Wake up, walk to the train station.

I get my hopes up that the train line that runs straight to the airport is working this morning. There are no messages either on the intercom or the lightboard about taking alternate routes and shuttles as I had to do yesterday. But when the next train arrived, the conductor said that everybody needed to get on and gave the dirt on the alternate routes and shuttles that I took yesterday. I had the vague feeling that the uncertainty here might come back to bite my rear.

A guy from the local Fox affiliate flags the guy next to me for an interview. It’s apparent from the get-go that he doesn’t particularly care to be on the news. He answers the reporters questions in one or two word responses and when the reporter asks “So what’s your story?” trying to get him to elaborate, he replies “I just told you.” There’s a 50/50 chance that I will be on the local news bobbing up and down to keep warm in the light wind and increasingly heavy snow. It probably would have been better for all involved if he’d interviewed me. I could have said something about having plane tickets, train tickets, and trying to get a flight out of here so that I can catch another flight out of Zaulem. I had the story that the guy next to me did not seem interested in telling.

We’ve been waiting in the wind and snow for two hours waiting for a shuttle bus to get there. Apparently my earlier premonition was correct. The train-plane line should have been running and wasn’t. So they had to scramble to find the shuttle buses to take us to the airport. Everyone waiting is getting irate and every twenty minutes or so a train comes by to drop off more people. It’s becoming apparent that there are too many people to fit on a single bus and there is no telling how much longer it will take the next bus to arrive. The Metro guy is saying that one should be coming by any minute now and that another will come by 20 minutes after. The problem, he explains, is a shortage of buses. Apparently, a dozen or so buses had gotten stuck in the snow, scattered around Shaston. Whatever other hardships I was facing, I was quite glad not to be on one of those buses. The long-awaited bus arrives, but the poor Metro guy is stuck in the position of telling us that even though it’s here and that we need to get to the airport, we’re going to have to wait another thirty minutes for reasons he’s not sure of. I’m wondering if there is about to be a riot.

I am getting increasingly anxious as to whether or not I will get on the bus and whether or not the next bus will be on time for my 7:30 departure. I want to tell everyone when my departure time is so that I can be sure to get on ahead of the people that have later flights. That’s when I find out that there are people with flights at 6:30, 6:45, and 7am waiting as well. At this point I’m not sure if I can even get on the bus with a good conscience. A young woman tries to organize everybody so that those with the earliest flights get on first. I’m game even if it may be to my disadvantage, but it quickly breaks down the second the doors open. Feeling awfully bad about it, I make my way on the bus as I mentally apologize to anyone that might miss their plane on my account.

A guy on the bus has unlimited data service on his cell phone and becomes very popular. He keeps checking on everyone’s flight. One woman talks about how worried she is about making her flight. Then she says something like “I know I’m being paranoid because the flight isn’t until 10:45, but I’m just worried.” 10:45?! I want to scream at her and throttle her. Her flight wasn’t for over four hours and she butted her way on to the dang bus ahead of people that now may miss their flights. If my flight had even been as late as 8:30 I would have waited. I wanted to call her nasty names, but instead I quietly seethed.

We arrive. I check the board and see that my flight is still listed as “On Time”. I’ve got my ticket printed out from the night before so I go straight to the security line. I’m feeling pretty good about my chances of making the flight. Several people from earlier flights ask if they can cut in front of us. We ask to see their ticket and when they show it to us we let them. The line is moving very quickly. I had forgotten what that feels like. A line actually moving. Because of the rush and staffing shortage, there is no pretense that anyone is going to be pulled aside and not a single bag is investigated thoroughly. This is good because I seem to always get caught up in these things.

Boarding.

Airborne.

Land.

Got my luggage and after a wait at the bus stop, it arrives and I board.

I arrive at the Sounddome, which is the bus stop that happens to be right across the street to the Amtrak station where my car is parked. I wait in the Amtrak line and get my two train tickets canceled. The Amtrak guy was really great about it. Then a woman in the parking lot loaned me her shovel so that I could get my car out of the snow and the parking lot. Things are suddenly going really well and working out. I am not sure what to make of this.

The main roads in Soundview have been shoveled and all that and since I live on a main road that works out great. The back alleyway to our parking area is completely iced over, though, so I park off the street in the front. There is some snow and ice in that area, but I figure I’ll be okay. I figure wrong. I can tell immediately that my car is stuck. I have another flight to Colosse tomorrow, so my first two hours spent after the initial euphoria getting home is spent desperately trying to free up my car so that we can drive it to the airport.

The car is not coming out. I’ve managed to move a lot of ice and snow around, but it appears to be doing almost as much harm as good. More than ice-free, it’s important that everything is even. It’s hard to keep that amount of ice even and no matter what I do I keep getting stuck. My car gets further and further out on the street to the point that it’s impeding traffic, but I can’t get it out. Fortunately, a woman with three very large sons stops and sends her team of kids out to help. They get it out with little difficulty. I take my car and find a side street that’s covered with ice but not much snow and park my car there, hoping that I can get it out in a few hours when I find a way to completely clear my street parking spot.

