nosrednayduj

I neglected to blog when my daughter was in a double rear-end accident a few weeks ago, with her car in the middle. Nobody was injured, but it doesn't take much to total an 11-year-old car. So she was without a car and we agreed to help buy a newer car for her.

Of course she has no time ever to do anything. Including, it turns out, renew her drivers license. Hopefully the new car can be registered in her name despite the expired drivers license, and she promises to just renew it online, rather than getting a new photo, which is what she had hoped to do, which is why she put it off.

We thought we were going to try to go buy a car on Wednesday afternoon, but it turned out she had like one hour of free time instead of the entire afternoon, and it wasn't a good day for me work wise, so we put it off until today. She had to rearrange some of the things she wanted to do, but she and I got to the car dealership right after they opened, and I had a clipboard with the used cars we were interested in all printed out and that makes the car dealers less pushy. I did have a conversation in which he said "what's the most important thing to you in a car" and I said "I want to look at these cars on my clipboard I don't want to have you match me with my dream car" and that was the end of that, and he went and got some of the cars that were on my clipboard. Unfortunately, some of the cars were at the dealership across the street (owned by the same company, so he didn't mind that we wanted to go over there, and this whole business where they don't negotiate anymore is actually really convenient, you just say I want this car and you write a check). So we had to trek across the street after we looked at the cars at the first place.

The place across the street was much busier, and so we had to wait for a salesperson, I guess because it was more than an hour later and not as close to opening time. But we looked at a car and we bought it. Sadly, the actual buying of it took two hours. There was a lot of sitting around while he xeroxed drivers licenses and more sitting around while he figured out if we were eligible for the various incentives (it's an electric car, surprise), which we were if Jocelyn was the owner rather than somebody like me who makes too much money, and then more sitting around because it turned out that there was only one guy who was able to finalize deals, and he took 20 minutes per person, and there were people out of us. What's up with that?

We've may have made an error in putting it only in her name, rather than trying to put one of us on the title as well, because then when she goes away in the summer and needs to garage it at our house we won't own it and so it might be complicated, but maybe it's fine and she can just change her official address to our house when she leaves. We actually tried this trick when we gave her the Prius, with one of us on the title, and there was a flaw where they reregistered that person to vote in Cambridge, and we had to fix it, so we were trying to avoid that mishap. Maybe we could have just not checked the "reregister me to vote" box on the form, but maybe that wouldn't have worked.

Of course we don't get to drive it off the lot. She has to call the insurance agent on Tuesday and get some insurance number to the dealership, and then they have to fart around with the registry and get plates and "prep the car". What do they need to do? It looked fine. Anyway, they are saying we might get it on Thursday or Friday.

At the first dealership when we test drove cars, the salesman did not come with us, so we could have her drive even though she has an expired license, how could they stop me from switching drivers? But at the second dealership, they came with us, so I had to do all the driving. It drove extremely similarly to one of the other ones.

We had looked at: Kia Niro, Hyundai Kona, Hyundai Ionic (the first model, not the latest ones), and a Chevy Bolt. The listed Bolt had been sold, so we didn't get to test drive it, but we'd driven friends' Bolts, and the people who had bought it were picking it up, and so I got to walk over there and engage them in conversation and get a "my wingspan" measurement of the back storage area with the seats down, to compare it with the Kona, which had looked smaller, but that's because the Bolt is narrower and taller and so the perspective is different.

We ended up with the Ionic. Why? Because it was cheapest. I don't know why it was cheaper. Maybe because this model isn't made anymore. But it has the high trim level so we get adaptive cruise, which I am going to appreciate when we have the car for a few months in the summer while she is off circusing. It also seems to have enough space in the back for her bicycle, and likely, I'm going to find out if it has enough space in the back for my bicycle (which is larger) on Thursday when I pick it up!

I went skiing! I drove an electric car more than 200 miles to do it!

