10 years, 100,000 miles

During my first year of grad school at Dartmouth, Hilary was doing a year of post-baccalaureat studies and MCAT preparation in Massachusetts. We saw each other most weekends, becoming very familiar with I-91 up and down the Connecticut river valley. For a time, Hilary had to come north to see me, because I had no wheels of my own (Greyhound, the alternative, was occasionally used, but inconvenient).

Around christmas break at the end of 2003, I was ready to buy a car to fix that problem. I even had one lined up - a Honda Civic HX (the one with the funky CVT) from one of the business school students. Unable to get my bank to grant me an auto loan (they claimed I had no income; I did have a meager grad student stipend), I scrounged and borrowed money from friends and family. Then, abruptly and for no particular reason I can recall, the guy called the deal off just after New Year's. Frustrated and dejected, I spent some time moping while Hilary - ever more practical - looked through the classifieds. Down in White River Jcn she found a good candidate: an off-lease 2001 VW Jetta with under 30,000 miles. The dealer - a used car broker called Jasmine Auto - was planning to tidy it up and sell to another, big lot used car dealer. I got there first and got the price they would have charged the dealer. Such a deal. I also got fixed up with financing through a bank in Portsmouth.

Best $8500 I've ever spent. This spring marks 10 years and just about 100,000 miles later. More, if you count the miles it spent being hauled to Minnesota (2005) and back (2009). It's getting a little creaky, but still runs well. It's had this funny quirk for years now where it doesn't recognize the opening and closing of the driver's door. On bumpy roads this can manifest itself as the car suddenly starting to beep - thinking the door is open with the keys in the ignition - which requires a quick actual opening and quick slamming shut. There are a smattering of spots on the roof, hood, and trunk where the paint is gone and rust is starting to show. Those got their start in 2005 when my parking spot was under some tall pine trees that dropped globs of sap. And let us not forget the passenger side-view mirror: practically ripped off when I backed a little too close to my roommate's 1990s Buick. It's been held on with electrical tape and bailing wire ever since.

So here's to that fine piece of German engineering. Given that Hilary's station wagon is unlikely to survive its next state inspection, let's hope the Jetta lasts for a few years yet!

Prelude to being buried in a blizzard in Duluth. Winter, 2007.

Things Fall Apart

Apologies to Chinua Achebe who, when he was talking about Things Fall Apart, was discussing problems of a much deeper and existential nature than my own petty bumps in the road.

Nevertheless, I have been confronted in recent weeks with plenty of examples of things falling apart.

Exhibit A: the enormous and beautiful silver maple in our back yard:


For all I know, this tree has stood watch over this house for most of the last century. Alas, its days are numbered. Ever since the freak snowstorm last October, when the tree lost a few moderately sized limbs, I have had a wary eye on the main trunk, just below the fork. I have known for at least a year that it has a sizable split in it. I thought it mostly superficial, but it is visible on both sides of the trunk. I'd been meaning for a few months now to bring in an arborist to have a look at it, and see if it might be possible to reinforce the tree with some cables joining the two trunks together. This past Friday, while out walking his dog, our neighbor heard a distinctive pop coming from back there. The crack hasn't gotten a whole lot larger, but it seems a lot more threatening now. Using you hand to span the gap, you can feel the two halves moving separately when the wind blows.


I spent a decent amount of time on Friday calling local tree services. I've now had five come out to look at it, and all have concluded that it cannot be saved; it must be taken down. Two of them, after giving me this judgment, subsequently bowed out; too big and complicated a job without a good crew and a crane. The other three I am awaiting written proposals from. One says he can do it in two weeks, the others will shuffle things to get to it in the next 2-3 days. All have ballparked it at somewhere between $2000 and $3000.

It is a sad thing: the death of a mighty old tree. Its shade and presence will be sorely missed. Although we'll plant anew, a tree of that stature won't grace this house for decades. But it cannot be meaningfully saved, and I do not love it enough to risk having it crush my garage, my neighbor's, the back fence, or the cars in the parking lot on the other side. I'd be happier if we had a fireplace, and could at least turn it into firewood. I've considered having the larger sections sawn into planks for subsequent woodworking. But, considering I've got about 50 board-feet of rough-sawn lumber in the garage already, with little prospect of using it anytime soon, adding to the collection a stack of green boards probably isn't worthwhile.