I go around from neighbor to neighbor asking if anyone has a snow shovel that I can use. I had previously been using an ice scraper because it was all I had, but I realized that I needed a bona fide shovel. Nobody answers or if they do they don’t have a shovel. Then I notice as I knock on my neighbors’ door for the second time that she has a shovel just sitting there on her porch. She is probably the neighbor that I am closest to and I don’t think she would mind if I borrowed it, but I’m not sure. I decide to knock on the door again after work hours. In a stroke of luck, I run into her in the back yard. She has apparently been around all day but is not in the habit of answering her door. I get a snow shovel, which is great because now I can dig out my parking space. Yay. I get to dig out a parking space.

The parking space is cleared. Clancy is home. Now laundry, packing, and a bunch of other stuff so that we can make it out to the airport tomorrow morning. She asks what time we should arrive at the airport and tells me that she is willing to arrive as early as I want. I tell her that I really want to go to the airport tonight and spend the night there. At this point, despite a light uptick in my luck, I don’t want to take any chances. She laughs at the prospect. As early tomorrow as I want. We decide to get up at 6am for our 12:30 flight. Getting Clancy up at 6 is quite the concession.

-{Previously Installment}-

“This is a message for {pause} William Truman {pause} from Amtrak Rail. Our records indicate that you have a ticket on the train leaving {pause} Shaston, Shasta {pause} at {pause} Six {pause} fifteen {pause} PM {pause} and arriving at {pause} Soundview, Cascadia {pause} at {pause} Eight {pause} forty-five {pause} PM. {pause} This route has been {pause} cancelled. {pause} Please call our customer service to schedule a new appointment.” -An automated call from Amtrak

I finally get ahold of Amtrak. They don’t have any trains leaving until Wednesday afternoon. The problem is that I need to get back to Soundview by Tuesday night so that Clancy and I can leave by plane on Wednesday morning.

I’m looking at renting a car. The cheapest I can find for a one-way rental is around $200, all included. I don’t think that I have a whole lot of choice.

Clint’s girlfriend finds me a plane ticket for 7pm, which I snap up immediately. I had considered getting a flight out but had decided that if the trains weren’t running then the planes probably weren’t taking off. But it looked like I was wrong because Northern Airways was still taking flights.

Northern Airways has cancelled all flights leaving Shaston. I call NA, but it’s busy.

Attempts to reach Northern Airways fail.

I decide that maybe I need to go back and look into renting a car. The problem is that the authorities are requiring tire chains and I’m not positive if the rental agencies have them. So I call to ask. The national agency says that I need to contact the local location. The local agency’s phone lines are jammed so they refer me back to the national agency. I do some looking into it and not only do rental car agencies not keep tire chains on them but they prohibit you from putting your own on their cars.

Attempts to reach Northern Airways fail.

I reach Northern Airways and am placed on hold.

Clint and his girlfriend are about to go out and eat. I tell them that I can’t go because I need to wait to get a hold of the NA representative. Right before they leave, I get the rep. Much to my surprise, they have me on a flight at 7:30 the next morning. I’m initially excited to have an early flight that would get me back to Soundview in time to hang out with my wife, though I do some time backtracking and realize that I would need to aim to get at the airport at 5:30 in the morning. I have no idea how I’m going to do that.

I start trying to contact cab companies. First one is busy. Second one is busy. Third one has a message saying that they can’t answer right now. Fourth one is busy. Fifth one sends me to an answering machine message. Sixth one sends me to an answering machine message. Seventh one answers. I ask if I can set up an appointment for 4am the next morning. They tell me that they’re not taking appointments and I’ll have to try to just call a couple hours before I need it.

I call the Seventh Cab Company and am told that they’re fully booked for the next couple hours and are not taking reservations beyond that.

-{Next Installment to be posted on Sunday}-

I arrived at the Amtrak Station to visit my friend Clint down in Shaston. It was the first time I’d ever ridden an Amtrak train, so it was quite the experience. I had actually been under the impression that these trains ran mostly empty, but in this case it was almost full. So much so that I had to plop down an extra $13 because the only available tickets were Business Class.

I was somewhat impressed by the Business Class accomodations. I will definitely pay the extra $13 (or 33%) next time. The free voucher sort of helps with that, but the big thing is that you get your own power jack, plenty of leg room (which is important for someone with my dimensions), and the feeling of smug superiority that is much more expensive on airplanes. I sat in the regular accommodations for about ten minutes before I realized that I was in the wrong place. They weren’t bad, though they weren’t quite as nice as I had figured they would be. The seats were a lot better than plane seats, but not much better (if better at all) than bus seats.

