a link to the PDF file. 

I'm sharing this analysis in part because it is believably gloomy, and when the markets take a big downturn, as they inevitably will, I can have the satisfaction of saying "I told you so!" Or more accurately, I told you what my investment advisor said was going to happen, a matter of when, not if. 

Here's some of what I found most interesting in "Do facts matter anymore?"

-- U.S. federal debt is included in GDP growth. Makes sense. I just had never heard of this before. The Trump tax cuts have us headed toward trillion dollar annual deficits in the near future. The way GDP is calculated, this will be counted as something positive, not negative, as it should be, especially since tax cuts in a strong economy are super-stupid.

-- This isn't new news, but I was surprised to read that adjusted for inflation, "breadwinner" incomes paying an average of $45,000 annually have risen just 0.8% since 2001. Also, that 26.9 million part-time workers have been classified as employed if they work one hour a week or more.

-- I'd also read this before, but it bears repeating: "Debt financed stock buybacks are the primary driver for these breathtaking stock prices and valuations, not company fundamentals or macroeconomic underpinnings." My advisor added, "No problem, optimistic future prospects and narratives, not current earnings and revenues, are all that matter at the moment."

-- As an investor, I found this both pleasing and disturbing: "Earnings aren't necessary for stock prices to rise any more since in the aggregate companies are spending all or more of their net income buying back shares of their own stock and paying dividends to shareholders, reducing share float and boosting earnings by dividing earnings across far fewer shares."

-- A story in today's Oregonian about a cooling in Portland's real estate market echoed my advisor's observation that mortgage applications and pending home sales are declining. Rising mortgage rates and prices make it difficult for new home owners to enter the market, with affordability a major problem,

For those who don't want to read the entirety of "Do facts matter anymore?," here's my investment advisor's not-so-cheery conclusion:

Narratives and prices can change quickly. Company fundamentals like valuations and macroeconomic variables like income growth, ignored for years, will eventually matter again. Don't expect Wall Street or the Fed or various experts to see any trouble coming.

In April 2008, former Fed Chairman Ben Bernacke confidently proclaimed there was no problem. In 2010 a House committee investigating the 2008 crisis learned that former Federal Reserve Chairman, Alan Greenspan "the Oracle," admitted he had been blindsided by the housing crash and credit market collapse in 2008.

Facts do matter, no matter how Trump tries to ignore this clear, well, fact. Right now the markets are in a state of irrational exuberance, to not-coin a phrase. 

At some point rational despair will wash over the investment community, and we'll head into what hopefully will be a fairly short-lived recession marked by a steep stock market decline.

Since this is a virtual 100% certainty, the only bright side I can get from this is if it happens before the 2020 presidential election, so American voters will have an additional reason to dump Trump.

Photos of 2018 Salem Art Fair & Festival

I hugely enjoyed today's Salem Art Fair visit. 

Here's photos, and commentary, of what caught my eye (and also my stomach) this afternoon. I share photos of my Art Fair purchase, a coffee mug with an unusual bumpy glaze.

The Art Fair is a great $5 bargain, especially since this also pays for entry to evening entertainment. I'm probably returning tomorrow.

A real estate sign speaks volumes about citizen activism

A few weeks ago a new sign went up along Liberty Road S, just north of Spring Lake Estates, where my wife and I live. It meant a lot to me, for reasons I'll explain.

Here's a photo of the land being offered for sale. The property extends beyond the crest of the hill. The acreage suitable for a vineyard is shown in the photograph I took, which includes a shadow of me taking the photo.

Back in 2005 I wrote my first blog post about these 217 acres, "Measure 37 hits close to our home."

For a lot of people, Measure 37 is a legal abstraction. For us, it means 215 nearby acres of farmland may become a subdivision. These rolling hills along Liberty Road about five miles south of the Salem city limits currently are zoned EFU (exclusive farm use).

If the Measure 37 applicants have their way 80 homes will be built and 80 wells will be dug in an area that already is designated as €œgroundwater limited. I call that eventuality AFU (all...up; you can guess the rest of the acronym).

Measure 37 was a property rights initiative that voters mistakenly approved in 2004. It gave property owners the right to develop in accord with the zoning that was in place prior to Oregon's pioneering land use laws being put in place in 1973.

