50 MPG!

Well, I managed to hit 50 miles per gallon on today's round-trip into Manhattan and back.

Since the drive into NYC is a bit slanted down as you head in, the mileage is better in that direction. In my Aztek, I managed to hit 33 mpg on one of my last trips in by maintaining a speed of about 60 mph. On the way back, however, I couldn't do much better than 27 or 28 mpg in that car.

The Smart Car, on the other hand, is so light and fuel-efficient that it would be hard to drive it fast enough to get such bad mileage. In general, it gets about 35-40 miles on a city gallon (assuming by 'city' that one means 'New Paltz'). And on the highway it does extremely well, generally scoring in the mid-40s for people who aren't leadfoots.

But I'm a feather-foot. I don't drive as fast as 65 mph, even, and rarely even crack 60. As a result, my mileage is amazing. On the way into NYC today, I reached 52 mpg even tho the last mile was a fairly steep uphill in the Riverdale section of the Bronx. As I drove into Manhattan later, my mileage was still in the high 40s for the short trip. And on the way back to New Paltz, I again kept my speed about 60 mpg and found that my mileage was 48 mpg, for an average on the day of about 50 miles to the gallon! In fact, the round-trip 170 miles used only about 3 gallons of gas, which is a lot less than the 6 gallons I'd use in the Aztek. At this rate, the car will save me about $60 a week!

SMART CAR Observations, Day 1

MILEAGE
I'm getting mixed signals from my Smart Car.

I filled up in Joisey (which happens to have the cheapest gas in the nation despite a law that requires them to pump your gas for you) on the way into Madhattan yesterday. Parking was a breeze, but I reparked to be even closer to my office (see the entry below from yesterday). Heading home, I basically had no traffic and only used the brakes 2 or 3 times, max. When I got to the Noop, I decided to fill up again, just to see how much petrol I'd used... and it came to 1.5 gallons for the previous 89 miles, or about 60 mpg. That just didn't make sense: I was driving uphill-ish, and there was a really stiff wind the whole way home. I expected no better than 40 mpg.

Today I drove in, maintaining my usual 60-65 speed the whole way and rarely using the brakes. It was a lovely, gust-free day. I expected better. I only got about 90 miles on what appears to be 2.25 gallons, or about 40 mpg. Considering that the car is actually rated for 40 mpg on the highway (and that I was driving downhill-ish at a low rate of speed), I deserved at least 45 or even 50 mpg, didn't I?

I'll have to sort this out soon. And towards that end, I've purchased a product called a ScanGauge, an after-market doodad that gives readouts of all sorts of important info for people like me.

HANDLING: Wind and Bumps
The car handles pretty well. Yesterday was really windy, and at times I felt like I had to fight a bit to keep in my lane, but later other drivers told me the same was true for them, so I didn't feel like I could blame my tiny car. Bumps, on the other hand, are for real. The Smart Car has smaller wheels than normal autos, so it picks up every bump you hit and even a few that aren't there. I found a great solution on the Internet, but I'm not sure it's for me. Meanwhile, I try to avoid known bumps (after enough trips, you know a highway like you know your way around your house), and I guess this is one area that I just don't care too much about. I got used to my friend JJ's rattly car in Denmark back in 1989, and once you've driven in something that's constantly being tinkered with, any other car is butter by comparison.

PARKING
Of course, this is the main reason some of us buy this car. Correction: We buy it because it's so cute and unusual, and we use the parking excuse as justification. Either way, there is no denying that the Smart Car is not only easy to park -- it's FUN to park! You almost don't want to take a normal-size (17-19 foot) space, just because fitting into a tiny spot is so much more satisfying. As noted, I actually moved closer yesterday when I found a tiny spot one block nearer to my destination -- a spot that only a Smart Car or a moped could have squeezed into. Parking alone can justify this car for my sake, because the areas I'm searching for spots in are generally tree-lined sidewalks without meters or angle parking. I don't think I'll ever have to park at a meter again. And who'd want to? It hardly seems fair to pay $1.50 an hour for half the space of an average car. Meters do me no good, anyway, because I need 4-5 hour parking, and the city hasn't figured out how to accommodate my needs.