Because I got Business Class tickets, I got a free voucher for $3 at the diner. I had visions of eating something while watching the landscape fly by. Wouldn’t you know it, after I buy the food and before I sit down, the train stops. Apparently the switch on the tracks are frozen and somebody has to get out to do something about it. After I finish my sandwich, the train is back on its way.

Screw it, I want my food-and-ride. I buy a bagel just so that I can eat something while I ride.

Train stops again. Someone has to get out again to clear off some switch or something.

Train stops a third time. They apologize for the inconvenience, but the snow and ice are creating problems for them. Even though we’re not far out of Shaston, I’m beginning to wonder if we’re actually going to make it.

I make it. Clint comes and picks me up. I’m safely in Shaston.

I have begun Scott Turow’s Kindle County series for my audio pleasure during my commute. The first book in that series is Presumed Innocent. Even if you’re not expressly familiar with Turow, that title may sound familiar because there was a movie starring Harrison Ford by that name. Maybe you’ve seen it.

I have, it would seem.

Actually, I’ve seen the last 20-30 minutes of it. Just enough to know who did what, why, and how things end. When I realized it was the book of the movie I’d seen, I said to myself “Oh, well, I don’t know anything about how it got there.”

Thankfully, they gave a summary of the plot in the introduction! So now I am relieved of the suspense of knowing what lead up to who, doing what, and how it ends.

Actually, I’m enjoying it regardless. I can only imagine how much I would be enjoying it if I didn’t already know how so many of the pieces fell together in the end.

There are some things that you don’t quite realize how much you use until you don’t have it anymore.

That would be my sideview mirror, which apparently broke last night. Probably had something to do with the snow and ice that accumulated last night.

The mirror is stuck looking down at the street. I tried pushing it up but I couldn’t get it to look anywhere but down. It was in a weird, not-obvious way, too. It didn’t look like it was looking down except when I was looking at it from the driver’s seat. But I’d push it up and it’d look right back down. Further complicating things was the fact that my window was also stuck in the upward pose. So each time I wanted to manually push the mirror, I had to either reach around it or get out of the car.

I figured that there was some ice in there that was preventing the window from going down and the mirror from looking up. A little movement and I figured that it would both would be mobile again. Unfortunately, the window didn’t budge, which meant that I couldn’t push the mirror around while driving. As luck would have it, according to my GPS I spent about an hour of my commute not moving, which provided me ample opportunity to tinker with it.

I heard a crunch sound when I pushed the mirror around, so I doubt it’s ever going to look upwards again. I would say that the mirror wouldn’t move no matter how hard I tried, but after the crunchy mirror I decided that I would just let it be. Better it be stuck up than down. Besides, not like there are a whole lot of days right now where I want the wind blowing through my hair as I cruise in the sun.

That mirror, though, has turned into a real pain in the posterior.

The window on the driver’s side is also stuck in the Up position.

I think that the term “patriotic” has been twisted into something unuseful, but I guess I would consider myself somewhat patriotic. I love my country and want it to prosper. I hate it when people use July 4th as an excuse to bash America. I defend America in arguments with arrogant foreigners who think that they know more about America than Americans do. This extends somewhat into international business where I want Boeing to beat Airbus, WM and iPhone to beat Symbian, and so on. But this all has its limitations. I sometimes root against our team in international competition when its obvious that the other country cares a lot more. I don’t buy “Made in America” products solely because they’re Made in America.

Errr, on that last one,it would seem that there is an exception.

Ever since I was young, my family has purchased American cars. It used to be Dodge but now everything’s a Ford. Part of that is attributable to my father’s general conservatism about major purchases with a strong bias towards going with what you know. He kept buying Dodge Colts until they stopped making them. Then he bought Ford Escorts and he would continue if they hadn’t stopped making those. I think part of it is that he knows his preferred car people can fix Fords and Dodges and though with a simple question he could find out if they would work on Toyotas too, why ask when he can just keep getting Fords?

I’m not sure how much life my current car has in it. Most likely enough to get us off to wherever we move to in the next year. But at some point I’m going to need to buy a car. I noted that Nissans have a near looking car that boasts a good amount of interior room but with a small footprint, which I like. It would also be convenient if Clancy and I both drove the same brand of car.

At the same time… I have such difficulty imagining buying a non-American car. I would myopically look at whatever follows the Ford Escort (Ford Focus?) and maybe it’s competitors put out by Chevy and Dodge. And I have no idea why this is the case. I can think of things that I might think are reasons. I think that Americans cars are less likely to have rigged up dashboards making it difficult to put in aftermarket players. I think that American cars cost mildly less to get fixed because there are more people that can do it. But if any commenters here tell me that I’m wrong about these things, I’m not sure that it would change my feelings on the matter.