It was kind of an adventure. Specifically, when I checked the weather Tuesday morning, there wasn't any serious snow forecast. However, in the event, there was a lot of snow overnight, and it was still coming down in the morning on Thursday. Which means, when you're in California, you need to have tire chains, or, four-wheel-drive with snow tires. Well, do I have any of those things in my rental car? No! So, there are people who help you out with this problem for money. This is the second time that I have purchased a set of tire chains (which are really cables) on the mountain. Then, I abandon them in Chico when I leave because, am I really going to take this piece of equipment back home in my carry-on? Also, in Massachusetts we don't do tire chains. I think it's probably because we don't get the quantity of snow that they get in the Sierra on a regular basis, and our towns are all close together, so you don't have these hundreds of miles of roads going through unpopulated areas. So, they are useless objects at home. This time, I abandoned them with my stepbrother, who will probably actually either use them or give them away. The previous set I abandoned with my stepsister, who probably just threw them out when she moved.

Anyway, this made travel much slower when we actually got about 5000 feet. Also, I dawdled in the morning hoping that chain control would be done by the time I got there, since the storm was predicted to be done late morning. Alas, that was not to be. So I got to skiing kind of late.

Charging the car was a bit of an adventure as well. I had identified two charging stations that could be used; one of them was fairly close to the ski area, so it could be used either on the way up or on the way back. Of course, on the way back means making sure to leave enough time to charge, though on the way up means that the battery is a little bit fuller and therefore it's harder to push the charge in. Either of them cuts into your ski time.

So, I stopped "on the way up". Well, there had been snow. A snow plow was making laps around the parking lot making sure that the gas station was available, but it was piling up the snow in front of all of the charging stations, both CCS/CHAdeMO and Tesla. So I tried stopping again on the way back after the snow was over, and one of the CCS charging stations had been unblocked, but there was somebody charging in it, and the other one still had snow piled in front. Well, it didn't have time to wait for somebody else to charge and then charge myself. So, cross fingers that the station at it grocery store in Grass Valley (40 more miles on) actually existed and worked. Because the other choice was 20 miles out of the way in Yuba City.

In fact, probably I could've just made it. Because, it was all downhill and boy did I get miles back! When I arrived at the ski area the guess-o-meter had said 99 miles remaining, and I needed to go about 130. By the time I got to Grass Valley, I had gone about 50 miles, and the guess-o-meter was reading 110, which was more than the about 80 that I still had to go. But, by this time I kind of needed a restroom and some snacks, so I charged for 20 minutes, getting back another 30 miles, and headed on down the road.

The Bolt has morals about how fast you should go. It puts the speedometer in a green circle if you are going 65 or less. If you are going more than 65, it puts the speedometer in an orange circle. Even if you are currently using regenerative braking in order to hold your speed at 70. I think that if I'm getting miles back, I ought to get a green circle no matter how fast I'm going. I'm curious, but not curious enough to find out, how fast you have to go to get a red circle around your speedometer.

Oh, and skiing was good, even though I really only did it for about three hours. I was actually pretty tired, because there wasn't hardly anybody else up there so there were no lift lines. The conditions were somewhat difficult, because the powder was a little bit compressed to really act like powder, and the groomed areas had had a little bit too much snow fall on it after grooming to really act like groomed areas. The fact that I've forgotten how to ski in those conditions made it challenging at the beginning, especially because there was limited visibility due to the snow. Visibility improved after the first half-hour, and that helped a lot with planning turns, you could actually see the snow you were aiming for so you had a better expectation about what would happen when you made a turn. So, by the end, I was feeling much more competent. But I'm probably glad I quit when I did because I was pretty tired and it's always that one last run you shouldn't have taken where you bust up your knee.

I made it back to Chico in time for my planned dinner date despite an additional 15 minute slowdown from a big accident on the way. The restaurant had a level 2 charger, so I plugged in. And now I am plugged in to the level 2 charger at the hotel, so I should be all set to go to the airport tomorrow.

Last year, when my Tesla key fob started saying "low battery", I gamely got out the manual and read how to do it, and changed the battery. Immediately turning my fob into a brick. (Then, stupidly, I performed this very same feat on Valerie's key, which I also bricked, leading to a service call.) Recently, my key fob has been saying low battery again. We went on the Internet, and we discovered that there was quite a lot of superstition surrounding Tesla key fobs. So we applied the following to magic spells: we used official Panasonic batteries, rather than whatever hardware store had lying around (Duracell, it turned out), and we changed the battery inside the car, with all the other key fobs far away.