For five years my wife and I led our neighborhood's fight against this proposed subdivision. Laurel started off being the main subdivision battler. Then I took over. It was the toughest thing I've ever done. There were so many twists and turns, I'd get dizzy if I tried to describe them all. 

In 2010 a Circuit Court judge ruled in favor of our neighborhood following the passage of Measure 49 in 2007, which negated most of Measure 37. I wrote about the victory in "Circuit Court reverses Marion County commissioners."

Last Friday our rural south Salem neighborhood got some great news: in Marion County Circuit Court Judge Nely Johnson reversed the Marion County Board of Commissioners' approval of Ridge View Estates, a 217 acre, 43 lot Measure 37 subdivision on Liberty Road.

That dry language didn't begin to capture how I felt, in part because it took time to realize what preserving the 217 acres from becoming a subdivision development meant to me. I've tried to do this over the years in some other blog posts, notably, "Judge's final decision on Laack subdivision: the meaning for me."

In this post I want to talk about the meaning this neighborhood land use fight has had for me. Hopefully I can share some ideas that will resonate with people who have no interest in land use issues, but can relate to the general nature of this sort of experience: working really hard on something, for a long time, when there is no guarantee of success.

As is the case with most things in life. Such as...

Raising a child. Pursuing a college undergraduate or graduate degree. Starting a business. Aiming for a martial arts black belt. Cultivating a happy marriage. Seeking better health. Writing a book for publication.

I've done all of the above, plus a lot more in my sixty-two years of living. Your list will be different, as the activities people engage in and the goals they pursue are marvelously diverse.

Now I can add "Struggling to save a neighborhood's water supply." A new activity, one of the most intense, difficult, and complex things I've ever done. But the meaning-of-life lessons I've learned in the process are extensions of earlier lessons.

I don't want to repeat what I said in that 2010 post.

I haven't even re-read it, because this is 2018, and I'm now 69, not 62. How I feel today about the sign that went up offering 111 acres of vineyard property for sale, along with an additional 106 acres, is different from how I felt eight years ago.

What I want to say now, in this age of Trump, when many people are feeling disillusioned, disheartened, and disturbed about where our country is heading, is this:

Citizen activism is both tremendously important and tremendously satisfying. I readily admit that the satisfying part obviously is most acutely felt when activism leads to success, as it did in the case of our fight against the subdivision. 

But though this is a truism, it's a truth that needs repeated saying -- usually it's impossible to tell whether a fight is winnable. So the activist has to step into a battle without knowing if their efforts will produce a victory. 

Writing those words reminded me that here in Salem, Jackie Leung stepped up to challenge incumbent city councilor Steve McCoid in the Ward 4 race last May. Most people didn't think Leung had a chance. Yet she won. A national example is the surprising victory of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez over 10-term incumbent Democrat Joe Crowley.

You just never know. Well, except for this. If potential citizen activists don't try to make a difference, they can know for sure that their not-doing will lead to no change.

What kept me going during our five year fight against the Measure 37 subdivision was a conviction that I needed to do everything within my power to stop this threat to our neighborhood's surface and groundwater. I paid as much attention to tiny details as to grand strategy. 

In the end, and I could only know this looking back, not forward, a few of those details played an outside role in our eventually successful legal battle. Again, though, I couldn't tell this at the time. All I could do was hope that a bunch of small things would add up to a large thing.

When I drive by the sign advertising the property for sale, I feel good.

Sure, there are many things larger than 217 acres of rural south Salem land. But the older I get, and I'm getting pretty damn old, I'm finding it more and more difficult to distinguish between the BIG things in life and the small things. 

Is saving 217 acres from becoming a subdivision a major or minor accomplishment? I have no idea. All I know is that when I look at the still vacant land, that sight means a lot to me. I even imagine a scene that likely won't ever happen, but still manages to elicit a few wet spots in my eyes.

I'm near death. At my request, I'm taken in a wheelchair to a wide spot on Liberty Road where my wife and I can have a view of what has become a successful vineyard. Laurel holds my hand. I say to her, "Hey, way back when, we did something good here, didn't we?" She smiles. No more words are needed. We both know what we feel.

July 2018 DirecTV update changes user interface from bad to horrible

A few months ago DirecTV sent out an update to our Genie DVR receiver that sure wasn't an upgrade, because my wife and I found the user interface harder to use than the old version.