I also can’t cite support for the American worker. I could get a Toyota made in Texas or a Nissan made in Tennessee easily enough. At least one of the Dodge Colts we got was full of parts made in Japan. It’s not outrage that the plants in the south aren’t unionized since I hold no strong belief that the UAW is a particularly positive influence as the Big 3 struggle for air and the foreign auto-makers do not. And the more I think about the different models, the less I want to buy American. Union issues aside, there are numerous other things that the Big 3 did to get themselves in their current mess and a part of me is extremely resistant to the idea that “Even though you did these things, I want to support you with my dollars anyway.”

But nonetheless here I remain, befuddled at the notion of buying a Toyota or a Nissan.

Maybe it’s partly an image thing. The same thing that drives some to buy the loudest environmentally correct car that they can without any honest assessment about what they can really do to lower their carbon footprint or whatever. Maybe I don’t want to be one of those people that buy foreign cars. Except that I don’t think less at all of Clancy for her Toyota nor did I Julie for her Honda or Kyle and his Mazda. Maybe there is a little redneck in me that wants the eternal struggle be between Ford and Chevy. Or I like the simplicity of choosing between three companies rather than between 11. Maybe I have a subconscious view that foreign cars are less genuine even though there’s really no solid basis and besides it’s more possible that the foreign car was built by a (distant) relative or friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend than the American car since I have roots throughout the south and none in Michigan.

None of these possibilities are things that I can stand behind, but they’re really all I got. Maybe I’m just my father’s son, going with what I know until I can’t anymore. Which may be sooner rather than later, it would seem.

-{Note: This post says nothing about Republicans or Democrats or lobbyists. I’d like the comments to steer clear of that as well.}-

Clancy and I were due for a conflict. We arrived in Colosse but needed to drive to Beyreuth on the opposite side of the state to visit her family. Fortunately my parents have an extra car. I figured we’d be driving my old car, which has a tape player. I bought Dad a tape-to-MP3 converter and figured we’d use that for the drive. But then Dad suggested that we take the convertible because my old car was having some troubles lately and he wasn’t comfortable with the 200 mile trip taken in that car. the convertible has a CD player. I had no CDs. She did.

Car music is one of those areas of inequality in our marriage. I tend to dominate it though I do take care to put in CDs that I know that she likes. There is a fair amount of music that I’ve introduced her to that she’s taken a liking to. I’m not sure I’ve been quite as broadminded with listening to her musical tastes. There have been times in the past where we’ve been stuck with CDs or for whatever reason had to rely on her music. We listen to Melissa Etheridge and a Delosian band that we both discovered and liked independently (a story for another time). She’s been in an Indigo Girls mood lately and they’re one band that I have not been able to get into (though I’m not sure how good a chance I’ve given them). But given how often she listens to my music, I was not comfortable with the prospect of tuning out hers by listening to something on an earpiece or something like that.

Then I remembered that my old CD collection was stationed at my parents house and sure enough, I was able to uncover it. The collection is spotty at best. It’s mostly stuff I liked and listened to years ago and never took with me because I had it all ripped. I figured a tentative solution to the conflict was that we could switch back and forth between a CD of mine and a CD of hers. If she put in Indigo Girls, that’d be her right, but I also might put in something that I knew she was less fond of (though nothing that she absolutely hated, of course, since I don’t hate the Indigo Girls).

The solution came in the form of CDs that were already in the car. Mom’s CDs! Well, Mom doesn’t actually own CDs, but for Christmas Dad took all of her old tapes, downloaded as many of the tracks as he could, and made CDs out of them. Clancy looked it over and found some of her classic rock stuff that she likes. I looked it over and it had some of the schmaltzy easy listening hits that, while I can’t say I’m a really big fan of anymore, have extraordinary nostalgic value.

So we listened primarily to my mother’s CD collection. A lot of Willie Nelson and Anne Murray. Some Janis Joplin and Janis Ian. James Taylor and Dolly Parton. It was really quite fun. We passed through the songs that neither of us liked. There were some that she liked and I didn’t care for, but I listened through them. There were more than I was fond of but she wasn’t. Some of the songs I really didn’t like much at all, but I liked how they took me back to when we’d be driving back from Ouachita having visited family and I’d be laying in the back of the van listening to those songs with my parents. I was surprised at how many of the lyrics that I remembered to songs I have not heard in over a decade and how easily they can get stuck back in your head.

