Cars – Page 3

Where Do I Live Again?

Our winters here in Portland are generally mild, but this fall has packed a bit of a punch at the end. We got a little bit of snow on Thursday a week and a half ago, and thankfully since I have some flexibility with vacation time right now, I was able to take the day off and let our dog Ellie enjoy the snow. But then as so often happens in Portland, we got some freezing rain and suddenly everything is coated in ice and trees and branches started falling all around our old neighborhood. We lost power a few times on Friday but never for too long. While walking Ellie I noticed a tree had fallen on a lovely old Mercedes a couple of streets over, completely crushing the back.

In the wee hours of Saturday morning while we were asleep the power kicked off and we didn’t get it back until that evening. Sadly the house was at its coolest when we lost power since we let it cool down at night, so I piled on extra layers and a hat until we had heat again. The house never got that cold so we weren’t exactly suffering, it was only down to 57 when the electricity returned.

This past week we got more snow, not very much but it arrived right before the evening rush hour and made a mess of everything. Fortunately I had also taken that day off but my wife wasn’t so lucky, since the train she was going to take home got shut down when some switches froze, she ended up spending the night at work. It’s going to warm tomorrow and the remaining ice should be gone, which will make a certain dog (and her walker) very happy, even if it takes the snow with it.

That’s enough winter weather for me this year, and winter hasn’t officially started yet!

At the End of the Trail

I became intrigued with the Subaru Outback while in graduate school so when we moved to Oregon and were ready to replace my wife’s car, it was our first choice. It was my wife’s daily driver for fourteen years and I took it on all my hiking trips, near and far. It was always a welcome sight when I arrived back at the end of the trail, in this case the Storm Point Trail in Yellowstone.

Late in its life it got hit a few times, once by someone who ran a red light and twice by people who inexplicably plowed into the back of it. I suppose one sign of how much we loved it is not just that we drove it for so long, and not just that we replaced it with another Subaru, but that we replaced my Honda with a Subaru too.

We bought this model when it first came out and fell in love with the color, which had literally just arrived at the dealer (they hadn’t even had time to take the protective wrapping off). Apparently a lot of other people loved the color too so we ended up seeing them everywhere, including a few nearby in our neighborhood. There are still enough on the road that I frequently get a nice reminder of our dependable little wagon that I took to so many of my favorite places.

Good Morning

The last day of the year got off to a cold but sunny start. I stopped at Rest Lake when I came across this great blue heron sitting beside the frozen channel and then sat listening to the cackling geese and tundra swans in the lake behind it. I couldn’t resist a self-portrait when the rising sun created a perfect shadow of my little Crosstrek on the bank.

Leaving Paradise

My little Subaru on the road between Paradise and Sunrise in Mount Rainier National Park. I’ve taken it on a trip before but this was its first big hiking trip with all of my camera gear. I used to take our old Outback on trips like this but bought the Crosstrek with the hopes of using it both as my daily driver and for hiking trips short and long. The storage in the hatch is much smaller than the Outback so I was worried all of my stuff wouldn’t fit but most of it did, I only had to put some drinks and snacks behind the front seats. With some different luggage in the future it should all stay hidden in the hatch.

On this day with rain and low clouds I practically had Mount Rainier to myself as I drove up to Sunrise and then on to Olympic National Park. I was thankful for the car’s visibility, both the view out of the car and the visibility of the white paint to other drivers, as it poured rain for much of the drive. As I drove off the bridge and onto the Olympic Peninsula in the rainy darkness, police were directing traffic around an accident that had occurred not much before, so I was thankful for the improved safety of this car compared to my old one even though I didn’t have to put it to the test.

Really love this little car.

Make That Two

Yesterday my wife decided it was time to replace her aging car, so today we went down to the Subaru dealer and brought home this lovely XV Crosstrek. It will be a good match to my car, which not coincidentally is also a Crosstrek. You might say we’re very fond of these little Subarus.

A Good Fit

I’ve put about 2000 miles on our new XV Crosstrek over the past four months and I have to say, I absolutely adore the car. Somebody at Subaru loves me.

Subaru has announced a hybrid version of the Crosstrek that will come out this fall that, while barely improving the gas mileage, adds a number of other features I like — especially since it looks like it can go short distances on battery alone, which would make it perfect for visiting Ridgefield. Some of the improvements are things that were already available on Crosstreks in other regions of the world — turn indicators on the mirrors, keyless entry and start, and a stop/start engine. Others are new and address a couple of criticisms I have of my Crosstrek — more sound insulation and an easier-to-read speedometer.

While it mostly sounds like a nice improvement on a car that fits me so well, there are a few downsides. Price hasn’t been announced, the gas tank got smaller so range isn’t really increasing, and the wheels are a little more traditional and not as fun as mine. But above all, they abandoned the lovely tail lights of my car (shown above) and went with a clear LED cluster. Whoever designed the lights on my Crosstrek gets top marks as I love both the front and rear light clusters, and that’s rare for me. I’m also glad to once more be driving a car with orange turn signals in the back, another thing I’m going to make mandatory when I’m king of the world.

Despite its inferior taillights, we’ll likely replace the aging Outback with the new hybrid this fall and become a two-Crosstrek family. Assuming the Outback makes it that long, it was out of commission for a couple of weeks for repairs after getting rear-ended while stopped at a stop light. The repairs were expensive enough that I was afraid the insurance company might write the car off, but thankfully they didn’t. It’s been a great car and sold me on the Subaru brand, I hope the Crosstrek serves us as faithfully.