Next exhibit: the backyard fence. I haven't ever liked it. There is something to be said for the lichen-covered, greying look of weathered wood. But when it is combined with rotting posts and gates than can only be opened by lifting and setting aside, charm counts for very little. Let us be honest: it was cheaply constructed years ago and poorly maintained ever since. It spent the winter reinforced with stakes and ropes, awaiting the inevitable...


This section flopped unceremoniously to the ground the other day.


Not too surprising: the posts had rotted clean through at ground level. And not those two: all of the posts of the fence are exhibiting a lot of wobble. It does not inspire confidence.


The gate section is missing two pickets and one hinge. In the time we've owned this house, it has never swung freely or latched. The rest would fall over with one solid kick. So, off to the dumpster with it. I'll put in some sweat equity on a replacement in the coming weeks. In the meantime, Jasper has an unimpeded escape route from the back yard. But no worries, he only escapes to go run up and wait on the front porch. At least that is in good repair.

Next: our attic renovations. This hasn't shown up on the blog yet, but it will: we are gutting the attic to the studs and renovating it to be a master suite. Well, it would be a master suite for any other home owner; for us it will be an elaborate guest room. More on that later. In the meantime, this is what it looks like:


In the past few days the big pile of debris piled into the middle has been tossed out the window, gradually filling a 20-cu.yd dumpster. Just today we had a guy come in to suck out the 2-year old blown cellulose from the pitch and the ceiling, and inject it down through the balloon-constructed exterior walls to the second floor. It's a haphazard job, but salvages some good material and puts to better use than filling a dumpster. The 2nd floor walls can definitely use a little help: an energy audit last winter revealed that they have no insulation in them. The studs have a greater R-value than the rest of the walls!

Final exhibit: my car will roll over to 100,000 miles in the next few days. I've had that car since the winter of 2004, when I bought it off-lease for a bargain price of $8500. It had less than 30,000 miles on it then. It had a couple of easy years in Minnesota, where Hilary and I had walking commutes. Since our return to New Hampshire, I've been putting over 1000 miles per month on it. It still runs well, and hasn't been too expensive to maintain. I think I can reasonably expect another 2-3 years from it (I hope: it'll take that long to finish paying off Hilary's Subaru!).

Still, scheduled maintenance at the dealer is never cheap. Replacing the timing belt (and associated claptrap like the water pump, tensioner, and serpentine) is recommended by now. That can get done by a local guy, but is still hundreds of dollars. And the car is due for state inspection. All of this on a volkswagon means I should probably just hand over my wallet and be done.

Coming soon: our street is getting torn up and redone in the coming weeks. On the plus side, it'll mean the sewer, water, and natural gas connections will get some upgrades, not to mention a smooth surface for B's continuing adventures with pedal-bicycling. On the downside, the local utility will need to punch a hole in the side of the house for the new gas line, and possibly trench our driveway.

It's probably best if we leave the crumbling retaining wall and front steps out of the conversation. And don't get me started on the 2nd floor bathroom. Is that kitchen faucet still dripping? I wonder if I'll ever see my garage workshop again. Anyone got some gasoline and a match?

At the moment, I'm feeling (and no doubt sounding) like a tired old curmudgeon.

More Repairs

Keeping in line with DIY repairs, I have this lovely bit of dental work to display:


OK, so it's not really dental work, but I prefer to think of it as wiring the Jetta's bumper shut. The front bumper and grille assembly is a stackup of several pieces, nearly all of them plastic. As far as I can tell, they all snap together with so many spring-hook features molded in. The lowermost, black ABS piece is essentially a skirt that reduces wind resistance, and elegantly curves under the grille and the forward section of the engine compartment. This means that dragging it backwards over anything (curbs, the concrete blocks at the end of parking spaces, snow berms left by the plow guy) has a tendency to break it.