{Singing to myself, “Nobody robbed a liquor store on the lower part of town. Nobody OD’ed, nobody burned a single buildin’ down. Nobody fired a shot in anger, nobody had to die in vain. We sure could use a little good news today…}

It started snowing in the Zaulem Sound area last evening. Those that had a northbound commute were allegedly trying to wait it out until 9 or 10 o’clock before heading home. Fortunately, I was southbound so I didn’t have much trouble. There was a little bit of snow, but not all that much. It was snowing a little more by the time I went to bed. I sighed that this probably meant that I would need to scrape off my windshield in the morning. On a brief aside, this didn’t make sense to me. I bought an ice-scraper on Wednesday night. The mere fact that I bought an ice-scraper meant that there should be no more need or it for a long time. It’s only when I don’t have a scraper that these things are supposed to happen.) I also timed my trip into work a little bit later so that if necessary the required army of snow-plows and maybe a little heat has the ability to lessen the problem. If there was one thing I learned in Deseret, it’s not worth your while to try to get an early start when weather is going to push your arrival back. You should just accept a bit of lateness and work from there.

Just to make sure that Mindstorm wasn’t closed for the day, I called the 1-800 number with that information. It said that the “Zaulem Sound” facilities were open with “limited service”. I wasn’t sure what they meant by Zaulem Sound facilities. Did that include the main HQ in Enterprise City? Or was that a separate campus? If that was a separate campus, did that mean that HQ was completely open or not open at all?

On mornings where there is a real question about commute times, I like to get to the first sign indicating travel times before I get my morning faux-coffee. So I did that this morning. Unfortunately, the sign said “Heavy snow. You’re screwed.” rather than giving any more specific estimate than that. But I-3 was moving along at a relatively brisk pace, all things considered. I decided that I would wait until I got to my favorite Shell station in Orrinwood before stopping for the faux-coffee. I thought for a moment that, given the alleged “heavy snow” that was to come that maybe I should drive through Zaulem rather than taking the always-risky Splinterstate, but since I missed my faux-coffee I wanted to be able to stop in Orrinwood. There aren’t any stops along the Zaulem route. Besides, there was no telling what the bridges would be like in this weather. Even at its worst, there was only so bad that Splinterstate 803 could be.

803 was worse than usual from the moment that I turned onto it, but not too bad. Until it got too bad. Unbearably bad. I reset the meter on my GPS and determined that I was going an average of 6 miles an hour. Then 3. It was stop and go. Then stop… and go. I was beyond relieved when I finally made it to Orrinwood, two and a half hours after I left our Soundview home. I couldn’t even enjoy the break because I knew how much I had left to drive. It was probably going to be another hour. Another. Hour. So I got back in my car after only five minutes or so and realized that my car was stuck in the snow in the parking lot. The parking lot was at an incline and unfortunately when I turned around I found my way to the road blocked by an air pump and I was unable to steer my car clear of it. Thankfully, a nice local was able to help this southern hick get himself out of the pickle he’d just found himself in. He pushed my car away from the air pump and that did the trick.

I was hoping that the Interstate had cleared up a little bit by the time I got back on the road, forgetting that my shortened break meant that was less likely to happen. Oh well, at least it couldn’t get any worse. An hour later, I had gone less than a mile. I know this because my GPS told me that my average speed was now .8mph. That average even included when I was earlier cruising along at 6 and 3 miles an hour before my Orrinwood detour. During that hour, as I watched the GPS average speed fall, I decided that I had to do something. Anything. Worse yet, I was missing the next installment of my audiobook CD, which meant that I either had to start a new book or do something else. I decided to call my father to find out if he could get any traffic information that might explain my .8mph speed. Dad wasn’t there, but I had a pleasant chat with my mom. I then called Clancy’s mother. I was actually calling to talk to her father, who could look the information up for me, but I realized that I would have to chat with her before I’d be able to get her to hand the phone off to him. That was fine, though. It wasn’t like I was going anywhere.

Unfortunately, the state Department of Transportation site was bereft of valuable information. It apparently wasn’t even bothering to pick up travel time information, instead opting for the increasingly familiar “Heavy snow. You’re screwed.” He and I had a good talk about college football, though, and some new office software suite that he’d found. After he and I were done, I decided that it was a mighty decent time to change the main address on my Discover card as I had been intending since they’re supposed to send me a new one next year. After that was finished, for the first time in my life I volunteered to do the “customer satisfaction” survey. Why not? I wasn’t going anywhere. Stop………… and go. Stop…………………….. and go. Stop……………………………………………………….. and go

Finally around New City it started to clear up. I was speeding along on mud at an astonishing rate of 20 miles an hour. That was enough to let me limp into a Mindstorm campus that was open but wasn’t actually in use. There were a handful of cars in the parking lot, but they looked suspiciously like they had been there overnight. Unfortunately, the parking spots hadn’t actually been cleared of snow and I didn’t want to get stuck like I did in Orrinwood. Then I thought to myself “Hey, if there’s any area that they did de-ice and de-snow, it would be the parking garage. Right? So I drove by and turned juuuuust a little bit to get a view. It was apparent that though there were tracks, there was enough snow on those tracks that I was unlikely to be able to get back up if I drove down there. No matter, the slight incline I was at was enough to prevent me from getting up and out anyway.

