Presently my days are proscribed by whether or not anyone can loan me their car, give me a ride, or if my destination is short enough to ride a bike to. Alas, my luck with cars continues to be unfortunate. This weekend I walked to the grocery store and loaded up a basket, and the bag-boy asked “do you need help with this out to your car?” This struck me as an unusual request, I was probably only a couple of years older than he was. Maybe it’s something they automatically have to ask when someone has more than two bags per hand. Oh well, I should have said “Yeah sure, I need help to the car, only it’s five or six blocks away.”

My part of town got hit with some heavy rain last week and flash flooding became an issue. Unfortunately my car became a victim. The cylinders filled up with water, and the starter doesn’t want to come back to life. So I can’t blame the car on this one, I can’t swim either.

So now the car has been sitting for almost a week drying out in the hot sun until help arrives this weekend to assist me with performing the repairs. I was able to change out all the fluids except for the transmission fluid. I don’t want to tackle the starter, the transmission fluid, or any of the electrical stuff on my own. I just don’t have the know-how on auto repair to go that far on my own, and I’d like to avoid bringing it into a shop as I’ve been ripped off by those places a few too many times.

So I’ve been driving Lizzie’s bubble to work every day, hoping it hits 50 mph before I get there. Oh I only kid the Kia, it has more get-up-and-go than my 87 LeBaron did. I’ll give it that. But the Grand Am definitely has more pep to it. And I miss it. It’s nice to have the ability to quickly accelerate into a spot in line in traffic which the car next to me always seems to want to refuse to let me into. My weapon for retaliation: the mean glare. Endorsed by old ladies everywhere.

But hey, I shouldn’t complain. It’s very nice of Lizzie to lend me her car and work around her schedule to accomodate my problems. Borrowing the Kia means bringing Lizzie to her work in the morning, and that of course means getting up at 4:30 am. It might be a good thing for me though, it gives me a longer day and more time to do things, meaning I can slow down the pace a little. But 4:30 am is pretty early for me. Oh well, I’ll live.

So apparently we get instant summer this year! It’s been in the mid-Seventies all week long, along with the familiar unbearable Minnesota humidity that I complain about every summer. At the beginning of this warm week I thought it wouldn’t last. I just knew it would be snowing again by Friday. It’s only mid-April! At this time in back in ‘97 I was in the middle of the nastiest blizzard I’d ever seen in my life. That was the same blizzard that resulted in the big floods in Grand Forks. Well, now it’s Thursday, and it’s only been getting warmer. It feels like July already. Odd, eh?

So with the warm weather and the broken car, I’ve been doing a little biking and walking around the past few days. It’s actually been quite good for me to get outside and soak in a little sun and breathe in the fresh air. It’s also given me time to do some thinking, which is good. When I get bottled up in my daily routine, the brain starts to not function as well. And when I’m working in a field that depends so much on creativity, that’s not such a good thing obviously.

So the other day I wondered what it would have been like to have lived back in a time when there were no pictures. The common phrase “pretty as a picture” implies that pictures are the standard to which the rest of the world must measure up, and I don’t necessarily think that’s the best way to view life.

Walking around, I arrived at this small lake and park and was in awe of the perfect landscape scene that I observed. The whole world looked as though it was shot in soft focus, lit by a master stage designer. For a second, I thought that this would make a good ad for life insurance, or something that sells warm moments of peace and comfort. This was the real thing, and if I don’t try to experience it more, I will only be seeing a copied version of it all captured by someone’s camera. Living in an age of pictures, television, computers, etc we see the fake more times a day than we see the real thing. I don’t know about you, but I think that’s a little disheartening. I think that the time for a major change in scenery needs to come soon for me.

Have a nice week. Cross your fingers on the car repairs for me, I really hope it’s just the starter that’s broken.

