Mosshead

car swap-a-roo

April 23rd, 2008

5 years ago A and I had some conversations about whether we really needed to be a 2 car family and decided that there was no reason for us to have more than 1 car.

We live in a bicycle-friendly area where nearly anywhere we need to go is 10 miles or less away. So we envisioned what our transportation situation should be …. Does “transportation situation” sound funny? Yeah. One of the things about living on the west coast is that public transportation is limited and destinations are far away. I’d say that many west coasties feel dependent upon our transportation and our transportation is a type of self expression.

Anyway, the first part of our plan was to get better road bikes for around town. It took us a while, but after we built our kayaks, we’d built up a nice dividend from REI from the kayaking gear we’d bought. So, armed with dividend and REI gift cards, I got an awesome lightweight road bike. My Carema won’t be a classic collector’s item, but it’s fast and fun and gets me out there.

There are about 3 months of predictably inclement weather in western Washington and sometimes we need to drive a car to haul things too big for a bike. Our short term plan was to use the Jetta since that’s what we had. The long term plan though is to do an EV conversion for our around-town car. A home EV conversion will generally get about 30 mi travel distance before a recharge is needed and that’s plenty for in-town errands.

So last year, I purchased the donor car - a 1963 Ford Falcon Futura (we like the model name and it’s a cool looking car that’s light enough). We haven’t had time to do much with the Futura yet other than to kick the tires and rust spots and strategize how to deal with the rust spot/s. That’s okay, we’ll get there.

So, it’s 5 years after that original conversation and the jetta’s electrical issues have become a real problem … no horn, no high beams (yes I changed the bulbs), only the driver’s window can be rolled down.

Our lifestyle has changed in the past 5 years. 4 years ago, I was finishing my degree and had grown overweight from a sedentary lifestyle. Riding my bicycle helped me lose quite a bit of that weight. So, since then we’ve both become more active. We built kayaks a few years ago, fell in love with mountain biking last year and became obsessed with skiing this year. And we feel pretty committed to continuing with that trend

Actually, it’s probably more of a near-mid-life thing … where many women our age are having an “oops I forgot to have a baby” moment, we also had an “oops I forgot to play” moment.

So … the jetta is about to die an ugly electrical death the way that jettas do. And we really want a camper for mountain biking trips and skiing next year. We figure if we get a season’s ski pass for next year it will mostly pay off if we’re going up on weekends and staying the night in a camper.

The upshot of that is I’m about to buy my first expensive vehicle - a 2004 Nissan Titan. Big by most standards, but it’s the smallest truck that has enough payload for a small camper. It’s a scary grown-up decision - the most expensive vehicle I’ve ever bought was $3500. I’m a sucker for both older and future classics.

So, we’ll give the jetta to A’s mother who needs a new car, we’ll look for a bike trailer on freecycle or craigslist so we can haul more with our bikes instead of driving (namely we just need to be able to haul 5 gal water about 1x a week). And we’ll have this hurking truck … that gets 13mpg … with gas at $4/gal.

I have fantasies of getting the ffv option that’s available for the truck and finding an ethanol source … but those really are fantasies at the moment.

I sure hope it’s worth it.

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