A couple people walked by and tried to help me push the car back, but they were not successful. Then good fortune really struck and a half-dozen people, including my boss, happened by. It took six people to move the car, but they did it. I exclaimed that I didn’t know where to park. My boss said I should just go home. I said that I’d been in the car for over five hours and was not interested in spending another five driving back to Soundview. I said that I would figure something out. I ended up parking in about a foot of snow, plowing my way into a parking spot I wasn’t at all sure how I would get out. Ironically, by the time I got to work, I was too exhausted to work. I filed a couple of reports that needed to be filed and walked over to my boss’s office.

I asked him if this weather was going to push back an extremely strict deadline we had for Tuesday. If so, I was going to regroup and probably spend all day working, getting both Thursday and Friday’s hours done, sleep on the campus, and leave the next day. Otherwise, another five hours or no, I was going home. He asked if I had really driven in from Soundview. I told him that I had and he said that I should never come into work when it’s snowing and that I should leave immediately so that I might get home before dark. I had never talked at 2:30 in the afternoon about leaving work to get home “before dark”, but suddenly that was a very real concern. I told him that given the givens I would not be coming in on Friday. He said that was fine. So I went back to my desk, worked a little more, went to the cafeteria (which was open!), got some food, and drove home. Despite having actually worked today, my wife managed to beat me home.

Things that I wish I had remembered, realized, or known:

• My boss’s phone number.
• There was a parking garage that was almost certainly dry and almost equally certainly had vacancies on the first floor, making my trip to the underground garage particularly stupid.
• Cascadia does not have the facilities to deal with snow and ice the same way that Deseret does. I had been lulled into a false sense of security by my previous ability to rely on Deseret making primary roads drivable.
• Studded tires are good for ice, but they are also good for snow, too. At least I assume this to be the case by how easily I was able to get stuck in snow compared to when I had studded tires in Deseret.
• When my audiobook ran out, I could have watched TV shows on my Smartphone. It’s not like I was doing much actual driving
• The 1-800 number tells you if a facility is open. Not whether anybody is actually working.
• If I had checked my email before I left, I would have seen an email from the junior VP of the Stormcast division telling everybody not to come in to work.

Bobvis offers up the point from a book and other sources that we should focus on overall percentage increases in energy efficiency rather than pooh-poohing increases that look small on paper but have larger impact. The test case is a Dodge Durango (12-mpg to 14-mpg versions) versus Honda Civic (33-mpg to 45-mpg versions).

Will counters back the point echoed by a lot of environmentalists, which grates on me, that the “real” disparity is between the 12-mpg Durango and the 45-mpg Civic, and that the goal is to get the Durangos off the road in favor of Civics. In the long haul, I think both sides of the equation are really missing out on very important points that throw off the calculations.

Point #1 – If you’re a single person who never travels far and never carries much, a Civic might work for you. While I think it’s silly for a person who never hauls cargo to have a giant truck, most people need at least some cargo space; I’ve regularly cursed the lack of it in my current vehicle, sometimes for things as relatively minor as IKEA furniture (which is already highly compressed since it’s not already put together).

Ironically, it was the CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) standards, those listings of what the “average fuel efficiency” (in miles per gallon) of a manufacturer’s fleet had to be, that started some of this inanity. CAFE standards are not universal; you have one category for cars, one for “SUV” class vehicles (aka “light trucks”), and one for honest-to-gosh “Trucks” (usually, but not always, diesel). When CAFE standards were upped, manufacturers had a hard time getting the venerable station wagon (heavier/less aerodynamic than a “normal car” but still classified as one and retaining the car’s lower center of gravity for better handling and less worry of tipovers on curves or in high winds) to fit into the “cars” category, but they could get the minivan (with all the handling, high center of gravity, and aerodynamic efficiency of a rolling brick) to easily fit in while classified technically as a “light truck”.

The result? Station Wagons, which usually averaged 21-23 mpg, were replaced by attrition with minivans and their “15 mpg if you’re lucky” efficiency ratings. Why? Because there are precisely two kinds of car that really fit a growing family: station wagons and minivans. Those are the only ones that have the people capacity to haul two parents, two kids, luggage/miscellaneous items, and possibly the kids’ friends somewhere when necessary. If you don’t have a station wagon or minivan, either someone’s getting left behind or you’re splitting into two vehicles.

Point #2 – “Miles per gallon” is a lousy measure of efficiency anyways, because there are all sorts of fudge-factors that go into the measurement and assumptions being made. Setting aside jokes about Paul McCartney’s hybrid getting only 4 mpg or Al Gore wasting fuel flying a limo to Tokyo so he could be seen arriving in a “hybrid limo” to an award ceremony, we still have to deal with the fact that what we are really trying to figure out is how much work is being done by the engine.

