Diesel vs. Gasoline

I drive a 2002 VW Jetta GLS TDI.  It's an automatic.  I bought it back in 2005 when gas prices were a lot different than they are now.  I ran a comparison of prices with my older car, a 1995 VW Jetta GL.  So here's what it looks like today after I paid $4.22 for biodiesel (B5).  Granted, these are highway figures.  My old Jetta got around 25mpg in city and the diesel Jetta gets about 32-33mpg in city; 35mpg if I'm really babying it.  These prices are current as of today.

I think this guy should take a look at my comparison.  He's paying way more than he should.

Gas: $3.42 - 31mpg on highway
BioDiesel: $4.22 - 39mpg on highway
DinoDiesel - $4.09 - 41mpg on highway

400 miles of travel

Gas - 12.9gal used - $44.12
BioDiesel - 10.26gal used - $43.30
DinoDiesel - 9.76gal used - $39.92

$ savings in %:
BD and DD are 1.8% and 9.5% cheaper tank for tank than gas, respectively.

fuel savings in %:
With BD and DD, you use 20.5% and 24.3% less fuel than gasoline, respectively.

Thule Trail

Think Oregon Trail, but with cars, CDs, bags of food, and dice games.

Totally awesome.

Source: Thule Trail

What I did on a gorgeous Sunday...

What a gorgeous day it was today to go look at gorgeous cars at the Kirkland Concours d'Elegance. Take a look at the pictures I took...

It's like I'm a mechanic or something!

The quote above is from my old friend Scott. It's his smart-ass quote for people that question his abilities as a mechanic. He's a talented guy and his services came in handy after we got back from the Olympus Rally in Shelton tonight.

Maureen, Scott, and I all went to the rally together in my car. We met up with Dave, Sarah, and Bob. Maureen left her car in my garage and left one of her doors slightly open. Her battery was dead by the time we got back to my house tonight. It took some work to get her car started, and Scott's expertise came in very handy. I'm very happy he's moving to the Seattle area.

In the meantime, Maureen wasn't the only one having car troubles. Erin called me. She got rear-ended on I-5 on her way to work. By a driver without insurance; who couldn't speak much English. What a not-so-fun night for her, too. I'm just happy she's OK.

To end, the rally was a lot of fun (albeit very wet). I've got a bunch of pictures to go through and tag. I'll post a link to the gallery once all the pics are online. Until then, here's a little taste of what it was like (click the pic for a bigger version).

Covered under warranty

Went to go see a movie with a friend on Monday (The Black Dahlia, I didn't like it) and the temperature light came on in the car. Checked around, and found the coolant reservoir really low. Bought some distilled water and filled it up. Light didn't come back on.

I took a closer look at the engine and saw pools of coolant on top of the transmission. Made an appointment, got it in today, and when I showed it to the service advisor and we actually saw a drip come from a hose. Turns out a coolant flange was faulty. They replaced it. Under warranty.

Woo, didn't have to pay a thing. Woo.

Saw Jackass 2 tonight. Much better. Very funny.

Driving in India

Awesome:

http://video.yahoo.com/video/play?vid=ef52ab75db44e40016a01b1f66556aee.598273

There was an intersection near my hotel that was very much like this intersection. We had to make the right turn, go through the intersection to get to the front of the hotel. It was amazing. The video is sped up quite a bit, but this is what it feels like.

Vacation wrap-up

So the MAF sensor was replaced in the car yesterday and we didn't have any problems whatsoever on the trip back to Seattle. We got here about 11:30am. The hardest part about the trip back was just how damn tired I was. Maureen and I ended up splitting the driving duties almost evenly.

After getting a nap and a shower, the laundry has been started. Much laundry to do, and there's a bunch of other household stuff that needs to be done.

It would've been nice if I hadn't had so many troubles on this trip, but it was certainly better than sticking around in Seattle being bored for a week :-)

MAF failure

So the dealer says that the mass airflow sensor failed in the car. Luckily it's covered under warranty. What I told them was that I am using a K&N air filter, and I was worried that the oil from it might've contaminated the MAF. I'm going to get a new air filter for the car when I pick it up later. No more K&N filters, I'm afraid. I just replaced the MAF sensor on my older (1995) gasoline Jetta. Same problem - they said the oil from the K&N filter had fouled the MAF.

