Guest Post: To Live and Drive in Mongolia

So for this post, Christopher Meharg, author of the blog Musings from Mongolia gives the rest of us a look at what it means to get around by automobile in Mongolia, where he currently teaches.

Why 'The Death of Car Culture' is a load of s**t--and the problems that turn people off of car culture.

It's 11:47 PM on a Friday night and I'm standing outside the newest Wawa convenience store/gas station built in my area just off of the Oaks Exit of US Route 422 West drinking a F'Real chocolate milkshake blended thin and taking yet another frickin' picture of my car, Wendy. I had just gotten off 422 from King of Prussia, visiting a place that I drove to out of a sense of nostalgia. Don't worry, that will soon be relevant to the focus of this article. What I do want to talk about today is the supposed 'death' of car culture. Some journalistic hack who thinks that their annual small-town car show, or movies like 'American Graffiti' and 'The Fast and the Furious' represents all of car culture as a whole, invariably writes an article with this as the heading every few months, because of reasons like young people not buying new cars, or young people not learning to work on cars with their parents, or electric cars getting more popular, or whatever other trend/phenomena they are pointing to that signals the death knell of all things cool about automobiles. I'm writing this to tell whomever reads this and has a little bit of common sense that such baited headlines are more full of crap than the most constipated person in the world. You don't even need to be an automotive enthusiast to understand that-- you just need to take a closer look.

Sometimes, you just have to go for a drive.

Allow me to preface this post by saying that while driving can be extremely liberating at times, it is also one of the most goddamned stressful activities a human being can undertake in this day and age. Traffic congestion, the unpredictable behaviors and dangerous habits of other drivers, the constant flux of fuel prices, the increasing scrutiny of automobiles' effects on the environment, and other relevant worries all conspire to make vehicle ownership an exercise in frustration and high blood pressure. It's a wonder why your average, sane person would even bother owning one if their public transit system would fulfill their needs.

So... about this blog...

Hello there, errant wanderer. You've stumbled upon a little cubbyhole in the internet where my blog happens to reside. What's it about? Well, pretty much about my life with my very first car that I am making all the payments on all my own while juggling rent, two part-time jobs (hopefully pared down to just one full-time one soon), and my own sanity. Also, you might be able to expect some nerdy junk, mostly anime and manga-related and such.