Basic science, first of all: the maximum (theoretical) efficiency of a heat engine is definitively not 100%. It never can be, because it is measured by the equation Eff=(Th-Tc)/Th * 100; in other words, the hot side (Th) minus the cold side (Tc), divided by the hot side, with all temperatures in Kelvin. For purpose of reference for cars, Tc can be nothing other than the ambient air temperature, or approximately somewhere between 250 Kelvin (“Really Frickin’ Cold Canadian Winter”) and 330 (Furnace Creek, Death Valley, USA). For purposes of guesswork, a temperature of 300 Kelvin (~80 Fahrenheit, ~27 Celsius) is a reasonable approximation to work with.

Thus, the goal of an “efficient” heat engine is to generate a really freaking high Th, just shy of actually melting the engine’s parts, to do work with. For the internal combustion engine, this gets to be around 1500 Kelvin or so, with a “theoretical” efficiency of 80%… but of course that’s not really the case. First, the exhaust gases aren’t exiting the engine cylinder at precisely ambient air temperature (they’re usually more like 350 Kelvin or higher, then go through the tailpipe while cooling further before being released to the air), so our efficiency is lost by that difference. Second, there is inefficiency from “heat” lost everywhere that isn’t doing any useful work – the heat that heats up the engine parts (requiring a coolant system to avoid melting them after running the engine for lengths of time), friction between road and car, friction between car parts (mitigated, but not completely, by lubricant… again something that can’t be theoretically 100% efficient nor would you want it to be), and so on.

So we get “efficiency” in that sense… but that isn’t miles per gallon. What we are really looking for is an engine that will extract the most energy from a given quantity of fuel, given that gasoline itself has an energy density of 130 MJ/gallon (gasohol, the 90/10 whiskey mix most people are actually getting, is only 125 MJ/gallon and has other thermal properties that further reduce its efficiency for use in an internal combustion engine). In other words, we want the maximum amount of energy (in Joules or MegaJoules) to be transferred to “go power.”

Once we have the efficient engine, THEN basic newtonian physics comes into play; “miles per gallon” is based on the amount of work (in Joules, again) to (a) bring the vehicle up to speed, (b) maintain the vehicle’s speed when facing loss due to other factors (wind resistance, road friction, internal part friction, etc), and (c) safely maintain the vehicle’s internal features and control (modern engines “lose” mpg by transferring power to other things like the electrical system, Air Conditioning and Power Steering, rather than making passengers sweat and drivers use Power Steering By Armstrong).

Needless to say, the heavier the vehicle, the less “miles per gallon” it will get even if it has a “more efficient” (Joules/gallon) engine. Likewise, the less aerodynamic the vehicle, the more “efficient” it will be, which is why this 1.5-seat vehicle (that secondary “back seat” does not look comfy) can get 285 mpg without even needing a hybrid engine. And you trade “efficiency” for pickup power and other benefits, too. The aforementioned vehicle only gets this efficiency by skimming a mere couple inches from the ground (would damage its frame passing a speed bump or even a mere pothole), with a single passenger, no luggage (no luggage capacity even if you wanted to!), and with “pretty darn slow” acceleration, a “pretty darn low” top speed (less than 75 miles per hour), and only seeing that efficiency in a narrow power band best maintained by driving the vehicle around half its top speed. In other words, perhaps good for a single-shot “to work and back” vehicle, virtually unusable for almost anything else.

Yes, there’s room to make vehicles more “efficient” in the “miles per gallon” sense – but it would be nice if the environmentalist crowd would realize that there is work to be done, that reasonable cargo space (the ability for me to carry, say, 3 friends and some luggage without anyone feeling cramped) and a reasonable-height frame are not “luxuries” for all people (the roads in Colosse are lousy enough thanks), and that the “Work” (in Joules of energy) required for specific tasks can never be simply pulled from thin air.

I got a GPS device from my father as a very late birthday present a little while back. I never plan to go without one again. The GPS is to Google Maps what Google Maps is to Key Maps and Atlases. It can change the way that you think about getting from Point A to Point B. This is particularly true if you live in a new part of the country, as I do.

It used to be that if you wanted to go somewhere, you pretty much had to draw a little map and then take a map with you. For someone like me that forgets everything, it is also crucial to note that it required you remembering to take your little map with you. Or you could try to wing it, but that results in having to pull over all-too-frequently to figure out where you are going. Even if I had a map printed out I would usually have to pull over at least once. Then it was worse for me because I have no internal compass that tells me which way it is that I am actually going. I lived here for a full month before realizing that I drive west once I get off the Interstate to get home rather than south. For previous birthdays I would sometimes ask for a compass for my car, but they seemed relatively unreliable for a device that works mostly on magnets and water.