SCRABBLE
That makes the Smart Car a great bargain in time saved. I can get a space within minutes and use the rest of the time to play online Scrabble®.

First Park

I parked in a tight Manhattan spot for the first time when I arrived to tutor this afternoon. By coincidence, one of the other Smart Cars in the area was parked nearby. It turns out that we're sandwiching my doorman's car.

Shirra took a cute shot of me in an even smarter car. This baby gets an unlimited amount of miles per gallon of gas -- it operates on foot power, tho it's a bit of a tight squeeze on the driver.

One Smart Man, He Felt Smart

It's adorable!

My Smart Car is now resting comfortably in the driveway after its trip home from Manhattan. Maeve and I took the bus into The City yesterday in time to sign a few papers and then head to my mom's in the new car. Maeve loves the car and was happy to be the first person to set foot inside it (as well as being its first passenger). Driving it in Manhattan is a bit odd, partly because the engine shifts gears in a manner that is slower and hurky-jurky compared with a normal automatic. This is because the engine is a sort of manual / automatic amalgam. It takes a bit of getting used to.

On the highway, I occasionally found that we were really speeding. I usually set by Aztek's cruise control at 60 or 65 mph, but the tiny Smart doesn't have this feature, so I will have to be more conscious oft speed; yesterday I hit 80 mph a few times.

The car has garnered many admiring glances in town so far. As far as I know, of is the only Smart Car residing in the Noop. I even took of to a fire call last night. Luckily it's large enough to hold my fireman gear, but to fit my unicycle, I'll have to put down the passenger seat or buy an attachment made for carrying bikes.

And yes, parking it is going to be a breeze!

Smart Purchase

I found out today that all systems are go for my purchase of a Smart Car tomorrow. Maeve and I are very excited; she's coming with me to pick it up.

SUPPLY & DEMAND
Smart Cars are in low supply. I'm not sure how high the demand is for them right now, but with gas prices at about $4 a gallon and destined to rise, I'd guess that they're generally not easy to get ahold of. When I called Elaine at the NYC dealership a few days ago, I was told that my request couldn't be honored until early 2009. I upped my chances by telling the her that I had no preferences for the style or model. Amazingly, when the most recent shipment came in, one car was left, and it sounds like a cutie: black, with red cloth seats. There is also some trim, but I didn't care enough to remember about it, so I guess I'll find that out tomorrow.

GASOLINE
I made what I hope was my last commute in the Aztek today. By adhering to 60 mph the whole way down, I could achieve between 31 and 33 mpg, depending on conditions. On the way back to New Paltz, my best mileage was no better than 28 mpg due to the uphill nature of the return trip. Smart Cars tend to get about 45 mpg, so the dealers say, but I have a feeling that I'll be surpassing that since I tend to drive so slowly. I'm shooting for about 55 mpg. Since the tiny car's tiny gas tank only holds 8.9 gallons, I'll still want to conserve gas! I'm figuring that if I drive 40,000 or more miles per annum, I can save myself about $2,000 a year in fuel costs alone.

INSURANCE
We have Geico, which seems to have the best rates, and because I'm essentially retiring the Aztek, our insurance premiums aren't going to increase too drastically -- no more than a few hundred dollars annually. I also agreed to get Lo-Jack, an anti-theft and security system.

Maeve and I are taking a bus into Manhattan so that we can drive back in the baby car. We can't wait.

Mountain (Unicycle) Man

I decided to give mountain unicycling another go. I had tried it when we first moved here -- our 'backyard' was the excuse for me to buy a different unicycle -- but I hadn't gone riding in our woods in over a year. It was time to suit up. Here is a picture of me in all of my gear, minus the 'me.' I'm wearing a helmet (to protect the noggin), sunglasses (eyes), gloves (wrists), leg armor (shins and knees), ankle protectors (duh), and a fanny-pack water system (lower back).

