Categories
Parenting

Kids, cash, and understanding money

Last night my family dined out at Seva, a stalwart of Ann Arbor’s plant-based restaurant scene. The big kids nibbled quesadillas, I enjoyed the “Veracruz” tostada, and the baby toddler gobbled everything including the crayons. It was a nice treat on a Sunday night. The kids noticed that they were the only children in this upscale restaurant.

I paid in cash. Normally I’d use a credit card, but I’ve grown more concerned about Capital One skimming a several-percent cut of each transaction from local businesses. And I had exact change so we could make a speedier getaway, always good with kids.

The big kids were shocked to see the cash I plunked down (there were a lot of ones, so the fat stack caught their eyes). “How much money did you put in there??” They started counting it. “Wow that is so much money!” The 8-year-old gets $2/week as allowance and it would take her over half a year to pay for this meal.

Correct, kids: it was an expensive dinner. That’s part of why it’s a treat to dine out. We’re lucky we can afford it. But if I had charged it, they wouldn’t have realized this or asked questions.

I didn’t expect to spark a conversation by paying cash. It’s conventional wisdom that paying cash makes cost more salient to a purchasing adult, but I’d not seen it apply so clearly to kids too, who are still learning about money. I realized how my paying by credit card abstracts the cost of goods and services to children. Airplane tickets are expensive, but do my kids know that?

This may be a phenomenon of affluence, to have the luxury of charging everything and having kids blissfully unaware of cost. But for those lucky enough to be in that situation, perhaps paying in cash – especially for things the kids consume – will help them appreciate the value of money and be grateful for their good fortune.

Categories
Biking Data analysis

Strava traffic on William St. Bikeway

The William St. Bikeway officially opened last weekend, though it is not yet finished and is in fact entirely closed in segments as construction is finished.  Here I am with my boy at the grand opening:

Sam and son biking on the new bikeway
A street that safely accommodates my four-year-old

I realized I should grab a “before” shot of the Strava cycling heatmap so I can eventually compare it to “after.” [the hardest part of data analysis is collecting the right data].  I took this November 1st, 2019, though a week ago would have been better:

heatmap showing cycling traffic on the Strava app

In it we see that William is less popular for East/West travel than either Liberty or Washington. This might have been due to its more peripheral location at the south edge of downtown, confusing lane changes, and higher traffic speeds.  The latter two are mitigated by the protected bike lane.

Will we see traffic spike? The biggest increase in ridership will likely be in the non-Strava-using crowd, i.e., regular people.  And that will be my explanation if this heatmap looks the same a year from now.  I’m not sure if those cycling for sport will find the protected lane more appealing.  The data service Strava Metro would allow for better analysis of this question, including  looking at those rides tagged as “commutes”, but I don’t have access to that data.

Incidentally, I’m curious about the “advisory bike lane” unprotected segment between First and Fourth.  With winter approaching, I don’t expect that segment to be painted anytime soon.  An informational poster on William St. describes how it will work and it doesn’t sound like anything I have seen around Ann Arbor.

Categories
Parenting ruminations

Dumb kids movies mimicking violent cliches from dumb grownup movies

Most TV and movies are trash, whether for adults or kids. The grownup material loads up on mindless violence or sex to compensate for its underlying dullness and unoriginality. Kids media sells stuff. None of this is news.

But twice this fall I’ve bumped into disheartening synergy that I felt merited a lament: the endless recycling of violent grownup-movie cliches had jumped the track into movies for small children. This seems like the worst direction this could go, though maybe not surprising.

Here is my n = 2 of complaints. I’m sure if I had the misfortune of watching such movies in increments of more than 45 seconds I would have more to rant about.

Toy Story 3

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Categories
Biking How-to

Things I’ve carried on a cargo bike

I wrote about how the cargo bike changed my life. The game changer is how mundane car errands become joyful adventures.  Whenever I can, I haul things by bike, and it’s become a game to see what new objects I can haul.

Here are some favorites.  Photos 2016-2022.

People

Babies & Toddlers

Babies love the Yepp seat.  They start off awake:

look!  Sunglasses a must if riding an e-bike

Then quickly doze off (don’t worry, he had his helmet on during the ride):

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Categories
Climate change Politics ruminations

Imagine a world without oil and gas

It’s stuck with me since I saw it in the Myrtle Beach airport in July. A young man wore a drawstring backpack printed with the slogan “imagine a world without oil and gas.” Under that it said, “IOGA WV”.

I first read this phrase the way I would if I had uttered it: as an aspirational call to imagine a world without oil and gas. Something like AOC’s “Message from the Future” or the Transition Handbook, whose featured blurb notes that “most of us avoid thinking about what happens when oil runs out (or becomes prohibitively expensive)” [more on this later].

When a search for “IOGA WV” revealed it to be the Independent Oil and Gas Association of West Virginia, I realized the phrase was meant differently. There aren’t many hits when you Google that sentence, but they mostly come from oil & gas interests. The phrase on the backpack is meant not as a serious call but as a statement of ridicule: life is unimaginable without oil and gas.

