Even in Kyoto

The last time I drove the car was the Saturday after Thanksgiving, when I went over to a friend's house at night in a neighborhood where it would have been impractical to bike (too far, too cold, too dark, no/unknown infrastructure). When I started up the car to drive home, the tire pressure light came on, accompanied by an alarming beeping sound. After getting out to look at all four tires, none of which were making any alarming hissing noises*, I slowly and carefully drove home.

I had so much going on, I didn't have the bandwidth to deal with figuring it out until this morning. Would I wind up needing to drive to a random gas station to put in more air?

Internet videos suggested that it would take a LOT of pumping with a bike tire to add more pressure. But, that's what we've got, so I figured I might as well give it a try. (also yes, double-checked with a car tire pressure gauge since those are more accurate for the relevant range)

And, yep, all four tires were unsurprisingly low.

But surprisingly enough, it didn't take very much pumping to fill them to the correct pressure, I think because they're actually fairly small!

So, minor vehicle achievement unlocked. The light turned back off again after 60 seconds of driving, and the frogs that just arrived on campus yesterday now have fresh, tasty crickets to nosh on (wanted to drive to the pet store to minimize cold shock for the crickets).

Now I just need to get the oil changed, get an updated inspection, and deal with the panel rust.

So you see, car ownership is such a convenient bargain, isn't it?




*We had a rental car tire develop a puncture when driving around Kauai two years ago, and were just relieved we made it all the way back to the rental place before the situation got dire!

Yesterday I had flashbacks to packing up the moving truck to move out from Arizona to New York. It took us a full day in the middle of July to get everything loaded in, so we didn't set up driving until nightfall. Thankfully I was smart about that and planned our first stop for Payson, not far out of town.

All things considered, we did better than that yesterday, given that we were only (ha!) loading up a car, not a large moving truck. We got out the door by 3 pm, and made our way back to Huron, OH by 11:30 pm.

At the last minute we discovered that the bike rack I bought at Goodwill in Arizona isn't compatible with the rear hatch on this car. Darn! So there was a quick detour over to a UHaul to obtain one of those bike racks that mounts into a hitch receiver.

George did not appreciate being grabbed and stuffed into the smaller cat carrier, to a few minutes after we started driving, he peed in the carrier. We didn't really have the resources for a full cat pee clean-up while enroute, so day 1 of this trip managed to be far more smelly than any of my Arizona return trip days, heh.

I did not wind up packing along enough Anti Icky-Poo, so that's on the shopping list now.

We looked more closely at the alternate ferry route across Lake Michigan, but it's rather expensive, so on we go towards Rockland, IL today.

We can even see out the rear window!



But hopefully today we can fix visibility to the right rear blind spot.

S had disassembled the bike to get it wedged in the car for the trip to UHaul, so this is as far as he got with reassembly for Day 1.



It's hard to see, but he has repositioned his Safety Pizza for the trip. I just feel better about life with a Safety Pizza on my rear.

I probably won't get caught up on reading blogs until we reach Seattle. I get carsick if I try to read in the car, plus I expect to be doing a lot of the driving.

Is it weird or unusual to just change out my 2 front tires?

The back 2 don't have nearly as much wear. The front 2 definitely need to be replaced.

I imagine this throws a wrench into the whole "tire rotation" thing, is all.

Something in the combination of: sitting/working options here, sleeping environments, lifting of heavy/awkward ant incubator, and doing sweep rowing, has made the middle of my back cranky to the point where I woke up at 5 am and couldn't get comfortable and back to sleep. Eventually, some time slouching in a living room chair allowed things to calm down again to the point where I slept for another solid 2.5 hours. Most of the time any back discomfort I've had has been lower back, so it's worrying to feel things in the lower thoracic vertebrae.

Information are in for the inspection and work estimates on the car. This mechanic was much more thorough than the one in Tucson, and I did tell him to go ahead with the most critical stuff. Unsurprisingly, there are multiple different things in need of attention, and the things I'll address immediately are going to be expensive, with potentially another round of equally expensive projects on the horizon. I'm not going to get into the minutiae, I really just want to whine about how expensive cars are. In the long run I may wind up crunching some numbers to see how much all of this costs, compared to other potential ways of getting back and forth across the country and moving a rowing wherry around. But for now I'd better just roll with it all.

For now I'd better get to work on the things that ultimately help pay for the bills. Whee.

Finally got a call from the mechanic, who says that although any issues have been pinpointed as being associated with the knock sensor, he's reluctant to try and access/test it more directly, because the components that would need to be disassembled to access it are rusty and that can lead to all sorts of entertaining situations, as I well know from personal experience with rusty bicycles, and more.

But they did change the oil and check the brakes, at least.