We made our annual visit to the 2006 Twin Cities Auto Show at the Minneapolis Convention Center on Saturday, and this year’s show was probably the best in the few that I’ve been to. All of the major domestic car makers had some major new car design concepts to unveil and they all looked great. Here’s my top five from the show:

1. 2008 Dodge Challenger
This design blows the other retro/new muscle cars off the road. I had seen images of this online prior to the show, but didn’t believe it could possibly be real. When I was making my way through the Chrysler cars and saw this beauty off in the distance, I almost ran to it. What a cool car.

2. 2008 Chevy Camaro
Doesn’t quite grab me the way the new Challenger does, but I think GM came up with a very nice design for the new Camaro. You can see the elements from the late 60’s Camaros in this design to go head to head with the late 60’s style new Mustangs. The new Camaro seems a little more inventive and original than the new Mustang or the new GTO, I worry a little about how consumers will respond once this car hits the show room. Is it a little too much?

3. 2008 Shelby GT 500 Mustang
I didn’t think it would happen. Carroll Shelby and Ford’s relationship was rumored to have been ended forever back in the 90’s, but with the new Mustang coming out I think everyone craved a new Shelby Mustang just enough to bring it back. Although I’m a huge fan of the 67 and 68 Shelby GT350 and GT500 Mustangs, this design just doesn’t seem to get me as excited about the car as the original 60’s cars. The Saleen Mustang that was at last year’s Twin Cities Auto Show was actually a lot more impressive. Let me see the new GT500 in another color and I might change my mind. Dark blue with white stripes? Black with silver stripes?

4. Ford Relfex Concept
Sure, it kind of looks like my electric shaver, or a toaster, but there’s something really special about this car design. It appears futuristic, yet seems very retro at the same time. Gee, retro sure is the trend these days in car design, isn’t it? Often times a concept car won’t appear to fit in with a car brand’s line when it’s not a redesign of an existing car. Ford’s concept car last year didn’t look like a Ford at all, it was more like a Jaguar or a Porsche. With this concept, I think they pulled it off. This really looks like a Ford. I wouldn’t expect to see this on the showroom floor anytime soon, but I’d like to see elements from this design start to show up in new Ford cars.

5. 2007 Pontiac Solstice
Pontiac has always been a favorite car brand of mine, and the new Solstice is a really cool car. When I saw one outside my local Arby’s a few weeks ago, I thought it was a BMW. The cool thing about the Solstice is that although it looks a lot like a high-end BMW roadster, it’s about 1/3 of the price. It certainly borrows elements from a BMW roadster, but it still has the unique Pontiac look that makes it a great new car.

Out of these cars, which would I buy? I’ll take one Challenger and one Solstice, please. Out of the show, the car I’d be most likely to buy would be the new Pontiac G6 2-door GTP. I’ve really been loving my Grand Am and think the next generation of my car is a nice step forward. The G6 looks great. As for Lizzie, she still refused to let go of her loyalty to Kia. She was very impressed with the Kia Sportage and Kia Sedona SUVs. Seems like a realistic choice in the next year or so as her car will be paid off within the next year. Then we’ll be looking for a new one for her, and the Sportage seems to be her first choice after being at this show.

I’ll have a full gallery up in the Photo Album soon like I do every year. For the time being, I put photos of the best cars, including multiple angles of the Top 5 I’ve been talking about on the PhotoBlog.

Lizzie needed some new tires for her car. No, she desperately needed new tires for her car. I’ve been putting it off, though. Waiting to feel like I have the money for four tires but I should have just done it a long time ago as I’d probably never have felt like I had enough money. Well, the one of those tires popped on her way to work the other day, so that’s when I knew it was time to get that thing in for some tires.

I’d already been looking around at prices, Sam’s Club seemed like that best way to go. I got a set of two tires for my Grand Am there, and they were a good deal and the installation was fast and simple. Overall my experience with Sam’s last time was pretty good - this time, not so much.

Rolled the car in to Sam’s at about 12:30, picked out a set of four Goodyears. They were the middle of the road tire, weren’t as expensive as the Michelin’s or BF Goodrich’s, yet not as crummy looking as the Dunlop’s. Took probably 15 minutes to figure out what tires I needed.