Seems to work! So the next time somebody's battery reports low, we'll try this trick again.

Separately, I went on my longest bicycle ride of the year, 15 miles, bringing me to 121. Not going to make 166 for the month (which would be par), but I always make it up in the summer. In fact there's been quite a lot more than average bicycling for winter this month. Next month, not going to be so good, because I am going to California for a week in the middle.

Holiday letter time!

Discovered I could insert pictures into RTF files so I didn't have to write this one on work computer with Word.

http://olum.org/yduj/holiday-letters/Happy_holidays2022.rtf

I haven't updated in a while – the big news is that the other kid is learning to drive! He's doing pretty well. He's over 18, so he doesn't have to go through the draconian rules that minors have to contend with, so mostly we are teaching him to drive, but we are also going have him sign up for a couple of professional lessons before the test. For example, neither Valerie nor I is excited about teaching him to parallel park. So far, he's mostly been chauffeuring Valerie around to errands for practice, but we've also had some just driving around parts. We are using the Leaf, so at least we are not emitting greenhouse gases while we are doing this. I do plan to have him try driving the Prius some time, just to have a different car. Not sure when we're going to let him at the Tesla.

Jocelyn is spending the summer in Portland. She's got an apartment with two friends for a year, so she will live off-campus next year also. There was some talk about some circus thing which was the impetus for staying there, but that doesn't really seem to be happening. There might be interesting circus stuff in the fall, but I'm not holding my breath. She spent a couple of weeks with us at the beginning of the summer, so she did get her waterskiing experience and stuff like that.

I've been getting at least one waterski ride per weekend. Every once in a while, I try to figure out how much I spend per ride, considering the price of the boat and motor and gas and all that, which of course has some guess about the lifetime of the boat and the motor. It's a fair amount, but I'm good with that. (Given that each ride is about 2 minutes, let's not figure the per hour price.)

My motorcycle is repaired, and it seems to work great. Now I need to find places that are appropriate for me to ride it to (going alone, good weather, and no cargo).

Bicycling, I am still on track for more than 2000 for the year. Today I rode 19 miles and averaged 11.6, which is pretty good. (For me.)

My next trip to California will be in early August, and I'm not exactly looking forward to the airplane flight, because I feel like, if nobody else is wearing a mask, I'd better wear an N 95, and while I'm fine with those for a couple of hours, it's going to be a real stretch to do a minimum of six hours, and possibly eight, depending on whether I can find an empty enough space in the connecting airport to make me happy. I'm also a little concerned about "when am I going to eat".

I'm really regretting buying a Tesla. We've been having some problems with its computer, and we had another service appointment today, where they made a recommendation that was going to cost a lot of money, so I said I'd like to think about it first (and talk to co-owners), so I went home (with the car, and a "plan" about how I was going to communicate my thoughts).

Now when I try to use the Tesla app to monitor my vehicle, it tells me that it's in service, and does not give me the usual options for messing with the car.

When I called to complain, the voice response recognized my phone number and put me straight to a survey of "how satisfied are you" (I pressed 1). I had to call from a completely different phone number that they've never heard of. Then I got voicemail. So I complained in voicemail, and I also put a message in the app, so hopefully they will release our car from electronic jail. I imagine we'll be able to drive it if we get in and try to do that. The switching to the "in-service" mode happened after I got home.

So we sold the SUV.

After working through the next no-show, and a guy who was too confused by my explanation of what the large looming repair was (hybrid cooling system) and decided he didn't want to deal after a couple of telephone exchanges, we got somebody who actually showed up, and actually had money and actually decided to buy it. He turned out to be a car dealer, and so now I wonder if the car is going to show up on his lot next week. When I mentioned this, he said that I shouldn't worry about that and he planned to use this as a loaner. I later looked at the cars for sale at his dealership, and a lot of them are old like this, and somewhat more expensive for similar cars so I have my doubts. On the other hand, it's likely that he will fix the looming repair and also the cosmetic damage before offering it for sale, and so he will deserve the extra money.