But now, July 2018, DirecTV has managed to screw up the user interface even more. Last night, June 10, I fired up the receiver to see what was available for us to watch. 

It took only a few seconds for me to realize that a bunch of our recordings had disappeared. The menu looked different, also. But there on the left side it said "All Recordings." 

So naturally I figured that "All Recordings" meant, oh, how silly for me to assume this, ALL RECORDINGS. Which got me worried, because the Playlist didn't have all of what we'd recorded.

(Note: some Googling revealed that when 0, zero, is pressed while in the playlist, the ordering changes from Latest to Alphabetical, and it appears that when the recordings are in alphabetical order, all of them show up. Of course, then we don't know which are the most recent, so the user interface is still screwed up.)

Fortunately, I had the bright idea of ignoring the literal meaning of All Recordings and clicked on "Continue Watching." There I found the Bill Maher live show that we'd watched some of, along with some other recordings that hadn't shown up on the misnamed "All Recordings" menu.

So now the DirecTV user interface for recordings has gone from bad to horrible. We had no problem with the DirecTV menu system that was used before. It's been getting worse with every update, which, again, in no way is a upgrade.

Here's another gripe. Dates have disappeared from the description of a recorded show. Great, now I know that I've got a recording of Episode 168 of Season 3 of The Late Show With Stephen Colbert. 

Is this a recent episode, or an episode from several weeks ago? No way to tell in the dysfunctional DirecTV user interface, so we've got to watch the beginning of the show to see what Trump outrages Colbert is talking about to get a feel for how old the episode is.

There used to be dates associated with recordings of shows like The Late Show. Now, there aren't. I can only imagine that somehow the DISH Network managed to insert a mole into the DirecTV programming team, because it sure seems like with every update, DirecTV is determined to make its customers dream of switching to DISH.

Well, at least now I've got something additional to complain about with DirecTV, given that I've pretty much given up on them ever offering the Pac 12 Networks. When DirecTV was bought by AT&T, I (wrongly) thought that this would bring improvements to our overpriced subscription.

But, no, if anything DirecTV has gotten worse, not better.

I'd "cut the cord" by going to streaming of shows we want to watch, but we've also got a crappy internet provider out here in rural south Salem, Oregon, CenturyLink. They believe that 7 mbps qualifies as "high speed internet," for which we pay way too much money.

Someday, hopefully we'll be rid of both DirecTV and CenturyLink. I only wish that I'll live long enough to enjoy that happy moment.

I've got both Arcimoto anticipation and anxiety

I've been following the saga of Arcimoto, a three-wheeled electric FUV (Fun Utility Vehicle) for a long time. So long, I can't remember when I plunked down $100 for a pre-order reservation. 

I must have been among the first to do this, since my reservation number is #129, and I believe they total more than 2,700 now. Over the years I've gotten numerous emails from Arcimoto headquarters in Eugene, Oregon, which is just fifty or so miles from where I live, Salem.

It seems like production for retail customers like me is always just around the corner, but that corner keeps receding into the distance. For example, in January 2018 I was told that I could order a vehicle in the 3rd quarter of this year. Yet when I checked a few days ago at the beginning of July, I was told that the 4th quarter was when a vehicle could be ordered.

That led me to ask some additional questions of Arcimoto staff.

I have another question, after reading the recent Register Guard story about Arcimoto.

http://www.registerguard.com/news/20180703/arcimoto-ramps-up-production-at-eugene-factory

 

The story says that 40 units will be built by the end of the year. Yet you told me that with pre-order number 129, I could expect my number to come up in the 4th quarter. I’m trying to reconcile these statements. Sure, it could be that most of the people on the pre-order list won’t actually order an Arcimoto.

 

But this would require two out of three to not order one. Plus, I’ve read that the next machines to be built are the “beta” ones. So seemingly the 40 units talked about in the story would be beta machines. So aren’t I looking at 2019 for a delivery date?

 

As long as I’m writing… I also noted a mention of how difficult it was for the Mashable test driver to steer at low speeds. This concerns me, since a FUV should be fun to drive, not difficult to drive. Any comments on her experience? She did say that overall it was fun to drive, though. See:

 

https://mashable.com/2018/04/02/arcimoto-test-drive/#ueItLvqrxgqo

 

Lastly, I’d like to suggest that you guys schedule a test drive in Salem. 