I chose a spot at the top of a nearby hill and decided on a few different 'lines' that I would try. It took me a few tries to make it from the big tree to the thin stump. Several minutes and a few attempts later, I'd made it from the stump to a steep slope. I only needed a few practice runs in order to make it down that slope. Then I was ready to put it all together, and within two or three tries, I'd made it all the way from A to Z.

I'm looking forward to muni'ing again tomorrow.

Wheel Problems, Wheel Solutions

I've been training for my upcoming unicycle race ("Ride the Lobster"), but the last week wasn't easy because of two flat tires and one achy seat. The flats were caused by a puncture in the tire of my geared unicycle; Mike the Bike told me that he thought his repair work would hold while the replacement tire was on order, but today, during what was to be a 19-mile ride, I got a flat towards the end and had to be Shirra-lifted to safety. She picked me up in the next-over town. So tomorrow I'll have to exercise on my other unicycle, the Coker, which I took for a training ride a few days ago. The larger wheel (36" rather than the 29" of the geared uni) smooths out a lot of bumps and makes for a nice ride, for the most part. The only problem with my Coker is the seat, which has caused me some discomfort over the years. Let's just say that I'm glad I already have my three kids, because enough riding on that unicycle ... well, you get the picture. I definitely need to get that seat replaced.

Then there's the car. I'm still driving my 2001 Aztek. That thing didn't get a lot of use until this year, when I started driving in 5 days a week for work. Thanks to little trips around New Paltz (as when I drive the kids to school), I also tack on another 20-30 miles a day, for a total of about 900 per week. As a result, I've now reached nearly 75,000 miles on the odometer; it was around 40,000 when the school year started. So the car has developed some aches and pains, as well as causing me some. In addition to my broken gas gauge, there is the anti-lock brake system that has failed a couple times and the fact that parking, while nowhere near as painful as I'd initially feared, is still as much of a pain as that unicycle seat. So I decided to look into getting a Smart Car. The things are tiny, measuring in at under 9', and this makes many more parking spaces available. In fact, on my mom's block, the doormen like to park their own cars so that they leave a huge space in front of the building that's just large enough for a Smart Car....



The only question is whether the tiny car has enough space to carry my unicycle!

End of the Line

For an upcoming unicycle race, I'm training by riding at least 15 miles a day. I decided that it made more sense to accomplish the brunt of this while my little one is off at pre-school, so for just over two hours a day, I can ride around New Paltz. The roads are generally pretty safe -- drivers tend to give cyclists a decent amount of space, and I haven't heard of any accidents since we moved. I need to work on hill-riding, so I'll take to the roads soon, but I much prefer riding on the rail trail. It's a pretty ride, and tho it's not hilly, it's bumpy and twisty and the ground is unpaved.

What I didn't know until this week is: It ends halfway across a bridge. I was zipping along, riding across what I assumed was yet another gorgeous wooden bridge, when suddenly the road came to an abrupt end. Weirder still, this happened literally at the midpoint of a once-spectacular structure. It's now a half-spectacular structure; the other half is a weather-beaten assemblage of huge Tinker Toys that appears to be on the verge of collapsing into the river 150 feet below. The first time I came upon the half-bridge, I gingerly walked it, afraid that the boards would creak and wobble, but it seems to be quite hardy, and when I rode it today, I felt confident that it was safe. Later I found out that someone owns the decrepit half and was hoping to turn the spot into a bungee jump but failed to get approval or funds.

That point is just under 7 miles from the preschool, so it's a decent round-trip distance, and when I add a bit more riding thruout the day, I can easily reach the 15-mile minimum I've set myself. I just wish the bridge went all the way across!