They said they didn't have the MAF in stock, but there's one on its way coming from San Jose. We should hopefully be leaving here tonight. And if there are no further problems, we'll be back in Seattle early early tomorrow.

This vacation has had its ups and plenty of downs. Right now it's not feeling like a vacation, though, so I'm ready for it to be over. If I can get back to Seattle by tomorrow then that'll mean I won't have to go back to work until Monday. I could use a few days to recover.

We made it to San Francisco?

The turbocharger issue with the car apparently was pretty serious. We left Vegas around noon today and about 500 miles into the trip, the check engine light came on. This is after noticing that the turbo had, once again, stopped working.

So I was faced with a tough choice - limp the car to San Francisco, and then immediately take it to a dealer the next morning; or, get it towed to the dealer to try to keep the car from really getting fucked up. I chose the second option. I have AAA Plus, which gives you 100 miles of towing per incident. Good thing - the dealer was 99.3 miles from where we stopped the car. So now the car sits at the dealer in San Francisco, and I will need to go over there at 7am to get them to fix it.

Please please please let it be an easy fix that can be done in one day. I wouldn't mind staying longer in San Francisco, but that means I would have to buy a plane ticket for my friend Maureen to get back to Seattle by Wednesday afternoon. And then I'd have to drive back alone. Does not sound fun.

Fucking cars! ARGH!

The good news about this trip is that I've made several new friends through Maureen, the tow truck driver was fucking hilarious, and hey, we really are in San Francisco now.

I'm in Vegas now...

So I've made it to Vegas, with the help of my friend Maureen who was gracious enough to join me on the drive down and helped out with the driving. Highlights:

- Gorgeous sunset outside of Pendleton, OR
- Got a speeding ticket in Utah, around milepost 171 on I-15. 89 in a 75. I think my speedometer actually was at 95, but I'll take the reduced fine.
- Got into Vegas a bit early so we went to Hoover Dam before going to the hotel.
- I had been driving the Jetta TDI so much that the turbo in it stopped working on the way into Vegas. It made getting to Hoover dam a bit slower as I was missing about 40% of power in my car. The turbo started working when we left the dam.
- Got a rock chip in my windshield. I'm going to have to get that repaired while I'm here.
- I'm wearing the most obnoxious Hawaiian shirt right now. Oh man, this thing is loud.

Enough typing. Time to go have some fun.

I should stick to computers...

Well, I failed at changing the battery in the car. I got the right battery, but I didn't get any anti-corrosion pads and I didn't get any battery terminal cleaner. And, I must've set the alarm off 10 times when I was fucking around with the negative wire. I gave up. I'll need my friend's help to get this done on Sunday.

Oh, and now I need to get the code for my radio as it went into protected mode. Argh. I'm such a doof.

What a day.

Took a wrong turn onto a one-way street, heading in the wrong direction. No cars oncoming, but after immediately flipping around, a cop car was blocking my path. Got the full treatment from him, but luckily no ticket.

Him: "Didn't you see the sign saying no right turn?"
Me: "Sorry no, I screwed up."
Him: You're dumb, blah blah blah blah blah, gonna get killed doing that, blah blah blah blah blah.
Me: Yessir, you're right. I'm sorry. I'm dumb.

Argh.

Our cat's stuck on the neighbor's two-story garage roof. No amount of coaxing has managed to get her to come down. And no lights are on at their house, so I can't let them know it's our cat. Well, the cat gets to spend the night up there. Maybe she'll figure it out. At least her collar has our phone number on it. Meanwhile, whenever she sees someone she meows.

Argh.


Update (10/11 10:36 PDT):

The cat managed to get down by herself, but not before I went to the neighbor's house at 7am this morning and had him go up a ladder to try to get her down. Stupid cat.

Argh.