So I'll go pick it up tomorrow and drive back to Tempe, while contemplating my next moves. It sounds like they may recommend taking the car to a dealer, I suppose because a dealer is more likely to have the correct replacement parts on hand.

We shall see. For now I need to figure out my travel back to Tucson.

Whee.

Edited to add... Diagrams like this one make me really tempted to figure out how to replace the sensor myself! But it kinda looks like I'd wind up having to get a torque wrench/etc to carry out the work, and if I got stuck, well...

So I've dropped my car off at the nearby mechanic, and they say they'll call me once they've had a chance to triage things. Whee.

In the meantime, I'm finally on wifi at my aunt and uncle's house, so I have no excuses but to try and concentrate and maybe get some work done. The only time constraint I'm going to start running up against is that the ant queens are still in Tempe and I should really be checking on them soon. So maybe I'll hop some sort of shuttle back up there, maybe I'll ride my bike up (unlikely!!), who knows.

In the meantime, I should clear out some browser tabs and do my best to concentrate. These are fairly random things.

I appreciated this article less for the headline and more for the focus on how not all types of dietary fiber are created equal: https://www.sciencealert.com/one-type-of-fiber-could-have-weight-loss-benefits-similar-to-ozempic

And the real take-home message to me is that it's still best to maintain a diet rich in fresh fruits and vegetables. Easier said than done in many circumstances!

I've had this article open about AI scraping for a little while now:

https://www.404media.co/the-backlash-against-ai-scraping-is-real-and-measurable/

It has me wondering about what would be involved in preventing/minimizing AI scraping for my personal website, but I am not sure I can work up the motivation/energy to figure that out. This whole situation is also just general commentary on what humanity has and has not accomplished with the internet. There's a lot about the current AI situation that makes me extremely angry and I feel like it should come as no surprise that automated derivative work has its uses but they should be curtailed.

I appreciated this article about the consequences of vulture die-offs in India: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c28e2pvzn3lo

Part of this is because ants often also get overlooked for their important roles as scavengers. Respect the scavengers!

Why clean energy really can't solve everything by itself: the mining costs:
https://phys.org/news/2024-07-demand-metals-minerals-energy-transition.html

Here's an interesting suburb that went through roadway modifications to make more room for bikes without major impacts on traffic flow: https://youtu.be/_F6xKd7AGKs?si=XCfuONFxl_Geh1W1

I would not say this strategy will work everywhere. However, I will say I noticed that many of the towns in the French countryside employ roundabouts, and I appreciated them for the traffic flow.

And with that, time to get on to the next projects.

Except, while writing this the car news has come in, and it sounds like there's a knock sensor that will require further investigation...tomorrow. While I was sitting next to someone waiting for the mechanic to open, she told me she'd had her own packrat woes, and they've caused sensor damage costing hundreds of dollars to repair. Well, yet another reason why motor vehicles are an expensive hassle.

Well.

I am down in Tucson, visiting my aunt and uncle this weekend (technically, great-aunt/etc, but they're close in age to my mother, so we'll roll with the terminology). We went down yesterday to the Coronado National Monument, because my cousin now works there as a park ranger, and had a lovely if abbreviated visit due to a big monsoon storm that rolled in. I hope I'll manage to go back again at some point.

This morning, I was going to see how far I could make it up Mt. Lemmon on Princess TinyBike. Step 1 was going to involve driving closer to the start of the climb, but when I went to start up the car, the inevitable happened: the yellow "check engine" light came on. I have a hypothesis that fluids may have run low, but seeing as it's 5 am and still dark here, really, the best thing to do is just go back to bed and then work on things once it's actually light out and the nearest auto parts store is open and my aunt and uncle can advise. I'm just about due for an oil change anyway, so this might also mean moving forward with that project ASAP to have someone more experienced lay eyeballs on the engine and car.

I mostly just needed to emit a small whine somewhere. Mt. Lemmon will have to wait. I've had enough car trouble in Arizona to know better than to tempt fate at this stage.

And now I'm at the stage of being mildly embarrassed by how dirty the car is, inside and out.

No, not like that, silly.



The drive there and back involved exciting things like hills and a zillion and five traffic lights. I was so anxious about the trip that I accidentally arrived an hour and a half before my appointment time.

After dropping off the car, I realized that I was within walking distance of a grocery store that has been on my list of places to visit, a place known as Farmer's India Market. Friends had mentioned that it had opened not too long ago, and was a much better destination for (East) Indian groceries compared to the other spot we recently learned of, in town.

I walked in, and was basically dazzled by the extensive variety of foods on offer, and how beautifully and brightly they were displayed:


I came home with almost zero actual Indian groceries, because I also discovered that they stocked a wide range of Mexican items that have been really hard to find. Plus a couple of the cheeses we like, and other Latin American foods. I did buy a bunch of ataulfo mangoes, though, because they smelled amazing.

