Any car is a good car

I've been known to have opinions about cars. Yes, I do humbly admit to having strong and sometimes unreasonable opinions about cars. The truth is though, I'm part of a lucky generation. We get to experience the wonderful freedom of an automobile, albeit tainted, as it is these days, with the growing crisis of climate change, to which the transport sector contributes about 15-20% of the damaging gases.

We are still lucky, though. The ability to independently and easily cover great distances, on our own schedule, is an ability that we have only been imbued with in the past hundred years or so, and with increasing affordability and practicality. I just got back from Tasmania. We rented a car, a Suzuki Swift. Superficially, it's not my cup of tea. I don't like the styling of modern cars, I don't like the materials, the sound, the feel, the driving experience. I particularly don't like the soullessness; they are simply goods, the byproduct of the profit of a corporation. Still, I couldn't help myself but to love that little car, in a way.

Yesterday, we were due to fly out at 5:50 pm. That meant we had most of the day to accomplish what we planned, which was to visit historic Port Arthur, which is about 80-some kilometers of beautiful, winding road from Hobart. It's a convict settlement, and in it's heyday was serviced entirely by ocean, there being no road through the rugged forest of the peninsula it occupies to nearby Hobart, and it's remoteness made it the ideal place for a convict settlement. There were frequent escape attempts, but many of the escapees returned willfully, upon finding out just how hard it was to make their way to anywhere at all. This is no small fact- their return to the settlement after escaping would have resulted in torturous punishment to say the least. But us in our little Swift, we allowed just over an hour to get to the airport.

This is my point- we are lucky to live like this. We are blessed. Any car is a good car.