Cars

Many years ago, probably when i was 13 or 14, my dad told me cars are one of the biggest wastes of money I'd ever have to endure. How right he was. But oh how I love having a car.

Needless to say, the Jetta needed some exhaust work... yet again (3rd muffler replacement in 5 years). The rear muffler hanger weld rotted out and broke, leaving a hole in the muffler. Quite annoying. The guys that put the new muffler on didn't do a great job. In the process, they loosened a heat shield on the engine. They fixed that. But a new rattle/buzz has started.

When the exhaust is cold, there's a rattle/buzz that seems to be coming from directly below the rear seat. Could either be more loose heat shielding, or could be that the exhaust doesn't have enough clearance. I'm not a mechanic, so I don't know. Once the car's warm, the rattle goes away. While it's cold, the rattle occurs during acceleration/deceleration (hitting the resonance frequency of the exhaust). I can also hear the rattle during bumps. But again, only when the exhaust is cold.

It seems so hard to find a good mechanic. Argh.

Breakin' the law... breakin' the law... (and gettin' caught)

I turned 25 on the 13th. I don't feel much different now, although now I know what getting pulled over on the freeway feels like.

78mph in a 60mph zone, or that's what the trooper said. And, I was on my way to my mother's wedding (there's no way I could make that up in a pinch). Fine: $153. After running a quote on Progressive.com, it looks like my insurance might not go up - I fall into the 19mph and under category for speeding. I'd imagine 20mph and over might make insurance worse. Who knows.

I guess I've gotten to used to speeding for the past couple of weeks. I'm bummed I got caught, but it just goes to show why Washington drivers don't go much over the speed limit, at least on the freeways. I've never seen more state patrol cars than on I-5 between Seattle and Olympia. I think I counted 8 total on Saturday the 16th. Tricky fuckers.

My radar detector caught the cop, but he was quicker than me - by the time the detector squawked, he was already moving out of the median turnaround.

Oh well. Had to happen to me sooner or later. :-)

In Billings, Montana now...

I'm typing this from the KOA campground (or is that kampground?) in Billings, MT. They have a small little closet-like thing with a power plug and phone jack. I've only managed to get a 31200 connection, but I'm not complaining - it's certainly better than nothing. In fact, it's downright cool. They have some full hookup sites with phone lines. I would've loved to have gotten one of those.

Barring any unforeseen problems, tomorrow should be our last day on the road. Since I last wrote, we've been to quite a few places - Gettysburg; the Spam museum in Austin, Minnesota; the South Dakota Badlands; Wall Drug in Wall, South Dakota; and Mt. Rushmore.

This has been one incredible trip and I've got many pictures to show from it. Nicole and I are holding up pretty well, considering being stuck in a Jetta for the past 4 days. Traffic through South Dakota was great, giving me hours of 90 mile-per-hour driving. Today I managed to get the little beast up to 120mph.

The Sturgis motorcycle rally has been going on for the past week and there are motorcycles up the wazoo. We've got a group of bikers from Alberta in the next camping spot over from us. And man, have they been nice to us... not once, but twice, did they offer to take a picture of Nicole and me at the areas we've visited. Very cool. Of course, we did see one guy with a swastika tattoo and underneath that, another that said "Born to raise heil!", but overall they've been great.

Due to the great success of this trip, I foresee many future roadtrips like this. Any suggestions of routes to take? Perhaps a more southerly route, or more through the middle of the country, rather than the northerly route we took.

Anyway, time to go read up other /. journals. Happy trails!

Interesting car concept struggles to get some traction...

Even though it's Ferrari red, zooms from zero to 60 in four seconds, and has a sensuous black leather dash with the same Motech data display found in Grand Prix race cars, this is not your typical little red sports car.

A car like this would be a lot of fun for my morning commute into downtown Seattle, but it would certainly suck on tomorrow's big cross-country trip.

Saturday (the big trip) approaches...

