Tag: driving

Posted on
by

Yesterday the Los Angeles Times ran an article about the fact that, in response to soaring gas prices, smaller cars are outselling light trucks (which include SUVs, pickups, and minivans) in the US for the first time since 1996. Last night I was going through old magazines that we’d just tossed in a bag before moving. I found the September 2006 issue of Westways (the California Auto Club’s magazine), with a cover story about the new breed of small cars, wondering when the market would shift in response to the high prices. Now there’s timing.

On a related note, 9 months of driving a Prius has given me a somewhat different perspective on “good” and “bad” mileage. When I see averages of 38–48 MPG over the course of a tank of gas, and can get up to 60 MPG on straight, flat stretches of freeway, advertisements touting 25–30 MPG just don’t sound that enticing.

Posted on
by

Sign: ICK SI NS (normally QUICK SIGNS)

According to Katie, this actually said “quick sins” the previous time we drove past it!

This shot almost cost us our new car. The sign faces the freeway, and rather than stick Katie with shooting from a moving vehicle at night, I tried to find a good angle from the parking lot. We saw that the lot extended far enough to see around the corner, and headed for the end of the lot. As I prepared to turn into the last space on the end, a truck came zooming around the corner of the next building over, a Carl’s Jr. with a drive-through and absolutely no visibility. Clearly they weren’t expecting to see anyone in the lot at 10:00 at night. Fortunately we both stopped in time.

Also, I now know that the horn works.

Posted on
by

I’ve been driving a 2007 Toyota Prius for a little over two months now. My old car was a 1997 Nissan Sentra that I’d had for years, so just driving another car is a change. Then factor in the switch from a plain gas engine to a hybrid…

Thoughts on the Car

Very smooth, very quiet ride. Lots of nifty little conveniences, like the fact that it remembers different volume levels for radio vs. the line-in jack (for the iPod). Far roomier inside than it looks. Oddly enough, I think it may be wider than the old car.

Not big on the hatchback, though I’m getting used to it. Cargo space is limited, though it makes very efficient use of the space it has. Lots of extra little compartments, hooks, etc. Cup holders are a bit too loose* for most purposes, including my travel coffee mug (yeah, big deal, I know).

Driving it

I’ve found myself changing the way I drive. I used to focus on maintaining stopping distance. Now I’m focusing on making the most efficient use of acceleration. The Prius dashboard displays the point MPG, and a graph of 5-minute averages over the past half-hour. It makes you acutely aware of which actions are most efficient. Continue reading →

Posted on
by

Sometimes you just get lucky.

On Saturday, I took the car in for maintenance. There was a snafu involving a mislabeled box from a parts supplier that closed earlier than the shop, and I was left with a complimentary rental car for the weekend.

On Sunday, an Ikea catalog arrived with the paper, and Katie spotted some nice, reasonably-priced patio furniture. So we descended upon the tiny rental car (a Hyundai Accent) with a tape measure, and a few hours later our balcony actually looked like someone lived in the apartment.

After I got the car back on Monday, I lowered the back seats to see just how big the opening to the trunk was. And despite the fact that it’s a larger car (a Nissan Sentra), there’s no way we could ever have fit the box in there.

Posted on
by

For various reasons, some stupid, some frustrating, and none of which I should have worried about that late at night, I stayed up waaay too late last night. And then couldn’t get to sleep for about 45 minutes after going to bed.

So I went to Starbucks on the way to work. The woman at the cash register wrote my name down as “KALSLN” despite the fact that I spelled it out loud to her. I suppose I should be grateful she got more than half the letters right. I’m always amazed at the new and surprising ways people find to misspell my name, though. If I’d been more awake, I would have added my usual “like Nelson with a K.” Of course, if I’d been more awake, I wouldn’t have stopped for coffee.

The rest of the drive was uneventful until I was ready to get off the freeway. Remember The Turn Signal Is Your Friend? Here’s another one. There was a pack of cars in the right lane, all about three carlengths apart, and I needed to get over to reach my exit. Unfortunately the gap I picked was in front of a Mercedes, who refused to open the gap at all. So this guy is tailgating me, barely a carlength behind, at 65 MPH. Last I looked, stopping distance at that speed was a whole lot longer than that. We reach the ramp to the next freeway, which is a cloverleaf, and my blueberry muffin rolls out of its bag onto the seat, spilling crumbs everywhere. Now, at this point I have to get over one lane immediately in order to be able to turn left at the real exit, but there’s a huge truck in that lane. So I pass the truck, start signalling, start to move over – and this jerk (who has never dropped more than a single car length behind me the entire time) not only zooms into the next lane and starts to pass me, but starts honking at me. Note that I started signalling before he passed me! I slam on the brakes (which, if he’d still been behind me, would have guaranteed a collision) and honk the horn, and the muffin (which I’d fortunately rolled back into its bag) rolls forward, hits the underside of the dashboard and lands on the floor.

To top it all off, a construction crew was blocking the left turn lane, so I may as well have stayed in the right lane.

Here’s hoping the day gets better and not worse…