Blessed by the Potato

I don’t really think a completely car-free life is for me, at least not any time in the near future. Wayfare, for her part, has done a remarkable job of going through so much of her life without ever having to drive herself, thanks to public transit, cabs, and most of all, the generous offers of high-class chauffeur services from people such as her parents and myself. Of course, she’s not entirely convinced that that will continue indefinitely, so she maintains a license and insurance even though she never drives. To try to keep her in practice, I offer to take her out driving occasionally. Today, for the first time since she had to renew her license, she agreed to go on a little spin with me — and boy, was it a little spin: we covered all of 8 blocks and two parking maneuvers. However, she is scared of driving, so I would like everyone out there to offer her mad snaps for having the courage to give it a try. Especially since she faced that nightmarish spectre that every driver is afraid they might one day have to face but hope that, for the love of sphagetti, that it is not this day. Yes, right there in front of her eyes:

A puppy.

It was being walked by a group of girls on the sidewalk, but there was no telling when it might decide to run off into the road in front of her! There’s no predicting what puppies might do, they have no respect for the rules of the road, no concept of right-of-way, and worst of all they’re combustable! Well, maybe the puppies aren’t, but if they cause an accident the car is and we could all die in a fiery fiery crash!

All kidding aside, Wayfare is a bit of a nervous driver, but I’m quite proud that she’s finally managed to overcome that and get behind the wheel when she didn’t absolutely, positively have to. She is a pretty good driver, and as silly as it can sometimes be, I suppose approaching the whole experience filled with terror is possibly better than coming at it all excited that you finally get to live out your video game speed freak fantasies.

As long as I’m on the topic of driving, does anyone know where I can rent a Prius in Toronto? There are a number of places that say they have them in their fleets, but none are actually available from any of their locations. Discount and Alamo list them specifically as part of their fleet in Canada, but none of their Toronto locations seem to have them (and I think, through trial-and-error, I’ve tried them all online). Thrifty doesn’t seem to advertise having any Priuses, but a poster on the redflagdeals forums suggests that the Holiday Inn/King location has at least one available (though again, not through their website).

It’s been said so many times that so many people are just way too aggressive in winter driving conditions. Last night’s storm was particularly nasty: dropping a thick layer of ice on everything, followed by heavy snow. So this article in the London Free Press (I know, I said I’d stop reading it!) about a man caught going 127 km/h and flashing his high beams at slower traffic, and then even after getting his ticket and being warned by police ending up spinning off the road in the slippery conditions. Thankfully, he didn’t take anyone else with him, though from the sounds of it he and his car escaped pretty much unscathed. I think true poetic justice might have required the car to be totalled and him to be found at-fault by his insurance :)

Well, the weather’s been quite blustery here today, and that lead to a rough night of sleep for me. Every time I woke up with a jolt to something banging outside I’d panic and think someone was breaking into the house. Finally at 5 am I just got up and started my day. It’s kind of sad how getting broken into can make one paranoid. Oddly enough, it wasn’t our gate banging and thumping out there (it usually is, it’s quite noisy if it gets unlatched), so I don’t know what was so loud. I haven’t slept well in over a week now :(

Over the holidays, the check engine light on my car came on. I remember getting all freaked out and pulling over the first time that lit up on me, but a few years ago it started going off every few months due to a sticky solenoid valve of some sort, so I’ve become a little more liassez-faire about it. When I’m in London, I usually take the car in to Westgate Honda for service: they’ve been a pretty stand-up dealership for me, with repair rates that are fairly competitive with independent shops (they charge more for labour, but some services are flat fee, and they’re very good about explaining things to me and giving me written quotes for big things). If I had something else that needed to be done, such as an oil change, then they’d pull the code off the OBDII for the engine light for me for free. Not this time — they dinged me for $90 just to read the code. Ouch.

While in the past that light has meant something happened in the car but its not really a repair issue (a cylinder pinging, or a valve getting temporarily stuck), this time it indicated that the oxygen sensor in my exhaust system has failed, which is over $300 to repair. D’oh. They also pointed out that my radiator is in rough shape. I knew that already, it’s leaking about 1 L of coolant per year. That’s such a slow drip out of the system that I’m not really worried about it, and it still keeps the engine cool, but it must be getting bad if they noticed that on a quick visual inspection. Another $375 repair. While I don’t like driving around without the oxygen sensor working properly, I think I’m going to defer both repairs until the spring (and probably defer the radiator until it becomes a bigger problem), just to see what the rest of the winter brings. I don’t like having my car in anything less than perfect mechanical condition, but it’s just been such a money pit this last year or so…

Oh, I think I found the source of the noise that woke me up:

My latest car repair/upgrade was my headlights. I do a ton of night driving, often driving between London and Toronto in the middle of the night with few others on the road. Lately I’ve found though that it’s been far too easy to over-drive my headlights, and I haven’t been quite as confident driving out there on my own, at least not above 90 km/h or so. While both of my headlights were still working, I know that the passenger side one was last replaced about 4 years ago, and the driver’s side one could be original to the car for all I know (5+ years). When the passenger’s side one burned out and was replaced, it was noticeably brighter than the driver’s side one for a while, but now both have dimmed to the point where, well, they’re both dim. I know that halogen lights dim over time, and should generally be replaced before they actually burn out completely, so that’s what I did.

I chose GE Nighthawk bulbs, which (should be) are compatible with my headlights. They’re supposed to be brighter than typical car headlights, and I had read a lot more good reviews about them than some of the other options (the Sylvania Silverstars, for instance, get mixed reviews about light output, and mostly just seem to be obnoxious blue). With a $10 mail in rebate, I decided to take the plunge and get a pair this week. I was expecting an improvement, a substantial improvement (I figured generic halogens would be an improvement), but not necessarily something as bright as my parents’ HIDs.

After doing a little bit of driving, I’m not hugely impressed. They’re only a touch “whiter” than regular halogens, which I’m fine with. I was hoping for brighter, with a longer viewing distance, and while they are an improvement over the old, worn out bulbs, it’s a surprisingly marginal difference. I think the point at which I risk overdriving them is about 100-110 km/h, which is a bit of an improvement. Interestingly, the bias to the right for the illumination seems a lot more pronounced than before, so I’ll have to figure out how to check my headlight alignment (if it can be adjusted easily at all). I actually found it a little distracting, since the shoulder was lit up better than my lane was, it almost made me want to pull off towards the right.

Despite the slight improvement, I still found that whenever another car would pull up beside me, their light output would almost always put mine to shame :(

Despite numerous articles touting the benefits of winter tires, I’ve never really bothered. That’s largely been because I’ve never had to drive, so I could wait for the roads to be plowed/salted before heading out on my all-seasons. No one in my immediate family usually bothered either (except my dad, who for a while had performance summer tires on his car, rather than all seasons, which really necessitated a winter set as well). Getting the Nokian WRs this year though, I’ve noticed a difference (they are severe-service rated all-seasons), and there are even better winter tires than those out there. However, now winter tires will be mandatory in Quebec. I doubt this measure will follow through in Ontario though: there are too many people in Toronto who just don’t have the space to store a second set of tires who would complain.