One of the other respondents who I had phone conversation with had said that I should watch out for car dealers, and that he was going to be somebody who would "really sign the title". I wasn't really sure what he meant by that, and the car dealer really signed the title. I guess I might be giving money to a middleman, and maybe I would prefer to give a discount to a real person who really needed a car, but maybe it just means I should've charged more for my car.

He hasn't picked it up yet – he needs a second person to come with him for that. But I have the money.

So despite my complaining, the Tesla really is cool. It figures out how much rain there is, and therefore how fast to run the windshield wipers. It has settings for different people, and so it will remember how you like the seat when your driving, so you just click on yourself and "poof" it's all set up for you. Unfortunately, we need to factory reset (here comes the whining – which means we need to wait for Tesla to finish transferring our account), so we haven't bothered to create our own personae. However, the previous owners' names are in there, so I picked one and clicked save when I adjusted the seat, and Ken and Valerie also. I totally love adaptive cruise, and this is on steroids – it will stop when the car ahead of you stops, and go when the car ahead of you goes.

We bought a Tesla.

It's a used 2015 model S. We don't have it yet; we're still working on the paperwork and registration and all that rot. We had been hoping to get Tesla to do a "used vehicle pre-purchase inspection" thing, but it turns out they don't really offer that service. And, who else is going to know about them? Well, there turns out to be a garage in New Hampshire that is run by some ex-Tesla employees, but they couldn't get to us until spring. So we did the best we could of inspecting it based on information that we found on the net and stuff, and decided it was beautiful and we would buy it.

We looked at another one a few days ago, but it had obvious problems (one door handle was completely broken, and the passenger seat adjustment would not work at all) and the dealer really knew nothing about it. The dealer for the one we bought was quite knowledgeable about Teslas, and the car is immaculate. (It won't stay that way. We're going to throw bicycles in the back and drive through the muck and stuff.)

Stopped by a VW dealer today, to look at an ID.4. It has the flaw that all modern cars have of just too much fancy garbage. Like, in order to turn on the reading light you just touch it, but since there's no tactile feedback, it makes a clicking sound. But, that clicking sound doesn't come from the light, it comes from the audio system of the car. Somebody implemented making a clicking sound in the audio system when you touch the light to turn it on. Bah humbug. But, all modern cars have this kind of crap.

It has an advantage over the Tesla Y and that more stuff is controlled by non-touchscreen items, such as cruise control. The Tesla S also has some stuff on the steering wheel and in other places on the dash besides the touchscreen. Unfortunately, the ID.4 is a little bit shorter in the back (cargo space with seats folded down) than the Prius V, and that might mean that Ken's bike doesn't fit. I think my bike will fit, but I think both of us need to put our bikes in the Prius and consider what would happen if we had 5 fewer inches of space. It might be the killer on this deal.

Separately, the Leaf has been having range problems, because it's eight years old and still has the original battery. Turns out there's a place in the Boston area which does battery pack replacement using cars which have gotten in crashes as the donor packs. So we're in line for this. It's a little bit like waiting for an organ transplant – you need to wait for somebody to crash their car.

My theory is that what we need is to get a Tesla or other long-range electric car that has four-wheel-drive, can tow, and can fit bicycles in the back, and improve the battery of the Leaf well enough that it can go most places in the Boston area and back without needing to charge, and then maybe we can do without the Prius. We rarely need three cars at the same time. When Jocelyn is here, then we need more cars. So maybe we'll hang onto the Prius until she's done with college.

I started going to work! I went once last week, and will go again this week. But if I'm only going one day a week, we can arrange it that Valerie or I drop Ken at the train station if it happens to be a day where he can't bicycle, and on the other days I pretty much don't need a car.

Of course, with the car shortage, it's likely none of this will come to fruition for several months. But it's good to start planning now, before the SUV decides to randomly croak on us. It is 15 years old, making its imminent demise much more likely.