AltWheels Festival

The AltWheels festival returned to Boston this past weekend for its fourth annual event. WheelsTV is a sponsor of the four day event that ran from Thursday to Sunday. On Thursday Lehel Reeves, our president of programming, and I took part in the AltWheels Caravan from the Larz Anderson Auto Museum, through Boston, and over to Cambridge where we gathered at MIT's Stata Center. There were over 35 vehicles in the caravan including busses, trucks, cabs, motorcycles and vans powered by ethanol, biodiesel, vegetable oil, hydrogen fuel-cells, hybrid battery/gasoline (our 2004 Toyota Prius on loan from my friend and dentist Joel Ross) and even an antique Stanley Steamer powered by whatever will burn!

The caravan was pretty impressive, complete with a Mass State Police escort that blocked traffic along the five mile route that took us through some of the busiest parts of Boston during rush hour...even past Fenway Park prior to a Red Sox game! I'm not sure of how badly our tieing up traffic set the alternative vehicle cause back but it was certainly fun and pedestrians seemed to enjoy it!

By the way, the Prius that we drove was surprisingly peppy and fun to drive. It gets 50 miles to the gallon of regular and once I got used to the odd layout of the dash and gear shift lever, was no different than driving a traditional "gas guzzler."

We've all probably noticed that gas prices are dropping. It always seems to happen just before an election. Hmmmm. Well, when they go back up, you might want to consider one of the growing list of high-mileage hybrids now available. I am told that GM may have a hybrid Tahoe available in 2008, about the time when I'll be retiring mine.

Back to the AltWheels festival: It ended up raining on Saturday but Sunday was pretty nice and the festival was deemed another big success. We'll have a story on this year's event on WheelsTV soon. If you want to learn more about Altwheels go to www.AltWheels.org.

Thanks and please drive safely,
Jim