After a number of years of abuse, after one of last winter's numerous storms, the passenger-side of the skirt broke away. After some time with it dragging on the pavement and looking sad, I decided it needed fixing, lest it catch on something and tear more of my car off. Last spring, I was able to reattach it to the bumper segment above. Where they meet is a sort of flange that the now-missing spring fingers originated. I was able to drill some holes and thru-bolt it back together. It was tricky work that mostly had to be done blindly by touch, but It was fairly clean from the outside.

About two weeks ago, I pulled just a little too far into a parking spot and caught the skirt on a concrete block. Pulling back ripped away my careful thru-bolt job. After some more time with the bumper segment flapping in the breeze, I decided to make a serious fix. Again with my drill I this time installed some bolts with nuts as studs, then used wire to cinch it all back together.


Ain't it pretty? But for a 10-year old car with 94,000 miles on it, I am unlikely to replace the front bumper assembly just for looks.

Unwelcome Hitchiker

What a fine way to start the day!

I must have picked up that nail late yesterday, because this tire was flat as can be when I rolled out this morning. I noticed the extra drag right away, and feared that the parking brake was dragging. But when I pulled into a parking lot a block later, wondering how the heck I could fix a stuck parking break, I noticed the right rear tire.

On the plus side, this little incident forced me to have a good look at the tread wear. On this tire it's pretty far down. The wear bars (those nubbins that bridge the tread groove) aren't quite even with the tread yet, so theoretically I've got some life left. But I can see all of Lincoln's hair, and combine that with this massive puncture, extensive cracking, 5 years and 50,000 miles of use, and I'd say this guy is near replacement.

UPDATE 2011-07-07: Interesting addendum to the above story. When I got the tires replaced last night, they told me it'd be best to put them in the rear. This went against what I thought was the conventional wisdom of placing the best tires in the front for a front-wheel-drive car, since that's where the steering, power, and majority of braking occurs. However, after some research, I found a compelling reason to put them in the back. Under normal conditions, so long as there is decent tread in both the front and rear, it doesn't make much difference. In adverse conditions, however, like making a turn on a wet road, having the less-worn tires in the back tends to help. Like a drogue chute, they keep the car from spinning around. If the "grippier" tires were in the front, the car has a tendency to pirouette around the front end, swinging the back end around. This is a condition called oversteer that, while plenty fun on a racetrack, is harder to control than the reverse condition of understeer. Plus, in an understeer condition, the nose of the car tends to be out in front, which is the preferred orientation if you're going to hit something.

Dilbert, Light Bulbs, and Oil

Like I sometimes do with the newspaper, let's skip over the serious stuff and go straight to the funnies.



This is, in a nutshell, the problem with our energy policy - the inability to weigh long term costs properly. Yup, it's going to cost a whole freakin' boatload of money and creative destruction to upgrade the electrical grid, bring renewables up to a very large fraction of the energy mix, scrap inefficient equipment with newer stuff, alter our whole infrastructure to not rely on cheap petroleum, and accept that leveling West Virginia mountaintops and shattering the bedrock is not actually a better alternative to funding up petro-dictatorships on credit. A fair bit of behavioral and attitude changes will be necessary, too.

Sadly, a whole pile of economic arguments, mountains of scientific data, the informed opinion of every regulatory body in the government, and most of the U.S. military doesn't seem to count for much against the overwhelming burden of ideology in Congress. The sooner we accept the big transformative changes that are necessary, the better off we'll be.

Most importantly: even if it costs a boatload of money and pain to start now, it will be a whole hell of a lot cheaper and easier than facing crisis after crisis when they hit. Our collective inability to internalize this notion, and demand that our elected leaders have this kind of long term policy, is a ruinous course.

Which brings us to my next exhibit of human irrationality: apparently there is some hubbub about the impending demise of the traditional 100-watt incandescent light bulb. I'll admit: they give off such pleasing color, and have been around for so long, that it's hard to let go. On the other hand, the engineer in me knows that they are only about 5-10% efficient at converting electricity to light and makes me eager to relegate them to the dust bin of history. Who actually likes being so willfully wasteful? If people were rational, we wouldn't need to worry about government intrusion. As a matter of national pride, we would have been dumping incandescents into Boston Harbor years ago and clamoring for alternatives.