I guess they were in a hurry because at this point they pretty much had all the tires off the car already, even though I hadn’t even paid for the tires yet. They were just starting to put the new tires on the rims when I realized that Sam’s doesn’t take Visa and I couldn’t write a check. That’s when I felt like a real jerk because I had to ask them to put my tires back on so I could go get some cash. They happily went ahead and started doing that.

Well then through the magic of cellular phones I actually managed to get the cash delivered instead, so I told them to start putting the new tires back on, even though they were pretty much done putting the old tires back on. Felt like an even bigger jerk at this point.

So then I was standing out in the viewing area watching the mechanic work on the tires, and something struck me as a little odd. He was using one of those high-powered air wrenches and was not hand starting the lug-nut on the stud before tightening it with the air wrench. Instead, he was just putting the lug directly into the wrench and then just zipping the lugs on without starting it first.

Then one of them wouldn’t tighten, and he turned to me with a puzzled look and asked, “have you ever had problems with the lug nuts on your car? I can’t get it tightened!” I shook my head and thought sarcastically to myself, “What could possibly be going wrong here?” He went to his manager and told him about his problems getting the lugs on and off, so the manager came over to check it out. He had to pry the lug-nut off as it was now stuck, and once he did and got the wheel off, he took one look at the studs and put his face in his hands and started shaking his head in disgust.

A few minutes after thinking over what in the world he was going to do, he then came to me and genuinely apologized for his mechanic having had seriously stripped out most of the studs and lug nuts on the car. They’d have to have the car towed over to a repair shop the following day (since it was now rather late in the day at this point, after all the running around getting cash) and have everything replaced.

I got the installation charge for free, and they of course paid for the repairs over at the repair shop. I got the car after work the following day and they genuinely apologized once again, regardless of the fact that I had wasted a bunch of their time that day.

I wrote about poor customer service a few days ago, these guys gave me a little hope that there’s people who truly care about customers. As for the mechanic who didn’t know how to put on a lug nut properly - well, some people are just hopeless I guess. It had to have been the first thing they told him in training… start the lug nut with your hand first.

But at least now Lizzie can drive safely and her car no longer shakes and vibrates like crazy because of the bad tires. So in the end everything turned out for the good.

Well this is a pretty spiffy idea! The new Cadillac DTS will get a feature us Northern folks have been imagining in our heads each winter for our entire car driving lives, while scratching, brushing, and scraping away at ice-glazed windshields until our fingers look like tiny bright red sausages.

The new Caddy will feature a windshield-washer system that heats the fluid to 176 degrees in less than 40 seconds, then shoots it across the windshield. Along with the wipers, the scorching liquid clears snow and ice from the windshield within just a couple of wipes.

Just this once I’d almost consider buying outside my demographic (and most certainly outside of my price range) just to get my frost bitten hands on this brilliant new system. Or to save money maybe I can just start boiling a pot of water every day and pouring it on my windshield. What could possibly go wrong?

Standing at the gas pump, which is a place I find myself at least twice a week these days, I can do nothing but shrug at the final cost for my tank of gas. $30 for 11 gallons of fuel, and all of those gallons will be burnt up within four days in my 60 mile a day work commute. That kind of commute in the city actually isn’t all that uncommon, especially in metro areas that are larger than that of Minneapolis.

Honestly, if public transportation were an option to where I go every day, I’d be jumping on the bus every day. But as Minneapolis public transportation doesn’t quite reach the outer suburbs, I have to drive. In doing that I burn about 16 gallons of fuel per week. That’s about 26 mpg, imagine what that would be like in one of the many gas-guzzling vehicles that are so popular these days. Ultimately, with four weeks in a month I’m spending about $172.00 per month for fuel, $2,073.00 per year. It’s amazing how just a couple years ago we were complaining about $1.60 per gallon being too high.

Now Minneapolis is seeing prices over $2.70, which is considered cheap compared to other parts of the country and in Europe. It all seems so insane to me as I remember a time just before I started driving and gas was below $1.00 per gallon. Now we’re faced with the reality that we may never see it go below $2.00 again. I often wonder why I couldn’t have been starting out my career at that time when gas was so much less expensive, why couldn’t I have been commuting all over the place on my own dollar then? Oh and being around before the dot-com/technology bubble popped at the end of the 90’s would have been good in my profession, too. Now I’m out there struggling with the best of them.