The phrase captured my imagination, in part because I’m amused by its Janus word nature: its two meanings are opposites. But also because in the way I first read it, it’s a succinct, elegant clarion call to dream as we must. In the effort to move beyond fossil fuels and preserve a habitable planet, it’s likely that our imagination, not technology, will be the limiting factor.

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Categories
Biking ruminations Someday

Growing adoption of e-bikes, cargo bikes in Ann Arbor

I don’t have hard data on this. Ann Arbor should collect this kind of data – Portland, OR has being doing bike counts since 1991. But I feel confident that the number of electric-assist bikes and cargo bikes on the road in Ann Arbor is growing rapidly.

Yesterday I parked in the excellent covered bike parking in the 4th and Washington structure and when I returned saw five e-bikes parked there:

Contrary to what you might think, not all e-cargo bikes are green.

Ann Arbor is a good town for an e-bike. It has some serious hills, which many people can’t or don’t wish to ride up while commuting. It has people with disposable income and environmental leanings who can be the early adopters. And we have two great stores for e-Bikes, Human Electric Hybrids and the newer Urban Rider (same ownership).

(Regarding one particular hill: the William Street Bikeway is slated to open this fall. This will be a veritable sales pitch for e-bikes, offering a safe and pleasant way to get to campus and downtown … to those riders who can surmount the steep, short climb up William from First to Ashley. Increase your assist level!)

Electric-assist bikes will grow in popularity here, becoming a critical part of how we move around in a world without abundant gasoline. (Even in a world with cheap gas they’re gaining steam, since they’re more fun, healthier, and cheaper than cars). E-bikes are already hugely popular in Europe and China, and while America has been slower to catch on, sales have nearly doubled annually in recent years. They’re the future.

I chatted with the owner of the Sondors bike (pictured above) as he locked up. He said he had been close to buying a moped but a friend talked him into buying an e-bike instead. He’s happy he did.

It’s a pleasure to watch e-bike numbers grow here in these early years of adoption.

Categories
Beer Homebrew Recipe

Batch 82: Black (-Hearted) IPA

A collaboration beer born from the local social network a2mi.social. George suggested a Black IPA; I had Centennial hops to use up so decided to brew “Black Hearted”, an improvised recipe loosely inspired by Bell’s Two-Hearted (though we also used a bunch of newer wave hops in addition to Centennial).

Easy brew day. For recent brews, I had the grain crushed at Adventures in Homebrewing and experienced a middling 70-75% brewhouse efficiency. Their mill is set to a cautious crush. For this brew, George crushed the grains quite fine and we fly sparged slooooowly, which I credit for the whopping 94% (!!) efficiency we experienced. (We did have a stuck mash but got out of it quickly). 94% is not out of the question: Kal, the creator of The Electric Brewery on which my system is modeled, claims to get a consistent 95% efficiency.

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Categories
DIY Work

Measuring CO2 accumulation during phone meetings

I am part of the remote co-working community Workantile, in downtown Ann Arbor.  We have small private rooms for taking conference calls and I often find them stuffy and notice I’m tired by the end of a meeting.  I’d read that excessive CO2 build-up in meetings can impair cognitive function.  Was that the case, or was I just bored from the meetings?

I borrowed an Indoor Air Quality Meter from my amazing local library (by Sper Scientific, normally $400, for me, $0) and went to find out.

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Categories
Beer Homebrew Recipe

Batch 80: Blueberry Sage and Rhubarb Berliner Weisse

For Round 9 of the Knob Creek sour barrel project, we brewed a Berliner Weisse.  This was the simplest recipe I’ve brewed: 60% Pilsner malt, 40% Wheat malt, 1.040 OG (our actual was more like 1.035).  No hops: hops inhibit lactobacillus and there’s no hop character needed for the style.

Spencer and I brewed a quadruple batch (23 gallons) – this included an extra 5 gallons to be shared by the group, covering the angel’s share and making for fuller take-home portions.  I thought I’d get by with reusing the yeast cake from a batch of cider; that failed to take off so I pitched a fresh packet of US-05.

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Categories
Climate change ruminations

A Car-Free Yellowstone

Last week I had the pleasure of visiting Yellowstone National Park.  We drove a lot outside the park, unavoidably.  From the airport in Bozeman to the town of West Yellowstone, and to the park entrance every day.  We also drove many miles daily in the park.  There, we might be able to do better for our visitors (and it is our park) and the park itself.

When we talk about public transit locally, a perennial question is of ridership volume: when do we cross the tipping point where the transit service becomes financially viable and practical for users, even preferential to riding in a car?  Yellowstone may be there.  Its crowds and traffic are the cost of its success, but a bus system could mitigate these, opening the park to more people while preserving its navigability.  And a car-free Yellowstone would be better for the flora and fauna as well.

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