This Saturday, Nicole and I will be setting out from Seattle on a cross-country road trip to Torrington, Connecticut, to visit my dad and all the rest of the family out there. I'm a Washingtonian, through and through, as I was born and raised here. Still, because my sister and nephew are flying out there, I wanted to be there at the same time she and the boy is. Since my parents were divorced six years ago, I haven't seen my dad nearly enough.

I'm getting pretty nervous at the thought of driving 3000+ miles (each way) in my aging 1995 VW Jetta (it'll turn 104,000 miles by Saturday). I've recently had a fuel filter replaced, and just had the tires rotated and oil changed today (changed the oil myself, even). Even still, this should be a trip to remember.

My parents moved out west from Connecticut in 1977, after getting married, to escape their overbearing parents. They settled in a small town in North-Central Washington called Twisp and by the end of their first day in town, my dad had a job with a logging crew. I was born in August of the following year. My parents briefly moved back to Connecticut for about eight months before relocating once again to Southwest Washington, were I spent my youth and adolescence. Eastern America seems so alien to me sometimes, especially coming from the "left coast."

Our planned route is to go through Montana, North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York before finally entering Connecticut. On the way back, the route will look similar, but we're planning to go through South Dakota so we can see Mt. Rushmore (and maybe even stop in Sturgis for the rally). I'm really looking forward to getting to Chicago, as I really want to take a look at the Chicagolands from the top of the Sears Tower. I imagine on the way we'll probably make some slight detours for sightseeing, but that's what I'm hoping for.

Once on the east coast, Nicole wants to see the sun rise over the atlantic. So we'll be making a trip to Massachusetts for that. I don't think we'll have time to go to NYC, unfortunately. Another time.

We've given ourselves about 2 1/2 weeks for this trip. It's going to be grueling, but I hope it'll be a great experience, hopefully somewhere along the lines of our Vegas trip in July 2001.

Cellphone coverage between Billings and Fargo is pretty non-existent as far as I can tell, so unless we happen to find some WiFi or Internet cafes, I don't think you'll be hearing to much from me. I do plan on writing about the trip and posting it to my journal when I can.

I welcome any suggestions on things/places to see, so long as they're along/near I-74, I-84, I-90, or I-94. I think that's all of the major ones :-)

Yes, AAA does rule.

This is what Nicole and I did this afternoon.

Fun.

Take 606, and so help me if this doesn't work!

A coworker of mine sent me this and this about the Honda "Cog" ad. Turns out it took 606 takes to get it just right. Oh. My. God. I can't imagine the amount of dedication and precision required to get something like that right. It makes me all the more impressed.

And there was light...

It's so nice to finally see spring here in Seattle. What's not nice is that I have to be in bed by 9pm so I can wake up at 4am for work at 5am. Yeah, that sucks, especially with the long days we have this time of year.

I've been working on catching up on some video encoding I've been doing - taking every episode of the Simpsons Futurama and encoding them in 3ivx format for my own personal use. I also finally had decent enough weather yesterday to get out and mow the lawn. And, I spent some time yesterday finding a replacement light bulb for the HVAC controls on the Bernenwagen. Cracking open the center dash is interesting, but I didn't break anything. That's a first!

Speaking of lightbulbs, I had to get one for our fridge, as its bulb had burned out.

I have a doctor's appointment today at 3:15pm. I'm not looking forward to telling the doctor that I didn't get the prescription he wrote for me because my insurance won't cover the drug. I don't have $160 for prescriptions every month or two weeks or whatever. So, I have to go get myself weighed today. Eeesh. My weight seems to stay constant, at right around 380. At least it's constant. The last thing I need to do is gain more weight.

I've been watching Manor House a.k.a. Edwardian Country House. I just love how we Americans can import a show from the UK intact, yet change the name to some Americanized oversimplification, a la Junkyard Wars (Scrapheap Challenge). In any case, Manor house reminds me a lot of 1900 House. I wonder, why do I have to watch the British take these trips back in time? Isn't there anything like that here in the U.S.? Do we have enough of a past to really know what life was like 100+ years ago? Did we have the same sort of class structures that early 20th century Britain did?

And finally, a question I submitted to the P-I's Getting There column got published on Monday.