The roads at Oak Point aren't public roads, so it's legal to operate golf carts here, and quite a few Oak Pointers have them. It's easier to find a parking space for a golf cart, and certainly cheaper to run. If you are a two person family but scaled down to one car when you moved here, the cart is great when your spouse has gone off with the car and left you stranded.

Golf carts aren't cheap, though. Prices for new models start around $4,000.00 and go up fast. Even used carts will usually run $2,000.00 or so. When I first thought about buying one of these, I momentarily fantasized about saving gasoline for things like running down to the mail center. A moments thought disabused me of that notion: pretend that gasoline cost $5.00 per gallon and your gas guzzler auto only gets 6 miles per gallon. A six mile round trip would require 400 repetitions to justify a $2,000.00 expense, and of course that assumes that the cart costs nothing to operate. As we aren't three miles from the postal center, and our car gets better than 25 miles per gallon even on short trips, and gasoline obviously isn't $5.00 per gallon, my payback is more like 3,000 trips.. assuming no operating cost or maintenance added on. No, a golf cart won't "pay for itself".

But still: we did give up our second car when we moved here, and when one of us has to be out, a cart would be handy. So when we saw a used Club Car sitting out on Plymouth Street with a "For Sale" sign on it, we braked and took a look. The sign said "$1,600 firm", a price point that also attracted our attention. No one was home there though, so we continued on to Oak Point and here we enlisted the help of a more mechanically minded neighbor to assess its value. As it happened, he had already stopped to look at it, and said it seemed to be in great shape, and he knew I'd be glad to hear that it was an electric model. We went back the next day and bought it.

My neighbor and I differ on the gas vs. electric choice. I don't like gasoline engines: they are noisy, they stink if not perfectly tuned, and there are more parts. Battery powered carts are quiet, have fewer parts, and actually are "zippier" from a standing start. Of course my neighbor points out that these little gas engines make very little noise, don't stink if you tune them correctly, and aren't all that complicated to repair if necessary. With an electric, almost everything that can go wrong is expensive: a new set of batteries runs more than $500.00 and a new motor is just as much. Even the speed controller isn't much less.

Batteries, by the way, don't last forever. If you are looking at a used electric cart, look for a code stamped on the battery posts. It might be hard to see or worn off (if it's worn off, it sure isn't new, is it?) , so if you can't see it on one, look at another. Mine is "D2", which means April 2002. That's pretty old; I probably will have to replace these in a year or two, but at $1,600.00, this was still a good deal.

When I first tried out the cart, I was disappointed by its hill climbing performance. We have some pretty steep climbs here at Oak Point, and the cart slows down noticeably going up hill. I was afraid that the batteries were just too old and weak, and mentioned that to my neighbor. He guffawed at me and explained that his gasoline powered buggy does the same thing, and suggested we have an uphill race to see just how bad it really was.

So we did. Off the line, I immediately pulled ahead - you expect that with an electric because it has nearly instant torque. I slowed down to let him catch up, and then we both floored it as we headed up the hill. Both our carts slowed down as we climbed Lantern Lane; I'd guess we were running a little less than 8 mph.

To my surprise, he wasn't zipping by me. It was obvious that he was gaining on me, but it was slow - if we were going straight up hill for a mile, he might have passed me, but the two carts really don't perform much differently. We turned around and started back down. Going down hill in a golf cart is a strange experience the first time you do it: all these things have speed governors that deliberately limit your speed for safety. You are rolling along, gathering speed, and "ooooommm"; it slows down by itself. My governor must be set higher than his, or his needs adjustment: I pulled ahead quickly and reached the bottom of the hill far ahead of him. Obviously my batteries still have life left in them and I had no reason to worry.

Now of course we need accessories: windshield, rear view mirror, a cover.. my neighbor made us aware of "Buggies Unlimited" (http://buggiesunlimited.com) for all of that and more. Hey, what's another few hundred dollars, right? When gas hits $15.00 a gallon we'll pay it back in no time..

See Little Red Woody also.

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