And incandescents are wasteful not only of energy and the environment, but of the owner's hard earned money. Compact fluorescents, even the highest quality ones (indistinguishable from incandescents), can pay for themselves in a year or two. The LED lamp you buy today may well be the last light bulbs you ever buy for a particular socket. Yet there are people so worked up about an overbearing government that they are stockpiling 100-W incandescents for the upcoming end times (of Edison's little wonder). Do they not realize that they are spending roughly the same amount that it would cost to upgrade all their lamps to CFLs and LEDs? Or that their stockpile won't last as long are modern bulbs, and they'll spend 5-10x for the electricity over that lifetime?

And now for our third exhibit: rising gas prices. It seems to me that we've been here before quite a few times. Should we be surprised at this point? Outraged? If there is outrage, it ought to that nothing has changed since the last time three years ago. In fact, rather than repeat myself with much tedious typing, I'll just point you to what I said about it then.

The conventional wisdom, particularly from the wingnuts of the nut wing of the Republican party, is that if we just let the oil and gas companies pave paradise expand domestic production, everything will be fine. This position is, more or less, unchanged since the last gas price crunch. Remember Sarah Palin's big energy policy speech before the election? Neither does anyone else, but the echo chamber of "say it enough times and it'll be true" carries the message on to this day.

Here is a very simple calculus: the world consumes nearly 90 million barrels of oil per day. The U.S. consumes about 20. We produce about 6. 90-20-6. If we drilled everywhere and laid pipelines through everyone's backyard, we might be able to extract a few million barrels per day more...for a perhaps a decade, maybe two. Would that bring gas prices back to the heady days of $1/gal? Will we be less susceptible to the fickle nature of the global oil market? Probably not, because by the time we do all that drilling, worldwide demand will probably have expanded by just as much, leaving us more or less right back where we started. 100-25-10. What's worse, this is an energy policy (or, at least, a gasoline policy) that has a lifetime of a decade or two - less than a generation.

90-20-6. Before any politicians opens their mouth about energy policy, they should preface it with those numbers. Anything less is pandering, ignorance, or deception.

What's my solution: use economics. People are irrational in their behavior. Failure to weigh long term costs is just one example of that. But one lesson from the last gas price crunch that continues today is that when gas gets expensive, people use less of it. What cars are manufacturers and consumers most interested in today? Hybrids and electrics - even if they can't yet get behind the wheel of one.

If we ultimately want to use less oil, making it more available by increasing its supply is not the way to accomplish it. That is an axiom of economics. One way to use less oil is to make the alternatives less expensive, so that people choose to use less of it. That could work, but we would need to have at least one, and probably many, really cheap replacements for oil available today to make the compelling argument for a whole economy to switch over. I see nothing on the horizon to indicate that.

No, if we want to kick the habit, then make gas expensive. This, too, is an economic axiom, and it can be put in place quickly. It works with cigarettes: higher tobacco taxes lead to lower smoking rates. Turn gasoline into the latest vice, and tax it accordingly. The increased gas price can, and should, be offset by lowering taxes on a whole bunch of other things such as the income tax - possibly even making it revenue-neutral. It won't be the end of the world: Europe and Japan somehow manage to get by with gas more than twice as expensive as ours. Shorter commutes get promoted, importing from halfway across the world won't look so appealing, big agriculture's rapacious appetite for petroleum-sourced fertilizer will shift, the economics of alternatives become more favorable, and our road infrastructure gets less of a pounding. Conservatives always want to let the free market figure things out. Let it, but with the proviso that oil is no longer gets a free ride. And essentially it does: the federal gasoline tax is 18.4 cents per gallon, and hasn't changed in years. The price at the pump swings more than that in a week these days.

It would have one additional benefit: at times when the price of oil really is up, a high gas tax provides a way to immediately and substantially reduce the pain at the pump.

