Cars

[ase]

Saturday I roadtripped with hourglasscreate and her daughter to get Der Kid to Pennsic. According to google maps, this was 280-ish miles one-way. My excuse for coming along was simple: highway practice time! Der K. has her learner's, so drove about an hour in the lightest traffic. hourglasscreate took over until I wore her down outside the Pennsylvania Turnpike, and I let go the wheel just after the I-76/I-79 interchange. Three women, one Prius; it was long, but doable, with frequent breaks. The afternoon was complicated by an exasperating and inexplicable hot dog shortage and some nerve-wracking Jersey barriers - seriously, people, shoulders and margins are good things - but went fine until hourglasscreate declared herself sufficiently comfortable with my driving she could relax and stop watching the road. Five minutes later, the clouds rolled in on a mission, and ten minutes after that we were driving the I-68/I-70 region in a driving thunderstorm. So hourglasscreate did not get her nap, and I learned that it is entirely possible to drive through a thunderstorm while wearing sunglasses, if you're paying more attention to the road than your headache. We rolled into her driveway sometime before 8 PM and after 7 PM, twin shades of wiped out.

It's worth noting that, unlike the people on the northbound side of I-70 in the evening, we hit no traffic, even in construction zones. Extraordinary.

I have been completely spoiled by my auto experiences. I drove a Ford Windstar twice in my teen years. However the real formative driving experiences were norabombay's Mazda Millenna, a Toyota Prius, and a Saab 900. Then I drove a Ford Focus, and learned that my abstract musings that I was completely screwed for the "less thank $25k new" car market were an excellent extrapolation from concrete experience. (Seriously: the Focus I drove explained why people don't like driving. If I had to drive an economy car every day, I'd hate driving too.) So this summer I measure my grocery runs by how much I can carry on a bicycle, gauge my plans by how long it'll take to get me there on public transit - thanks, WMATA, for running that track maintenance, what, every weekend? Or just most of them? - sweat on buses with broken air conditioners - thanks, Ride On, two out of three times today, thanks so much - and count every mile I'm not driving in a $1,000 clunker as another fraction of gas, insurance, maintenance, repair, and car loan payments I'm not making until I can afford something pre-owned (complete with "oh, was that a support beam?" dents) and zippy. With working A/C.

(The first person to say, "why don't you get Zipcar?" will be bludgeoned with a my c.Jan 2008 driver's license, strapped around a handy brick, and the eligiblity requirements until January 2009 or they get the hint, whichever comes first.)

Our last Saturday stretch-and-bathroom break was the Hagerstown outlet mall, where I wandered into the Bose store and lusted after the $300 noise-cancelling headphones. The problem is that 1.) I do not have $300 for headphones, and 2.) I have a bad feeling they're tuned for the wrong frequencies. It's all booming jet engines, and I'm not sure that's going to work on the lower-midrange machine and fans-for-machines racket I'm really trying to filter out. There's also 3.) a tangent to be written on the social messages of bulky headsets vs earbuds, but you can probably unpack that yourselves.

Comments

[scifantasy.livejournal.com]

Seriously: the Focus I drove explained why people don't like driving. If I had to drive an economy car every day, I'd hate driving too.

Ouch. Speaking as the Focus owner, I like my car just fine, and I don't think the car is the reason I don't get a visceral pleasure out of driving.

[asciilifeform.livejournal.com]

> ...they're tuned for the wrong frequencies. It's all booming jet engines, and I'm not sure that's going to work on the lower-midrange machine and fans-for-machines racket

As someone with a lifetime cumulative war-on-fan-noise tab running firmly into the four figures, I feel qualified to comment on this one. Noise-canceling headphones work exceptionally well on mid-range computer and lab equipment noise. The problem is that, given how they rely on destructive interference, they cannot cancel any sound which is out of their own speaker elements' range. The infra- and ultra- components of the noise still get through, and sum to an agonizing headache over time. Your mileage may vary.

[ashcomp.livejournal.com]

The working A/C is a non-negotiable item for me, at least in the DC area. Especially if you like getting to work before your deoderant fails.

Also, re the Bose phones--I've never tried them either, but do know that they have a "slimline" model that isn't the massive original. Same price, though.

As economy cars go...

[many-faces.livejournal.com]

They weren't exactly designed for the visceral, primal thrill of a good drive, with the exception of Mazdas. A good, used Miata will run you about $10k, as new as 2001, with relatively low mileage. A brand-spankin' new Mazda3 is still well under your $25k mark, fully loaded, and designed to, well, Zoom-Zoom. Even a decently equipped Mazda5 or Mazda6 is in your price range, if you can negotiate worth your salt (or can walk into a dealership with an internet price off the dealer website, they're often just barely above invoice).