 

It’s been sort of strange to follow Arcimoto via Facebook and Twitter over the years, seeing Arcimoto models test driven all around the country, but you’ve never come to Salem, so far as I know.

Yes, I could drive down to Eugene to test drive one before I make a final decision as to whether to purchase one. It just seems like Arcimoto should be focusing a bit more on getting people in Oregon familiar with your vehicle, since you’re an Oregon company,

So that covers the "anxiety" aspect of the part of my brain devoted to thinking about Arcimoto.

Well, not entirely, because the above-linked Register Guard story says that two investors are suing Arcimoto because they feel duped about "excessively optimistic and glowing remarks about Arcimoto’s progress in manufacturing and selling vehicles" made prior to Arcimoto stock being publicly offered.

I don't own stock in Arcimoto, but it concerns me that the company could be on the hook for damages to the investors, which would suck money away from Arcimoto's ability to market and sell a finished product. 

OK, let's leave my anxiety aside and turn to my anticipation. That's quite high, because this three-wheel motorcycle has a lot of appeal for me, given my experience with other two and four-wheeled rides of various kinds. 

Electric. My wife and I owned a Nissan Leaf for about a year. We sold it mainly because of range anxiety, given that it was my wife's daily driver. We live about six miles from the Salem city limits, so just getting to the outskirts of town and back took up 12 miles of range. Add in cold weather, using the heater or A/C, go up a steep hill, and such, and the range dropped a worrisome degree. 

Yet we're still big on electric vehicles, being ardent environmentalists and believers in global warming. We just don't want a pure electric vehicle for our essential driving around.

Now my wife drives a Chevy Volt with gasoline backup, which she likes a lot. Me, not so much. The Volt doesn't have a sun roof, and visibility to the sides and rear is poor. So I drive...

Fun car. A VW GTI, which is a wonderfully enjoyable car. Before that I drove a two-door Mini Cooper S, which also was a lot of fun to drive. Thus I feel like I have a good understanding of what makes a car more than just a way to get around. It's got to have an energetic, well-designed, semi-quirky personality that makes me happy to start it up. 

However, I also know this...

Motorcycle/scooter. A $5,000 motorcycle or scooter is more fun than a $100,000 car. After owning a motorcycle in the 1990s, I drove a Suzuki Burgman 650 Executive maxi-scooter from 2009 to 2012. It was way more fun to ride on than either the Mini Cooper or VW GTI was to drive. 

But as I was quoted in a USA Today story about older motorcycle riders (I'm 69 now, and was 64 at the time):

As for Hines, he did sell his scooter in 2012 – something he says greatly pleases his wife. "She was worried every time I took off." He says he likes a little risk in his life, "but there are ways to fill that need without risking life and limb." He's taken up skateboarding instead.

Actually it was longboarding, which I'd propel with a paddle rather than my foot. I've given that up also, yet I still like a little risk in my life.

I've considered getting another Suzuki Burgman 650.

However, being almost 70 now, I worry even more about what would happen if I took a fall on it. Bones and muscles take a lot longer to heal at my age. That's why I considered a three-wheeled Can-Am Spyder, and watched a bunch of video reviews of this somewhat safer motorcycle.

In the end I was turned off by how expensive the Spyder is, the fact that you're still just sitting on a seat rather than being strapped in, and the handling characteristics that made motorcycle riders who test drove it say, "I felt like I was going to die." (Because a Spyder doesn't lean, and centrifugal force tries to throw the rider off while turning at speed.)

So this helps explain why I'm attracted to the Arcimoto. 

It's electric. We have a level 2 charging station in our carport, so it would charge quickly. Plus, even though I haven't ridden an Arcimoto yet, most videos of test drives show people having fun. Initial reports from early buyers of close-to-final Arcimotos also are positive. 

(There's an Arcimoto SRK "FUV" Club on Facebook, and an FUV forum on the web. Both offer some great information on the Arcimoto, unfiltered and based in part on direct experience of early adopters.)

I like that the Arcimoto, though classified as a motorcycle, has these features: no shifting, twin shoulder belts, rollover protection, windshield, windshield wiper, two seats, heated seats and grips, room to carry some stuff, no need to wear a helmet (in Oregon, at least; states differ as to what is required).

Sure, it won't be as fun to drive as a two-wheeled motorcycle, but an Arcimoto is considerably safer. At my age I'm willing to trade some fun for increased safety. 