Although it may be good medicine, I'll admit the middle of a spike in gas prices is not the best time to introduce such a proposal. The time to do it was when we weren't facing a serious problem: a year or two back, when gas was $1-2/gal less than today. But might-have-beens don't count for much in debate, and even less in policy-making. We ought not to live in the past, even when history can be instructive. We are faced with the challenges of the present. What will we do about it?

If history is any indicator, we'll have another crack at lower gas prices eventually. But, alas, history also indicates that we'll probably skip that opportunity in the pursuit of more demagoguery and grandstanding. There's an election coming up, don'tcha know?

Upgrades on Four Wheels

Northern New England, for those that don't know, is Subaru Country. There must be something appealing about how awesome all-wheel-drive is in the snow. Maybe it is the ability of Subarus to last to 200,000 miles that appeals to a Yankee's sense of thrift. Whatever the reason, there are a lot of Subarus around here.

So, when Hilary's car reached the end of the line a year ago by utterly failing New Hampshire inpsection, we had little difficulty in replacing a '94 Legacy Wagon that has 140,000 miles on it with a '95 Legacy Wagon that had 203,000 miles on it. This was largely a strategic move: at the time we were in process of buying our house, and didn't want to muddle our credit by applying for both a mortgage and an auto loan in the same breath. So, we sought a bridge car with a little life left in it, one that could take a place of Hilary's flagging station wagon at least through the winter. We paid a whopping $750 for it in a private sale, spent a little to fix it up and - wonder of wonders - managed to get over a year and 10,000 miles out of it.

We knew it was getting old by any number of measures. We could tell from the various noises that it was on questionable mechanical footing. Sure, it was always a struggle to find third gear. Sure we hardly put any money into fixing or maintaining it. But golly if it didn't start up every single time! We took it in for its annual inspection a while back and were told that they would pass it this year with some reservation, but assured us it wouldn't pass again next year. I guess 15 New England winters had finally gotten to it, and were beginning to cause some real structural integrity issues.

So, with tremendous gratitude, we drove that car to a Subaru dealership in the area and bought ourselves a new one. Well, not exactly "new" - it's a 2002 Subaru Outback wagon with 60,000+ miles on it. That's pretty low miles for a car of that age, and seems to be in great shape. It even has butt-warmers, something Hilary is quite pleased about with winter on the way. Here's hoping to another ten year, 100,000-mile relationship with Subaru!

Car Go Bye Bye

It is a sad event to say goodbye to an old friend..a trusty companion, a good steed. Yet, as we found out a while back, this chariot had, after 15 years and 140,000 miles, given out. We already had the replacement, all that was left was the disposition of Hilary's old car.


Because we bought her new car in a private sale, the old subaru had zero trade-in value. We could have perhaps tried to sell it ourselves, but with all the necessary fixes and its present lack of road-worthiness, we'd be lucky to get much of anything for it, and then only after a lot of legwork on our part. No, instead, we donated it to NHPR. They make it real easy - just an initial phone call to get some information (make, model, etc.), then a follow-up phone call from the auction house that would send a tow truck for it. We've been told that, should the car fetch more than $500 at auction, we'll get a sort of itemized donation receipt for tax purposes. Frankly, I'd be surprised if NHPR got that much for it, but we'll see.

Thankfully, they were able to do a pickup on Saturday morning, which was about the only time we'd be available. Though there was some difficulty when the truck arrived. The driver was all in a huff and a hurry and dismayed that, at 7:30 am, half an hour before the scheduled pickup window, we hadn't already fetched the (plateless) car and laid her out ready to go. Thankfully, Hilary was already on the way, and we'd already cleaned out most everything of use and moved it to her new wagon. The main thing to go was a set of snow tires, which ought to come useful if the new wagon lasts to winter.


Some fussing around with chains, some whirring of the winch, and there she was, laid up on the flatbed, and off around the corner with hardly time for a proper goodbye!

The Car Problem...Solved!

So, we left you, our dear readers, hanging, with the Moose Family temporarily reduced to a one-car family. How to get a new car? We didn't want to take out a car loan right before taking out a mortgage, or spend a bunch of our down payment either.

