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Archive for the 'Travel' Category

Zap!

Friday, March 16th, 2007

Treehugger reports today that ZAP has doubled its available dealers. This is the first time I’ve heard of the company, and I have to say: these are some cute, small cars.

Their styling is a bit scattershot though. They really need to get their headlights in a row and get these things together into one look. The pickup’s front is gorgeous retro, while the Obvio’s face looks like Joan Rivers:

And another thing: 29 mpg? That’s kind of ho-hum for a vehicle with two seats, isn’t it?

Whatever, the 3 wheeled electrics are adorable.

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How bad is flying, really?

Thursday, March 15th, 2007

So Boeing is unveiling a flying wing, and an MIT / Cambridge design team has a similar design for a silent, fuel efficient passenger jet. In the latter case, the fuel efficiency was a serendipitous side-effect of noise reduction.

Both promise fuel efficiencies, per passenger, similar to a Prius seating two people: 120 passenger miles per gallon. And they claim to do so by increasing efficiency by about 20 percent.

This made me stop and think. If a normal plane is getting 100 passenger miles per gallon, how bad can it really be? If you do a carbon footprint calculation, you’ll note that air travel is a big component of your footprint. But it’s precisely because you travel so far in a plane. It turns out that driving to california would put out roughly the same amount of CO2 as flying.

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Travel small.

Friday, March 9th, 2007

OneBag is a fantastic resource for travelers despite their use of Comic Sans. Since 1996, they’ve been preaching the gospel of Smallistry, albeit in the limited domain of carry-on baggage. Here’s a rundown of my favorite tips from their site:

“Bundle wrap” clothes to avoid wrinkling. Basically create a large roll of clothing with the nicest, largest stuff on the outside. Alternate collars on either side to keep a consistent thickness. The site has a great illustration here.
Use the plastic bags your newspaper comes in to wrap shoes, if you’ve got extra pairs. Make sure to fill the shoes with small items, to conserve space.
Wheels increase a bag’s weight 75% and sometimes remove almost half the storage space, so consider how useful they’ll be when considering what luggage to bring.
If you must check baggage, remove or tape down padlocks, as they frequently get caught in the gaps between conveyor belts.
You can get Inflatable Hangers, and they pack nice and small.

A lot of the site focuses on the needs of a third-world traveller, and may be a little off-topic for smallist, but it certainly whetted my appetite for adventure. For more tiny travel products, check out flight001.com

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