Given that I'd want the extended battery (about 130 mile range, vs. 70 miles for the standard battery), doors of some sort (either half doors or full doors), and likely other options, i'm expecting that an Arcimoto would cost me $18,000 to $20,000. The base price is $11,900.

That's more than a big Burgman scooter (around $12,000) and less than a Can-Am Spyder (around $24,000). It's a lot to pay for basic three-wheeled electric transportation, but the fun factor is what likely will seal the deal for me. 

The Arcimoto folks have encountered some dead ends and speed bumps on their lengthy quest to design, market, and sell their vehicle, but they've done one thing very much right: calling it a FUV, Fun Utility Vehicle.

There will be various motivations for buying an Arcimoto, but for me, and lots of others, fun is a primary factor. 

I wish Bill Clinton had collaborated with Daniel Silva, not James Patterson

I'm a big fan of spy/thriller/espionage/solitary killer novels. Yeah, they fall into the category of "popular fiction" rather than literary fiction, but that's because...duh...they're popular. 

I read lots of non-fiction because I want to learn something. I read popular fiction because I want to escape into an entertaining alternative world.

Recently I've had two books sitting by my bed for nighttime reading: "The President Is Missing," by Bill Clinton and James Patterson, and "The English Spy" by Daniel Silva. 

I tried to alternate reading each book on successive nights. But it didn't take long before I read Silva's book every night, because it engrossed me, and the Clinton/Patterson book didn't -- at least not in comparison to "The English Spy."

Amazingly, currently 68% of Amazon reader reviews give a 5-star rating to both books. My suspicion is that many of those who bought "The President is Missing" don't know what a really well-written thriller novel is all about, because Silva is a vastly better writer than Clinton and Patterson.

"The English Spy" is (1) believable, (2) complex, (3) populated with interesting characters, and (4) a page-turner that's hard to put down. So far, and I admit that I'm only about a third into "The President is Missing," I haven't found the Clinton/Patterson book to be any of these things.

The New Yorker review of "The President is Missing" was titled High Crimes, with this apt subtitle: Bill Clinton pens a thriller, sort of. 

My feeling exactly! But the online version of the review omitted that snarky saying. Maybe Clinton and Patterson objected to this bit of truth-telling.

Anthony Lane's positive, but not ecstatic, review of "The President is Missing" contained a cogent question:

Yet the puzzle remains: why James Patterson? Why not Daniel Silva?

Indeed. The answer to that question probably is contained in this excerpt from Lane's review:

But the gods are just, and although they denied the gift of literary grace to Patterson, they bestowed on him an even rarer skill. As a collaborator, he’s the top. Barely can he sketch an outline without reaching for a sidekick. So numerous are his assistants that one has to ask, less in snotty disapproval than in ontological awe, how many of Patterson’s books are actually “his,” and to what extent he is a writer at all, as opposed to a trademark or a brand.

I don't know if Daniel Silva has ever co-written a book with someone else.

I suspect that he hasn't, because Silva is so skilled at writing a thriller novel (I love his Gabriel Allon character, "legendary spy and assassin" according to the back cover), being forced to collaborate, as Patterson did with Clinton, seems as unlikely as Shakespeare saying, hey, dude, let's each write part of this Romeo and Juliet play I've got an idea for.

(And not just because "dude" wasn't in Shakespeare's lexicon.)

Anyway, I'm going to turn my attention to "The President is Missing" now that I've finished "The English Spy."

But I've got another Silva book on hand in case I feel a pang of Daniel Silva withdrawal symptoms: "House of Spies." Which, interestingly enough, is mentioned in The New Yorker review as one of Clinton's favorite books.

In 2003, in downtown Little Rock, there was an exhibition devoted to Bill Clinton’s favorite books. It was solid fare, and doughtily unmodish. T. S. Eliot, Yeats, Orwell, Sophocles, and Marcus Aurelius were present, and also Reinhold Niebuhr (of whom Barack Obama, likewise, is a devotee). There was a face-off between biographies of Lincoln and Leopold II of Belgium. There was even something entitled “Living History,” by Hillary Rodham Clinton. How on earth did that make the cut?

Then, last year, on Facebook, the former President issued a fresh roster of recommendations, this time with extra quirks: Oliver Sacks and Carly Simon, a book about the making of “High Noon,” and “House of Spies,” by the indefatigable Daniel Silva, whose recurrent leading man, over seventeen books, displays a knack for espionage, judicious homicide, and art restoration.

