New car, and not sick.

Two weeks ago, I was crazy sick. Last week was just crazy. Training has been spotty. I'm getting it in when I can, but I still only trained 4 days last week.

Monday I did some light conditioning, and then it was back regularly scheduled programming today.

Sunday, I traded in my 2002 Ranger Pick-up. I've driven that car for 9 years and over 96,000 miles. It was an extension of my being. It was weird getting in a new car Monday and driving to work. The truck just didn't make sense any more. Car seat didn't really fit, wasn't exactly safe, and it was going to need a few hundred bucks worth of work to pass emissions (for a car worth less than 2 grand). So I traded it in.

I got a new(ish) VW rabbit. Solid small car. Supposedly run forever. I really like it. I have nothing to compensate for, thus the small car is not a problem. In fact in a lot of ways it is far preferable (the gas mileage is insane)

Even though I was getting total garbage for gas mileage the environmentally sound decision was to keep the truck. I drive so little, that the delta between the environmental impact of building another car, and the better gas milage was negligable. This is a factor that people forget when looking at the impact of cars and fossil fuels. If everyone kept and maintained their cars for 8-10 years it would significantly decrease our use of fossil fuels even though the average gas mileage on the road would decrease slightly. It takes a lot of plastic and petrolium to manufacture a car. Unfortunetly the Auto industry has a rather compelling reason to get us to turn over cars as much as possible.

The average new car stays with it's inital owner for 5.5 years. Juuuust long enough to pay it off and turn it over (most car loans are 60 months). To me that was just the beginning. Once I paid off my truck, to me it was just the beginning.

So here's to driving someone else's car.. until I pay it off.
Mahalo!