So you are basically saying "why do things the normal and cheap way when there's a really wasteful and completely redundant way instead?". If you can walk, then you should, 2 miles is so short a distance I actually laughed when I read that! My school I went to for 6 years was 6 miles away and I went on foot and even then hardly took half a hour, exercise people!
As for the high winds, just know that it's the wind that actually dries the clothes, the sun simply helps a bit with that, even without sun at all, if there's wind, things dry really fast as long as there's no rain or high moisture. And those machines are exactly as useless as I "think" since no one here has ever needed them, I've been doing laundry since I was 8 and never needed to iron even once! Just try things out the normal way first before picking the expensive wasteful route, you will save tons in the long run.