A Tale of Two Hybrids

This is the story of how we became a two-Prius household and how we started to blur that light between everyday hippie/yuppie and super hippie/yuppie in less than a year.

It seems that generally whenever people get a new job, especially their first real job coming out of school, the first thing that they get with their newfound income is a shiny, brand new car.  Usually, this is to replace the rusting, beat up car that got them through college or grad school (as a side note, it was always amusing to me that when I was doing my post-doc at UC Irvine in Orange County, the professor/post-doc parking lot was filled with old Hondas and Toyotas while the undergrad parking lot was packed with Mercedes, BMWs, even Maseratis).

However, I was never a real car guy.  A car, for me, was a tool to help facilitate getting  me from point A to point B in a relatively easy manner.  Bonus points if the ride was smooth and wasn't loud enough to drown out the stereo.  But while some people really enjoy the act of driving, it was mostly just a chore for me, something that had to be done.  As a result, I didn't really drool or geek out over new cars like other people.  I had my beat up Honda Civic and it worked fine for me.  So when I started my first real job three years ago, I didn't even think about getting a new car.  It also didn't hurt that I tend to be relatively frugal, and if I could avoid dropping thousands of dollars at once, that was fine by me.  I was just going to drive that Civic until it died.

Unfortunately, that happened a lot sooner than I thought.  After only two years on the job, it was pretty clear that the car was falling apart.  As in, literally falling apart.  Various pieces of the car started falling off.  It was almost as if the car had suffered a stroke---none of the electronics on the right half of the car worked, including the windows or locks.  While it hadn't died, it was clearly dying.

So off we went to find a new car.  Although I'm not a car nut, I do like new technology.  And I've been becoming more environmentally conscious as well.  Plus, with gas prices rising inexorably, getting a car that gets good gas mileage was a must.  So if I had to get a new car, I definitely looking to get a hybrid.  By this time, the Toyota Prius had been out for nearly a decade, so it was established technology, but still relatively cutting edge.  We gave it a test drive, and we were astounded at how smooth and quiet the ride was.  Although this may be partly due to us being used to a loud, old car that was falling apart, the hybrid electric motor makes the ride significantly quieter.  The console had a futuristic, space-age feel to it that befit a car with new technology.  It was almost like being in the cockpit of a spacecraft.  Needless to say, we ended up walking out with a Prius, getting a decent deal on a very slightly used 2009 Prius in "Spectra Blue Mica".

Our First New Prius

Meanwhile, my wife was still driving her old BMW, which was approaching fifteen years of age.  It was a good car, handled very well, and got decent highway mileage.  She had been driving it for almost ten years, so it was her baby.  However, the car was starting to show its age.  Last year, it broke down on the Turnpike while we were driving to the city.  One of the engine coolant valves broke and the hood of the car started smoking.  We had to stop the car in the middle of the highway during rush hour to avoid overheating the engine.  Needless to say, it was a nightmare to get the car towed and fixed.  Maintenance for these old European cars can get ridiculous.  However, we sucked it up and got it repaired and it seemed to be okay once again.

However, my wife recently switched jobs and as a result her commute ballooned from 8 miles to nearly 50 miles one way.  We hemmed and hawed over having her drive the Prius, since it gets better mileage, but ultimately we decided to have her drive her car until it died and avoid putting a lot of miles on the new hybrid. Things were going smoothly until she recently started hearing some funny noises.  She brought the car in to our mechanic and it turns out that her car had some badly bent wheel bearings.  Even worse, the wheel bearings were rusted and stuck to the front axle, so they couldn't be easily removed.  And if we didn't try to repair it, the wheels might eventually fall off.  As a result, it would cost well over a thousand dollars to fix, approaching the total value of the car.  That alone wasn't a deal breaker, but if her car started having these big problems every year like clockwork, it was something that wasn't going to be tenable in the long term.

So just about a year after we went car shopping the first time, we ended up going car shopping again.  We already had a Prius, so we were hoping to get something different.  Although we wanted to get something that got good mileage, in the worse case my wife could drive my Prius and I could drive the newer, more practical car.  However, we were both pretty opposed to getting an SUV or a minivan.  It also didn't make sense to get a fun, sporty car with less room either.  So we ended up looking for other roomy sedans or even station wagons (sadly, there were no wood-paneled station wagons out there).  

However, despite looking around for other cars, we kept circling back to the Prius.  It really is a nice car and it really fit our lifestyle at the moment.  So, although it is a little embarrassing, we ended up getting another Toyota Prius.  Even more embarrassing, the second Prius is essentially the exact same year and model with almost the same mileage.  It's even blue, although it's the lighter "Seaside Pearl" blue.  We are now officially a two-Prius household.  Now it's a battle over who gets the better miles per gallon...

Our Second New Prius

First World Problems

There's not much to say about the events happening in Japan beyond the frenetic up-to-the-minute updates from the news outlets and the blogosphere and wishing them well..  It does go to show that even first world nations are not immune to catastrophic problems.  Nothing can really prepare a country like Japan, let alone a third world country like Haiti, for an event like this.  One wonders what will happen when, not if, a huge earthquake hits the West Coast.  If the response to Katrina can be used as a predictor, we'll be in for some tough times.

There are updates being provided constantly, but one of the more powerful applications of Internet reporting I've seen are before and after pictures of the areas affected.

One of the things that I am worried about is how this might set back nuclear as an energy strategy.  Although the crisis at the nuclear reactors at Fukushima Daiichi is still evolving, the airwaves are filled with alarmist fears about nuclear energy.  Even if there is a core meltdown, ala Three Mile Island, the amount of radiation released may still be contained due to the heroic efforts of the plant workers.  The problem is that nuclear and radioactivity are loaded words and most people don't fully understand them.  Instead of reporting radiation numbers using mysterious units without context, I wish people would report them with respect to number of airline flights, X-ray examinations, or even number of bananas.  For example, a coal plant releases 100x more radioactivity than an equivalent nuclear power plant, but no one blinks an eye.  Even at Berkeley, there were official city signs put up declaring that it was a "nuclear free zone" (the chemist in me rolled my eyes every time I saw them, as well as at the whole "organic" food movement, but that's for another time).  It's too bad, since nuclear needs to be a part of our future as our energy consumption keeps increasing...

Up Up and Away

I saw that National Geographic set out to make a real life version of the floating house in Up for a new series called How Hard Can it Be?.  They built a 16' x 16' house and attached 300 weather balloons to lift it up to a heady altitude of over 10,000 feet.  Granted, it looks like the Nat Geo crew only built a shell of a house and used pretty large weather balloons to lift it, but it looked like an amazing feat.  What about lifting a real house using standard party balloons?  In an interesting article, Slate calculated that over 9 million standard helium balloons would be required.

Scene from Up

Real life version of Up

We are pretty big Pixar fans and Up is probably one our favorite Pixar movies.  Up, along with Wall-E and Ratatouille, was the beginning of when Pixar started making adult movies with some nods to kids rather than kids movies with some nods to adults.  Any adult should be able to relate to the basic concept of the balloon house---how can you just float away from all of the stress and troubles of your life to the infinite possibilities just over the horizon.  I just don't know how many children would really understand that.

My wife and I saw Up the year that we got married.  Even beyond the general theme, an early opening sequence, a dialogue-less montage of Carl and Ellie's life together, always makes us tear up.  In a space of only four minutes, it perfectly captures the sweetness of love and dreams full of hope to the cruelty of reality and the bitterness of time.  It's probably one of the finest four minutes of film ever shot, and the perfect motivation to get out and do something before it's too late.