Among the other Latin American foods, something I haven't gotten to enjoy in over a decade!!



No salsa molcajete that I saw, though.

There is a Bus Rapid Transit line that runs up Central Ave to this spot, so I'll probably be back again sooner rather than later.

For now, I am relieved to be home, having run the gauntlet of all the traffic lights on Central Ave twice today (4 stall-outs).

There was an indoor rowing competition this morning at one of the area high schools, so I resolved to use it as an opportunity to practice driving The Car. That meant that the erg race itself was only the third scariest thing I did in the morning. The fact that I am posting this now means that I did, in fact, make it home safely. I cannot even tell you how much I am looking forward to RIDING MY BIKE later today.

I determined (empirically) that I need to apply at least a little bit of gas when getting the car started into first. I hope you can infer how I determined this empirically. Getting the car into first is still where I am very much struggling the most right now, and I didn't even have to try and start while pointed up any hills for this drive. I stalled out multiple times on the drive out. I had hoped there wouldn't be much/any traffic early on a Saturday morning, but it seemed that all the traffic that was out there managed to stop right behind me at every red light. So I got some more practice with throwing on the hazards real quick. S made fun of me during the drive home for "peeling out" when trying to get the car into first at a stop sign, but honestly that's probably what I need to do until I can really master the choreography for this vehicle. I probably need a bunch more parking lot time, is what it all means. And I must keep reading about this driving nonsense so that I have at least an intellectual understanding even while my muscle memory is nonexistent/terrible.

I only stalled out like 3-4 times on the drive home, compared to the drive out. I guess this is how I need to measure my progress.

Attempting to park in the driveway. I now have a better sense as to how heavy the car is, is one thing I can say about that. There were some touch-and-go moments. I did not manage to get the car parked within 4 inches of Princess TinyHouse's bumper, but it is sticking out less than 6 inches into the roadway proper, so I'm leaving it there for now.

I am hearing several different noises while driving. Some of them seem like they might be at a volume and/or pitch where S might not be hearing them yet. So I think maybe I need to prevail upon a local friend who is a rally car racing aficionado, and have him come over and listen to things and tell me a few things. This friend actually started his rally car racing in a Mazda2 so I don't think it would be a huge imposition. It is hard for me to know whether the noises are fine or indicative of a brewing problem caused by poor driving.

This is one of those things where if it's a new (to you) car, you have to learn the natural sounds so as to be able to distinguish them from the "trouble brewing" sounds.

There's a plastic piece under the front bumper that is loose in one spot. Also, I probably need to replace the windshield wiper blades. I did not like how they were smearing the water around in the rain in the morning. At least now I know?

And at least now I know the Aux cable works, and at least the EZPass actually showed up last night, so I didn't have to get stressed about the $0.23 in tolls in either direction on I-90.

Oh, I won my age category at the erg race, but part of that was just lucking out. The former elite rower was in the 30's age range, so I was spared from trying to pretend I could hold anything close to her 7:20 pace.

Car-shopping is sure managing to dredge up all kinds of emotions and memories.

First off, it is a logistical hassle. You can't just buy a car like you'd buy a bike. Inspections, paperwork, test drives, salespeople, more paperwork, registrations, licensing, et cetera. Hidden issues. Most of the issues with a bike are readily apparent.

Second, it inevitably involves making appointments, dealing with people, making phone calls. And you can't have reasonable interactions when dealing with people, because people get funny when it comes to major financial decisions. So the people trying to encourage the major financial decisions engage in elaborate psychological tricks, whether they want to or not, because they become necessary for survival.

I am learning about myself that I am totally disinclined to make massive spreadsheets and obsessive optimization calculations, when it comes to something like this.

Then there are the accessories for the thing. Winter things, summer things, racks, hitches, sprays, polishes.

Parking. Lord have mercy, does my area have the absolute requisite minimum number of at least 3 distinct places where I can put the thing for storage purposes at any particular point in time??

Insurance.

Electronic gizmos for paying tolls.

The only times I've ever had major attempts to steal my credit card info has been when I've tried to use the card to pay for gasoline.

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These are just some of the reasons why I ultimately decided against purchasing a car in the past. They are costly, not just in time and money, but mental overhead.

I want to be very intentional and deliberate about continuing to commute to work by bicycle. I feel like this purchase threatens my identity as a bicyclist.

None of this is to say or suggest I'm going to back down this time. We live in a car-culture country.

It's just...I can't say I am liking or enjoying this stuff.

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Maybe at some point I should write more about those first attempts to learn to drive a manual transmission vehicle, trying to learn how to drive with my family's Dodge Caravan minivan. I don't think I ever got competent enough with it to actually drive it around Seattle. I don't know how my mother managed to drive it everywhere while we were growing up. She has her own fair share of stories with that car.