Nobrainer’s Think Tank

“If gas prices stay like this, I’m gonna buy a horse.” God knows how many times I’ve heard that over the last few months and pretty damn sick of it. Why? Because you’re not going to buy a horse, or even use a loaner to replace your normal car activity.

Why do I have to get pissed off at this? Because the news media’s little darling lately has been the crazies who find all these wonderful alternatives to using gasoline. Yesterday I was supposed to be upset because some students were disallowed from riding their horses to school. I’m only peeved by their limitedness in seeking to save money.

Horses are horrible vehicles for a number of reasons. First let’s look at some advantages. The cost of grain per mile is likely lower than the cost of gas per mile. If you have two, well paired horses, you might be able to get several new horses without going to the horse dealership and dealing with the dreadful horse salesmen. When your horse’s engine blows up, you can shoot and bury it in a hole instead of putting it on blocks in your front yard. A good horse may even last long enough that you can have it registered as a historical automobile and get the really cool license plates.

But I digress. Equines (I’m sort of assuming here) are quite labor intensive. Their tanks must be filled throughout the day. They must be groomed. And this is all assuming that you have a suitable place to store the horse while you’re not using it. You can’t leave your horse in your garage for 3 days at a time without care or tending to it. Plus they don’t make post-market mufflers, spoilers, or rims for horses. They are highly uncustomizable.

The idea of a city consisting of only horse traffic, instead of those noisy cars, seems quite romantic doesn’t it? Not to me — because of all the shit. Even areas where only a few dozen horses are used for horse-drawn tours reek of the foul stench of horse shit. Multiply that by a factor of thousand or more and try to comprehend that. Replacing each car with a slow-moving shit machine really doesn’t sound appealing to me.

So entering the equine-driven transportation market makes little sense. If you’re already in it and have the infrastructure, I’ll cut you a pass. Otherwise, don’t get upset when you wish for a horse to replace your car and I, or someone like me, unleash a tirade about your own stupidity.

And what about the students who were prevented from riding their horses on the 60 mile round-trip to and from school? Well apparently they’ll have to go back to driving and carpooling with the ol’ International harvester that averages 10 miles per gallon. I offer them a few suggestions. First, if the speed of a horse is satisfactory, buy a bike. It’s cheap and you’ll get used to it at some point. It is even cheaper than the horse. Or, go ahead and buy a small, used car that gets good mileage. Simply by using a car that gets 20mpg, you can save over $1300 per year in gas money, assuming gas is at the low, low price of only $2.50 a gallon.