Bob and I were demoralized by the breakdown of the Goat Van, but we pressed on. I drove the vehicle to my mother’s place, restricted to no more than 20 MPH by its transmission, and parked it in her driveway, for fixing at a later date.

It occurs to me that you may not know just how we came to have the Goat Van: Our mechanic friend Wayne lent it to us when he was unable to complete work on our Jeep. Looked at one way, it’s his fault we wound up in this pickle; looked at another way, we got a summer of free Goat Van hauling, which made our move much easier to pull-off. So we offered to pay for the van’s transmission repairs, and he counter-offered to pay half. Done and done.

Read More

Locking the back tire to prevent theft (if a lock is used at all) is a trick that definitely only works in Japan -- you can't leave a bike unattended for five minutes The bike can be left anywhere (within a predetermined area, we presume), and is immobilized using a rear tire lock. Once you find a bike you want to rent, the system will send an unlock code to your handset, which you'll enter into a handlebar-mounted PIN pad. Residents (and tourists with Japanese cell phone numbers) can rent bikes 30 minutes at a time for 105 Yen (about $1. Well, NTT DoCoMo is at it again, this time dabbling in the fine art of bicycle sharing . The Japanese mobile carrier's own flavor is currently undergoing beta testing in Yokohama, just outside Tokyo, and uses a familiar kiosk system to collect and... Rather than visiting a kiosk to rent a bike, you'll be able to use a smartphone app to locate some available wheels, with position information broadcast by a built-in GPS.

Read Article