(This whole thing would have been much easier if it hadn't been raining, and raining, and raining, making a bike commute, even to the hospital, dangerous...)

But I can now present the new Moose Family auto:



"But Hilary," you may say, "that looks just like your old car!"

Indeed. We solved this problem in fine New England style—we met a guy at the Norwich farmers' market! He was parked next to us, Alex struck up a conversation with him, and it turned out that he was selling his car. For less than $1000. We realized that this was the perfect solution, an inexpensive bridge vehicle that we hope will get us over the mortgage hump. It is a 1995 Subaru station wagon, making it a whole year younger than the almost-identical car it is replacing. Though I suppose "new" may be a little bit of a stretch. Especially since it has 203,000 miles on it. However, it does have the added benefits of having a manual transmission and no automatic seatbelts, addressing my biggest complaints about my old car!

We bought it contingent on it passing the New Hampshire inspection, or requiring only minimal work to do so. Two weekends ago we drove up to Vermont, picked the car up, took it across the border to New Hampshire, and had it inspected. It did need a little work (a new CV and outboard axle assembly), which it had this past week. Now it is all inspected and registered. Welcome to the family, Subaru Two!

Bye, Bye Car...

So, apparently my car took us a little too literally when we asked it to pretty-please just get us back to New Hampshire. Yesterday I took it in for its state inspection (and a few other things as well), and then we got a phone call that told us it would require a tremendous, expensive amount of work just to pass the inspection.

My car is a 1994 Subaru wagon with almost 140,000 miles on it. We aren't going to spend thousands of dollars to fix it.

And so, in the midst of this rainy weather, we are a one car family and on the lookout for a much-less-used Subaru wagon! Luckily we are in northern New England, the Subaru heartland, and finding one shouldn't actually be all this difficult. I think they all might come with a complementary Obama sticker, too.

(Yes, I would love to have a hybrid, but we need a car with more cargo space than a Prius, Accord, or Insight.)

Commute

I've finished my second week at my new job. There's not much that I can say about it in an open setting such as this blog. So, instead, I'll talk about my commute.

My last job, in Rochester, was delightfully close by. So close, in fact, that I had a mere 17 minute walking commute from front door to my desk. That was quite nice. In fact, I was so junior at the company that, even if I wanted to drive to work, it would have done me little good: I would have had to drive away from my job, park the car, then take a shuttle back in. Yup, walking was a great way to go - even in minus 20 weather.

Now, however, I live in Concord and work in Manchester. So, I not only have a 20+ minute commute, but it's a driving commute. I'm sure many of my more urban friends will laugh at that, but it's a big deal to me.

I don't begrudge the time in the car all that much. Traffic isn't too bad, it's almost entirely a straight shot on the highway, and I listen to NPR going to and from. I do worry about the miles, though. My Jetta manages 30+ mpg on the highway, which I consider pretty good, but 40 miles of daily driving is a hit to the pocket and to the carbon footprint no matter what I'm driving. The gas cost is about $3.50 with current prices. If I figure in insurance, depreciation, and everything else that goes into the IRS' $0.55/mile reimbursement rate, it becomes an extra $20/day compared to my old job. There's also a $1 toll each way, which is easy to forget when using the EZPass.

I'd be stoked to get a car with better mileage, but it is tough to justify replacing perfectly good automobile just to reduce my gas consumption by only 25-33%. Taking out a car loan right now would be a poor tactical move in our quest to securing our next mortgage. Besides, if we're replacing any car in the near future, it's probably going to be Hilary's, uhhh, hale Subaru wagon - 15 years old and 140,000 miles.

What is the solution to this problem of commuting? I'm not sure. It is almost certainly too far to bike. Even in training it would be an hour each way - time that I can ill afford. There may be carpooling or shuttle buses available, if I can make that work with my work (and Brynna's daycare) schedule. Moving closer is possible, but it is probably more important for Hilary to remain close to the hospital.

Perhaps I'll just get used to it, like most everyone else does. I hope, even if I can accept it, I don't ever forget it.