Making A List & Checking It Twice

My glorious vacation is at an end. I used a combination of vacation and holidays to take a week off at Thanksgiving, go back to work for two weeks, then take four weeks off in December and early January. It has been fantastic, a mix of goofing off and getting things done.

I had a lot I wanted to get done so early on I made a huge list of tasks on a letter-sized piece of paper, both sides, multiple columns, and started crossing things off as I got them accomplished. There were too many things to do even during such a long vacation but I did make good progress.

Two high priorities are shown here. The first was the Crosstrek, I knew it would be hard to find but wanted its all-wheel drive capability as soon as possible since we were into the rainy season, a decision I was already thankful for on my first drive out to Ridgefield as it poured rain. The second was to replace our garage door which had split in half, it looked fine from the outside but was so fragile we couldn’t even risk opening it. The new door has been installed and works better than the old to boot. The wood framing needs to be painted but that will have to wait for warmer and drier weather.

While I love small cars in general, you can also see why the little Crosstrek held such an appeal for us. Ours is an old house, the garage built into the basement level. The driveway is narrow and between two retaining walls, while the garage is small in all dimensions. The other car has to be parked on the street, where a small car is also convenient, so I had little doubt that at least one of us would find the Crosstrek a good fit.

Now the question is: will we end up with two?

High Hopes

For a car to work as my daily driver, it needs to do well in two situations:

My commute to work
The auto tour at Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge

I’m in the midst of a long vacation so I (thankfully) haven’t had the chance to test our new Crosstrek on the work commute, but Christmas was lining up to be my first chance to test it at Ridgefield. It’s become a bit of a tradition for me to go to Ridgefield first thing on Christmas morning as sometimes I practically have the refuge to myself, a nice time for quiet contemplation during a hectic time of the year.

Late on Christmas Eve after my wife had gone to bed I went out into the garage and just looked at the car for a while. I was nervous, for the next day would prove whether my high hopes for this car would pan out at the refuge. I sat in it for a while and read the owner’s manual enough until I figured out how to quiet the beeps when you lock the car. My nerves settled, I headed up to bed and set my alarm to wake me before sunrise.

I love photographing in the rain and Christmas delivered the wet in abundance as I drove in the dark to the refuge, giving me a quick feel for how the little Subaru would handle the heavy rain compared to its bigger sibling (thankfully, it handled the soaked streets and big puddles quite well, I was thankful not to be in the Civic).

I was relieved to see the car did well along the auto tour too (the icing on the cake would have been if it had been a hybrid so I could drive more quietly around the refuge, but it was not to be). At this time of year you can’t get out of the car except in the parking lots, so I took a quick picture beside the sign in the entrance lot.

I’m definitely still in the honeymoon phase but so far I’m just loving this little car.

I’ve been back to the refuge and it’s gravel road a few times since Christmas, each time in the rain, and it’s starting to feel less and less like someone else’s car and more and more like mine. But she’s not quite as white as she used to be.

The Wait Is (Actually) Over

It’s going to be a white Christmas this year! A white Crosstrek Christmas!

The dealer called late this afternoon to say our car had arrived and thankfully they were able to squeeze us in so we could pick her up right away. This is going to be the best Christmas ever!

Will I be too excited to sleep tonight? I never could as a kid. We lived in Michigan in my younger years and one Christmas Eve with relatives in my room I ended up in the bottom bunk of my brother’s bed. Unable to sleep I contented myself with watching the snow fall outside his window. Suddenly there was a big gust of wind and snow as the bottom of Santa’s sleigh flew past, and just as quickly it was gone.

The over-active imagination of a kid who loved Christmas? I know what I saw! Even today in my memory I see his sleigh flying by.

Technically speaking the Crosstrek isn’t a Christmas present. And besides, as much as I love the car, Sam and Emma were far better presents. But yes I am excited, and yes I have a lot to be thankful for.

So too do Sam and Em, for I put up our artificial Christmas tree this afternoon. They were both sleeping under it before I even had time to spread out the branches and I don’t think they’ve left it in the hours since. Woodland cats, these two. Emma even tried to climb it while I was setting it up, but we know how that turns out.

The Wait Is (Almost) Over

We started looking for a new car about a year ago, and ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner!

Our list of potential new cars had shrunk to one, the Subaru XV Crosstrek, and pretty soon we’ll have one of our very own. They’ve been in short supply and high demand since they arrived on our shores a few months back, but our dealer emailed me yesterday that a black one just came in so we went down today for a test drive. We loved the car and while we’re not interested in black, fortunately a white one is due to arrive in one to three weeks so we put a claim in on it. I’m not normally a fan of white but I think the XV looks great in it.

We’ve decided to replace the Civic first even though it has less miles than the Outback, it’s been a great little car but it just doesn’t fit our current lifestyle very well. So for the first time in over twenty years a Civic won’t be my daily driver. And the first time I won’t have a stick shift, which I’ll miss at times but not so much on my current commute with it’s heavier dose of stop-and-go traffic, and not at all at Ridgefield where the stick was downright obnoxious at the slow speeds I drive on the auto tour.

I’ll certainly miss the moonroof but not the several inches of headroom it robbed me of.

Not there will be any tears shed when it comes time to hand over the keys, these next one to three weeks can’t pass quickly enough!