If you're looking for a book design firm, I highly recommend ebookpbook

If you're an author who is looking for a competent firm to get your book self-published in both electronic and print versions, I highly recommend ebookpbook, and an associated entity, Newgen KnowledgeWorks. 

Jason Pearce is the guy I worked with after finding ebookpbook listed as a resource on Amazon's CreateSpace web site. For quite a few years CreateSpace offered interior design and cover design services on a fee basis.

But fairly recently CreateSpace stopped doing this, so publishing a book via CreateSpace's print on demand process now requires that an author find a way to get interior design and cover files prepared by someone else.

Believe me, it isn't wise to do it yourself, unless you're well-versed in book designing. I've written three published books, so I know how tricky it is to fashion a book that's easily readable and looks good, both inside and outside.

Pearce, via Newgen, worked with CreateSpace on book design services, so now is doing the same thing directly. 

We are proud to have partnered with Amazon CreateSpace for several years to help independent authors see their work published. Now, with CreateSpace’s decision to no longer offer paid services to authors, we hope that we can work with you directly to get your book to market.

Here's the "pitch" that sold me as soon as I read it on the ebookpbook home page.

As an independent author self-publishing a book, you want to know that you are in experienced hands. For 20 years, we have been helping both independent and conventionally published authors get their books to market.

During that time we have learned editorial and formatting conventions that are centuries old, and we have ridden waves (both the ebb and flow) of new technologies in print and electronic publishing.

As a team, we have worked with some of the world’s largest fiction and nonfiction publishers and with many independent authors self-publishing their first book. We are members of the International Digital Publishing Forum and work directly with the major retailers and distributors, including Amazon CreateSpace, Apple, Barnes & Noble, Ingram, and Books on Demand.

For all this experience, we treat every book as a new journey. Our role is to guide you through the self-publishing process as effortlessly as possible, to produce a final book that you are completely satisfied with. And we’ll charge you only when we reach this destination.

We offer interior formatting, ebook conversion, cover design, and editorial self-publishing services. We consult with you throughout to ensure the best services fit for your timeline and budget. We don’t sell “packages” or services that don’t add value or produce results, and we promise not to sell services you don’t need.

We respect your copyright and will always keep your content secure. All the files we produce for your book belong to you. We collect only the minimum personal information we need to provide services to you, and this information will never be given to any other company.

Now, my situation was a bit unusual, because my book, God's Whisper, Creation's Thunder, already had been published in print form on CreateSpace, and I was looking for someone who could produce an e-book/Kindle version. A p-book, by the way, means a print book. 

After I contacted ebookpbook and sent the interior design file to Jason Pearce, he emailed me with a very reasonable price for converting my 200 page book to an e-book format: $79. 

Pearce also noted that after looking at the interior design, there were some things that could be "tweaked." Understand: all Pearce said was the following. There was absolutely no pressure put upon me to redo the interior design.

I'd also be inclined to open up the spacing a little, to allow the text to breathe. Publishing conventions would remove the running head from chapter opening pages, and set the first line of any paragraph after a heading flush left. But these are all minor tweaks that can be easily made. And all that said, the book is easy to read as it stands.

I followed up with a message that said, "I'm into tweaking," because I hadn't been all that happy with the interior design that a local graphics firm did, which apparently was their first foray into book designing. It looked OK, but to me it just didn't appear as professional as it should have.

Jason Pearce did an excellent job with his tweaking, which required that the page count remain the same, as otherwise I would have had to republish the book on CreateSpace. He sent me a new file. I uploaded it via my CreateSpace account. Bingo! A better looking book.

And here's what really impressed me.

Pearce refused to charge me for the interior design changes. I offered to pay him, but he told me that since I didn't ask for those changes when I first contacted him, being interested in an e-book conversion, he didn't feel right charging me for the interior design work.

I'm planning to use ebookpbook and Jason Pearce from the start for my next book project, because I found Pearce to be so competent, honest, and easy to work with. He lives in Chennai, India, but this made zero difference to me, since we communicated exclusively via email. 

(I mention this only because until I asked Pearce where he lived, I thought he kept some very late hours, since I'd get a message from him at midnight here on the West Coast, which is the middle of the day in India.)