You know when you’re a blog-writin’, energy wonkin’ wonk when you go bike riding with friends, and the whole thing turns into an energy policy riff. On the Internet. I’ll let Scot tell it:

I see at Bloomberg this morning that oil is $55 a barrel. $85 dollars down from $140, carry the one….that’s…a 61% decrease in about 135 days or so. Besides proving, once again, that I’d make a lousy commodities trader (and that most commodities trading analysts would make lousy commodities traders), what does it all mean?

I haven’t a clue, but doing a bit of bikeriding yesterday around the kitsch that is Mesa del Sol I saw big, shiny manufacturing centers looking pretty empty amid even emptier sunny Mesa. In particular, I came across this optimistic sign at the Advent Solar plant that read “Parking for Advent Solar Customers Only”. Sure it was Sunday, and almost everything in the whole planned development was empty, but given what my bikeriding friends told me about Advent, those parking space might not be filled for quite a while at $55 a barrel. European frenzy for solar energy or not.

Scot tells it about right, I think.