I also wonder - why aren’t there more people asking questions about this oil situation? In the 1970s they would have called this a “crisis.” I’ve wondered about this, and I looked around to compare today’s prices to the prices during the mid-1970s energy crisis. It turns out, with inflation factored in, we’re actually paying more. (See the graph below, courtesy of the DOE).

So where are the rationing laws? Where are the long lines at the gas stations? Where are the speed limit laws? Why do I continue to see growing numbers of enormous, gas-guzzling SUVs driven by everyone on the road every day? I just don’t get it, where is the outrage?

Many argue that comparing today to the 1973 situation is flawed, because cars get much better fuel mileage these days. I respond to that by comparing the fuel mileage of an average car used for commuting in the 70s such as my first car, a 1977 Chrysler LeBaron, to that of today’s popular commuting vehicles which is composed of a scary percentage of gas-guzzling SUVs which get worse gas mileage than most 1970s sedans did.

The gas mileage of 2000 model vehicles averaged 28.1 miles per gallon, worst fuel economy since 1980. The main reason for the decline in gas mileage was the popularity of the SUV, garnering about 50% of car sales in 2000. If car manufacturers were to increase their fleets’ average gas mileage about 3 miles per gallon, this country could save a million barrels of oil every day, while US drivers would save $25 billion in fuel costs annually. Credit: Ecobridge.org

Not a big surprise. Everyone knows that there has been a steep rise in SUV and trucks used for city driving, while there are plenty of models of more energy-friendly minivans or large sedans available at a lower cost. Can anyone explain this nonsense to me? Why does your 16 year old need a Ford Expedition to get to the mall and back?

If you’re my age, surely you had read about the great energy crisis of the 1970s in a history class at some point. If you’re older, you may even remember it. During that time, rationing of gasoline occurred in many countries. People faced long lines at gas stations, and the rule was that drivers of vehicles with license plates having an odd number as the last digit were allowed to purchase gasoline for their cars only on odd numbered days of the month. People with vehicles having even numbered license plates were allowed to purchase fuel only on even numbered days. (Wikipedia) I’m not sure how well that worked, considering most people don’t buy gas every day of the month anyway. Do they? Well, the restrictions were abolished in 1976.

During the 70s crisis a national maximum speed limit of 55 miles per hour was also put in place. This was imposed to help reduce fuel consumption, which continues to this day to be one of the justifications for highway speed limits in the U.S. It has also been claimed that traffic fatalities dropped significantly when the maximum speed limit was put in place. As a result, that law was not completely reversed until 1995.

The current crisis was caused by our very own complacency. Americans are just as dependent on oil today as they were in 1973, except this time there’s no excuse. The ludicrous American obsession with four-ton land monsters has finally, in reality, been exposed for the sham that it is. But people still just don’t get it:

“The difference between a vehicle that gets 20 miles to the gallon as opposed to 40 miles to the gallon, if they are both driven 12,000 miles a year, is about $600 a year. For many people, that is simply not enough to make them switch vehicles.” Credit: Aiadia.org

Who are these people? That kind of money is more than enough for me and certainly a lot of money for people who are in worse situations than I am. And we’re the ones getting hit with it the worst, simply because other people can afford it and just don’t care. Do these people consider the ultimate effect their greed has on the big picture? I know that I’m in a pretty fortunate situation compared to some. I complain a lot and wish things were going a little better, but I know that I probably have no idea just how much worse it could be. To me, $172.00 per month is a ton of money. I know that to many others, it’s a whole lot more money than I can probably even imagine.

Sometime during my lifetime America fell asleep to the soothing gurgle of cheap gas. When are people going to wake up? This is a problem. We’re a very spoiled nation, and we should know better. Isn’t anyone else getting tired of this?

Well, at least we have this promising invention. Recommend it to every SUV-driving soccer mom you know.

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