Automobiles

After 16  years of faithful service, the Dog Chariot’s alternator finally gave up the ghost.

We knew several months ago that it was on its last legs…or bearings, or slip rings, or whatever alternators have. But we decided to let it run, since replacing or fixing it is expensive and I was, as usual, thinking about buying a new car.

Welp. I didn’t buy a new car. In fact, I decided I don’t want a new car — druther do the driving myself, thank you. So the car has been tooling along just fine ever since that initial diagnosis.

Yesterday as I’m was driving home from the FedEx office the radio cut out.

I figured it was time to buy a new cheap radio.

But…uhm…then the ABS light flickered on. And the thermostat said the engine was a whole lot cooler than it oughta be. The air conditioning gasped and wheezed.

Shut off the AC, opened the windows. The ABS light went off. Radio cut in and out. Shut off the radio.

Got stuck behind a moron on a two-lane road that I’d turned onto by way of avoiding traffic and construction. Knew there was enough room for the six-banger to get around the idiot, so FLOORED IT and flew past the bastard like an X-wing with a TIE fighter on its tail.

The poor guy in the oncoming lane apparently did not understand why one has a six-cylinder engine. He was visibly terrified…as in he almost climbed up on the sidewalk. Tsk.

After that blast of power revved up the engine, the radio came back on and the ABS light went off and things seemed to work OK again. But I left the AC off and drove straight back to the Funny Farm.

Problem is, both of Chuck’s master mechanics are out — one with an injury and the other because he and his wife bought and paid for a trip to a destination wedding five months ago. His shop is very busy under ordinary conditions — with three guys working, they have all they can do to keep up with the work. But summertime is when cars love to crap out around here. So their lot is overflowing.

I felt terrible to foist a repair job on him right at this moment. We should have changed out the alternator when we first noticed it was sickly.

Anyhow, because of the craziness down at Chuck’s, the car probably won’t be back on the road before tomorrow. That’s OK, because I’ve got plenty of food in the house and my son is back in town.

Unfortunately I went off and left my purse in the car, which was parked in the alley behind Chuck’s. We called down there to tell Harold to snag the thing. Haven’t heard anything from them to the effect that some bum already found it. So I guess it’ll be OK. Without a car, one doesn’t need a purse…

That was stupid. Don’t even know why I took the damn purse, other than force of habit. There’s a spare driver’s license hidden in the vehicle.

We drove back to my house in a Chevy Suburban. I was reminded of why I don’t want a new vehicle.

Here’s what I want in a car:

• To get from point A to point B with the least amount of hassle, expense, and distraction possible
• To drive the car all by myself
• To be reasonably safe — i.e., inside a car heavy enough to withstand a collision or a rollover
• To run trouble-free at least 100,000 miles
• To have a radio that brings in NPR and a cowboy station
• To possess an air conditioner that actually works. At all times.

There you have it. That’s it That’s all I want.

Admittedly, a functioning air conditioner…that’s asking a lot. My car has one of the old-timey functioning air-conditioners, one that actually cools the car and does not pretend to practice passenger-by-passenger “climate control,” and that is one reason I don’t want to give it up.

Here’s what I DON’T WANT:

• A car that nags me any more than the Dog Chariot already nags
• A car that tells me to turn left an eighth of a mile ahead
• A car whose windshield wipers turn on at the first hint of a raindrop
• A car that can sense a red light ahead and puts on the brakes for me
• A car that’s connected to the Internet in any way, shape, or fashion
• A car that doubles as a cell phone
• A car that arrogates driving functions unto itself
• A four-banger whose makers fool us into imagining is as powerful as a six-banger
• A course in jet airplane navigation to learn to use the dashboard

What I really would like is to keep the Chariot on the road until such time as I can no longer drive. By then, Google and Tesla’s self-driving vehicles will be past the first and second generations and so should be less of a headache to own than the first versions will be. I’d like to be able to trade the Dog Chariot in on a self-driving car that goes faster than 30 or 40 miles an hour, that can run on the open highways, and that will last until I topple over into the grave.

That, I figure, will keep me out of the nursing home by making it possible to get daily necessities and run to the doctor without having to hire a taxicab for the purpose.

I hope.

So the car broker dude got back in touch yesterday. Wants to know if I want to come over to his lot and view the 200+ vehicles he’s trying to peddle. I like the guy a lot and am sorely tempted to run straight over to his shop and buy something from him.

But…lookee here! Google is making great headway with its prototypical self-driving car. And I do want one of those. That thing is gonna keep me out of the life-care community and, with any luck, out of assisted living until I’m ready to shuffle off this mortal coil.

Happened to glance at the Dog Chariot’s odometer yesterday: 131,000 miles. And change. Hm. That car is 15 years old, far more antiquated than any vehicle I’ve ever owned.

Normally, I figure I put 10,000 miles a year on a car. But…

131,000 miles/15 years = 8,733 miles per year

And to what do we attribute this anomaly?

Looks pretty obvious to me: since I got laid of my job back in 2009 and no longer had to make a 40-mile round trip four or five days a week, I’ve been driving a LOT less.  Even when I was teaching face-to-face, it’s only a 24-mile drive to and from the college, and that was two or at most three days a week.

The 40-mile trip to Tempe alone added up to 10,000 miles a year (40 x 5 days a week * 50 weeks a year), although as a practical  matter I often worked from home; probably on average I really drove out there four days a week.

I think what this means is that since I “retired” to 60-hour weeks served almost exclusively at my own computer in a home office, my mileage has dropped enormously. In addition, because the car is so old, I no longer drive it out of town.

So…hm. I’ve been doing a lot of my shopping on the way home from my weekly meeting in Scottsdale and have limited the Costco trips to one a month. Assuming I drive out of the ‘hood to a more upscale Costco outlet, what do we have here?