Gas Woes Again

As I write this, I'm waiting once again for a Triple-A truck to come to my rescue with a gallon of gas.

My gas gauge is still broken - it turns out that this would be an expensive repair - but my car has a digital readout of how much gas I've consumed since my last fill-up. Apparently I didn't set this properly the last time I got gas (or else there is something REALLY wrong with this car) but when I started out today, it looked like I had over four gallons left. I now know that this was not the case. It seems that the "low fuel" light that comes on only does so when I'm actually low on fuel; I should have heeded its warning when I passed that gas station a few miles ago....

iPhone, Re-Visited

My iPhone is great, when it's working. But so far I've had to re-something-or-other it several different times.

RE-SET
First there was a mild glitch that caused the screen to freeze. A simple 'reset' did the trick, and it was back to normal.

RE-STORE
But a few days later, I found that I was unable to return emails sent to my gmail account (and viewable on my phone). A customer rep explained that I'd have to 'restore' the phone, causing it to put my 'settings' back to their default settings and forcing me to spend hours putting all of the music and podcasts back onto the phone.

RE-COVER
When I ran into my next glitch, the rep suggested that I perform an even more drastic type of resetting of the iPhone. This procedure is called a 'recovery,' and it seems a lot like the re-store, only more invasive somehow. This worked initially, but then a few days later, I was unable to sync the phone with my computer. I ran thru all of the other steps, but alas, the phone would not fix itself. I called iPhone support again (800-MY iPHONE). The support team is top notch, never making me wait longer than 30 seconds on the phone, and they immediately suggested the only step left at this point.

RE-PLACEMENT
I made an appointment at the 24/7 Mac Store near FAO Schwartz and uni'ed over there today. When I arrived, I gave my information to one of the zillions of reps floating about the store, and he quickly determined that I'd accidentally been given a time in the wee hours (1:30 am) rathrer than a quiet (ha!) afternoon time of 1:30 pm. Still, he was confident that he could squeeze me in and before I knew it, a young woman handed me a new iPhone!

Of course, if this fix doesn't work, I may have to think about this whole purchase again. That would be called...
RE-CONSIDERATION

A La Recherche d'un Temps Perdu, or What I've Been Doing the Past Month

Forgive me, Reader, for I have sinned; it's been four weeks since my last submission.

I bumped into a classmate from my elementary school, Fleming, while she was buying a birthday gift for the 2-year-old son of another student from our graduating class. The three of us hadn't seen much of each other in the 28 years since we graduated from our little French school, but we all decided to go to dinner and a show, and a few weeks later, we got together for a great evening. Over dinner, I mentioned that, in the pre-Internet days, I'd started a mailing and phone-number list of our fellow alums but that I hadn't gotten very far, managing to track down only one friend who sounded a bit tired and grumpy when we spoke. Our dinner inspired me, however, and when I got up the next day, I immediately started Googling some of the more unusually-named people from Fleming. My hope was that, if I found a few friends, maybe some of them would have leads to others. I also hoped that my sleuthing skills would have improved.*

Nostalgia Orgy
Long story short: I created a Google group for all of the people I found, and we've been emailing each other, like a forum, for the past 3 weeks, generating just over 1000 messages in that time. It's been overwhelming and wonderful, with memories surfacing about old shops, the smell of the science lab, and quirky teachers. These memories are often quite vivid, like ancient murals unearthed and exposed to light for the first time in many years -- just as vibrant as the day they were set down. I clearly remember the candy store where I'd buy penny candies, the social studies teacher with the bright orange hair, and the double banisters along each stairway. Nicest of all is how well everyone is getting along: The bullies apologizing and their victims accepting graciously. It's like we've all decided that we'd like a do-over of certain moments.