The GPS provides a compass on steroids even if you’re not asking it to tell you how to get somewhere. You always know what direction you’re going. Even more helpful, you know what streets are about to come up. Whenever I had to make my own maps or print them out from Google or Yahoo I would always have to make note “If you’ve reached X-Street, you’ve gone too far” to prevent myself from driving half-an-hour too far. In addition to having no internal compass, I also have nothing in my mind that informs me common sensically that I’ve gone too far. “Sure, I’ve crossed the state line, but maybe I’m supposed to and the next turn will take me back?”

The directions are even better, if not wholly reliable. There is an Interstate near where we live that makes it rather difficult to cross because there aren’t any access roads (Cascadia in general doesn’t seem to believe in access roads, alas) and a lot of streets end at various points before the Interstate. The GPS has taught me each and every cross-point in various directions that it’s given me. So now even when I’m driving my wife’s car, I have a much better idea of the fastest way to get somewhere.

Alas, GPS systems are not perfect. They haven’t sent me over any cliffs or anything, but they have left me awfully confused once or twice. Sometimes it thinks that two roads connect when they don’t or it will inexplicably tell me to take three rights rather than a left. It thinks that the Walmart in Uniontown is roughly a block over from where it is. It kept telling me to turn right into the parking lot of a Dollar Tree. Unfortunately, miss a couple turns and it assumes that you want to go somewhere else sometimes. Or that you don’t want to go there at all and want to just go home. It also thinks that there is a Walmart in Soundview that isn’t actually there. That’s not the GPS’s fault, though, because Google Maps thinks that it’s there, too.

By and large, though, it provides good directions except whenever Clancy is in the car. When she’s in the car, I’m in “showing off my cool new gadget” mode and it invariably lets me down. Whenever she’s not around, though, and whenever it’s not involving a Walmart, it seems to work pretty well. It’s worth remembering that in the old days Yahoo Maps used to be pretty unreliable. I expect that the GPS will get better with time.

It’s kind of funny how it freaks out whenever you want to take a route other than the route it wants you to take. The unit is good at compensating for what it perceives to be wrong turns. It recalculates your route for you and you keep going. Unfortunately, sometimes it doesn’t get the message. For instance, whenever I go to work by way of Zaulem, there is a never-ending stream of directions telling me to take the next exit and turn my butt around. Around the fourth exit it finally concedes that I’m going by way of the big city against its advice.

It lets me know usually about .6 miles ahead of an exit that I need to be taking it and when the exit arrives it tells me again. There is also a little feature that gives me an arrival time, but it doesn’t compensate for traffic levels at all. Otherwise it’s pretty accurate. Moreso than Google Maps, at any rate. There is also another feature that tells you your average speed (either the speed you go when you’re moving or counting times when you’re stopped at lights and in traffic and whatnot). Somewhat importantly, though, there is a little thing that tells you the fastest speed that you’ve gone since you last reset it. If I’d had this thing during a particular spitstorm in rea-life Wyoming, I may have been able to contest the officer’s assertion that I was going faster than my car was seemingly capable. Or maybe I would have been able to see that he was right and I was wrong. Any time I have a “high speed” significantly faster than the universal speed limit around here, I make sure to reset it. Even so, it’s an interesting little statistic. Even in the absurdly low speed limits of the area, I almost never go more than 10mph over.

When my family was taking a trip through Europe, the tour bus was pulled over in Italy. European tour busses apparently contain some sort of record of maximum speeds and they’re admissible even if the cops can’t prove that you were going that speed on your current road. In other words, if you were going 60mph in one place where that’s the speed limit and they pull you over on a stretch that has a 45mph speed limit, you essentially have no defense. Further, the cops can check your records without any justifiable cause. It’s apparently a racket out there. The tour guide says that you just pay the officer the “fine” and get on your way.

It makes me wonder if the GPS could be used in the same fashion. In the US the officer doesn’t have any right (that I’m aware of) to force me to turn the GPS device to the screen that might incriminate me, but if it’s plainly visible he might be able to use it under certain circumstances. It might be up to me to demonstrate that there were enough miles on it that I could have been going the speed limit somewhere else, but since I don’t think I’ve seen a single speed limit over 60mph in the entire area and never anything above 65, and since I’m not close to any state or province I’m aware of that has the sorts of high speed limits that Deseret and Estacado do, that could be tough. I wonder how admissible my GPS would be in my defense. I’d somehow need to be able to have a record of what was on the GPS right that minute and be able to demonstrate to the courts that I hadn’t tampered with it. That’d be a pretty tall order.

I expect that the GPS companies would vigorously oppose the GPS being used in courts. Estacado was planning for a little while to use the Estag, the little thing you put on your dashboard so you don’t have to stop at tolls, to ticket people. They already use those things for signs that tell you the expected time between certain landmarks so the technology is there. However, the Estag people freaked out because they rightly believed that if the Estag invited tickets nobody would use it. The idea was quashed.