It's also been great to find out how people turned out nearly 30 years later. One is an executive producer for a hit TV show, several are professors or academic deans. One is a food writer living in London. One is a professional poker player who has also written for a hit cartoon show. And perhaps most strangely: Despite there being only a dozen boys in the later grades of our school, 3 of us became firefighters! There are plenty of parents, too: My old girl-friend has four kids of her own and is a French teacher. Many of us have submitted photos, and it's been fun seeing how people have changed since adolescence, since some of us look pretty similar while others are barely recognizable.

* About that sleuthing: I used Google, whitepages.com, USsearch.com, 411.com, and Facebook.

Open Letter to Stanky (Our Cat)

Dear Stanky,

It's great that you've taken upon yourself the task of ridding our house of all the mice we've seen lately. I've been quite impressed with the results, too. You've caught more mice in the past week than in your past 14 years. I believe that this morning's mouse was the tenth notch on your scratching post.

I also appreciate how gently you've dispatched the mice. You cats sure know how to kill something softly. There was that one that looked a bit more like a 7th grade biology dissection project gone horribly wrong, but the rest have all looked like they're sleeping, albeit a bit more ruffled and comatose than usual.

Speaking of sleeping, let's try to keep the 'gifts' out of my bedroom. You know that mamma isn't too fond of mice, even when presented so lovingly by her slippers, so from now on, could you go back to depositing them near your food? Thanks.

Keep up the magnificent work!

Dad

PS: I'll get more of those treats today -- the soft chicken ones, right?

Mice in the Hice

I thought we had just one mouse in the house. Our cat caught it (yay, Stanky!), and that was it. Right?

OK, wishful thinking. There is probably a rubric somewhere that tells you how many mice you have for every one that you see. If there is such a calculation, I don't want to know, because I just saw two mouseys. Stanky is on the job.

One day last year, we came home to find two dead mice lined up (parallel!) in front of the television. On other occasions, we'd come home to find a mouse in the same spot. This meant that, for awhile, I had to be the one to check the living room first. Shirra could handle bugs of all sorts, but she used to hyperventilate when she saw long-tailed rodents under sub-optimal conditions (like: dead on her floor).

As I wrote most of this, there were two mice scurrying about. One ran from the kitchen into the laundry closet as another did a perimeter search of the living room (where I'm sitting). Stanky finished my yogurt and then crouched in his favorite hunting spot. I heard a brief tussle, and then in traipsed Stanky with half of a mouse in his mouth. We disposed of it quickly, and I gave him another reward. He's had a lot of them lately.

Pitty, Our Road. Pity Us

I met with a man about our horribly pitted road. The drive has gotten so bad that my car bottoms out in a couple spots, which may have resulted in a broken brake fluid line and some busted bearing holders in both wheels. The road is currently soggy, pitty, and cratery. It's gotten so bad that I may have to make up a few more words for it, tho some popular scatological ones come to mind right away.

As for the repair, our man estimated the cost in the $4,800 range. Ouch. The last time we had some holes filled in, it cost us $300, or 12 times less. The repair should last 4 or 5 years, however, so that's not too bad, and luckily we share the road and can split the costs with our nabes. We'll see how that turns out....

Spring Flood 08

New Paltz was hit with a rain storm last week. The temperature surpassed 32, and the sun came out. All of the leftover snow melted. The fire department immediately went on alert.

It's not the flooded basements that put us on standby. Basements were looking pretty pond-like along certain roads like Ohioville (North and South). Instead, it's the threat of downed power lines that we fear. As the ground soaks up all that water, the Central Hudson poles tend to sag a bit. Sometimes these get hit by trucks, and sometimes they just snap under high winds.

Luckily we didn't have to deal with one of those situations, but we did have lots of basements to pump out. Some had a foot of water; some had enough to get into the waders that the firemen were wearing. As it happened, I didn't go onto a basement until a day after the major flooding. For those who DID go in on the bad day, they often came out with a couple bootfuls of H20. One young guy new to the department came out of a basement with more water than was left in the basement after we'd finished, or so he claimed.