It’s 24 miles RT to the Scottsdale venue; add 4 miles to that for a shopping trip that takes in Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, Sprouts, Walgreen’s, Safeway, and if need be a Staples, a PetSmart, a Fry’s, a Nordstrom’s Rack, and a FedEx office. Assuming I did that once a week — in fact, I don’t shop for all those things that often, so this will inflate the figures — that’s 1,400 miles in 50 weeks (there are two or three weeks when we don’t meet around the holidays).

It’s three miles to the church, but choir only meets about 9 months a year; so 6 miles per trip x (9 months x 4 weeks) = 192 miles. Hm. Am I making a mistake here? Can this be possible?

Okay, let’s add a trip to the credit union once a month, plus a couple of trips to errant Costcos: To the Costco on the 1-17 via the credit union is about 30 miles, RT. That would be 240 miles a year, right (30 x 12)?

How about a trip to the Mayo once a month, much as I hope never to see the inside of that place again? 50 miles RT. Actually, it’s unrealistic to think I’d have to go there every month; once a quarter would be a lot. So 50 * 4 = 200 miles a year.

Okay, let’s add an occasional junket around town: restaurants with friends, extra shopping trips, whatever: maybe 10 miles a week; that would be 520 miles a year.

That would put my base annual mileage at around 2672 miles per year (!!) assuming I’m don’t have to run out to the Mayo every time I turn around.

Chuck thinks the car will run at least to 150,000 miles; other guys at his shop think it should run to 200,000. Assuming Chuck, the grand old man of automobile mechanicdom, is right, that’s at least 19,000 more miles.

19,000/2622 = 7.2 more years in the vehicle’s life!

Can that possibly be right?

What if we figure I drive 5,000 miles a year, half of what I used to drive when I had a job and the car was spry enough that I felt safe driving it out of town?

19000/5000 = 3.8 years

That’s still almost four years. And if the car makes it to 200,000 miles (heavens to betsy!!) it could (in theory) run almost 14 more years! At 5,000 miles a year.

That’s assuming I keep it in good repair, keep throwing money at it, and never drive it very far.

There’s an outside chance these self-driving cars will come on the market in four or five years. If I’m still living in 14 years, they almost certainly will be available.

And that is what I want for the next car. A car that would drive me around town would moot about 90% of the reason for having to go into an old-folks’ warehouse. As for day-to-day care, it would cost one helluva lot less to have Gerardo come here every week and a cleaning lady or other caretaker come to the house every week — or even more often — than it would to pay four or five grand a month (or more!) to live in one of those places. One of those contraptions could very well make aging in place possible.

Keeping the Chariot is an inconvenience, of course. It has to be serviced more often than a newer car, and it’s pretty confining not even to be able to drive to Prescott or Bisbee. If it gets into a fender-bender, the insurance company is going to total it, and then I’ll be forced to hurry out and buy a car I don’t really want.

But…renting a car for day trips would barely register compared to the cost of buying a newer car. Insurance premiums are rock-bottom. Registration fees are negligible. And it runs like a proverbial top.

(Why are tops said to run so swimmingly? Mine always used to fall over…)

Images:
Toyota Sienna: Public domaiin.
Driverless Toyota; Google technology. Steve Jurvetson. Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.
“A Tough Gang of Spinning Tops.” Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

And I don’t mean Missouri. 🙂  Here’s a recent update on a very interesting technological development, the self-drive, self-park private vehicle.

This thing, if it ever comes to fruition, could present a partial solution to the huge headache America faces as its baby-boom generation ages away from independence. The biggest pressure to move oneself into a life-care or assisted care institution is loss of the ability to drive a car. And the reason for that is that in about 99.9% of American towns and cities, public transit is simply not a practical option.

Most of us wish not to be warehoused in a holding pen where old folks wait for death. It’s a horrible prospect, and those of us who know people who have enjoyed that treatment have seen the depression and decline that quickly follow admission to one of those places, which drain your life savings in exchange for sad living conditions and bad food. But for many of us, there’s really no other choice.

If you don’t live in a city like New York, which has more or less usable public transit, your days of living independently in your own home expire with your final driver’s license. A friend of mine, Tootsie, saw exactly that happen to her.

In her mid-80s, she ran a signal at a major intersection and, not surprisingly, someone crashed into her. No one was injured, thank goodness, but both cars were totaled. A few months later, she ran a stop sign in my neighborhood, apparently because she thought it was a four-way stop. It was not. The SUV that ran into her was, yes, totaled. Again, no one was hurt.

But the two accidents in close succession alarmed her kids so much that they insisted she get rid of the car, which, being the accommodating type, she did.

The result was dismal.

She lived just far enough away from her son that it was inconvenient for him to get to her place to help her and drive her around on errands — nor did he feel much enthusiasm for having to do so. He would go out there about once every week or ten days. Less, if he could get away with it.

Phoenix being a 100% automobile-oriented city, access to even the most basic necessities meant blocks of walking through heat that can reach 118 degrees in the shade. Heat radiating off asphalt and concrete can make your external car thermometer register numbers upwards of 125 degrees.

Public transit in Tootsie’s part of town was essentially nonexistent. She tried: waited 30 minutes before a bus showed up. I myself have stood for 45 minutes waiting for a bus in this town. Few bus stops here provide seating or shade structures — most people end up standing in the full sun or, if a nearby business or home has a lawn, sitting on the grass. Getting around on public transport here is extremely inconvenient for younger, fit people and out of the question for the elderly.

The city used to have a Dial-a-Ride service for the disabled and the elderly, but recently they discontinued access to it for people who were merely too old to walk far. Unless you’re in a wheelchair or on crutches, you can’t use that anymore.

This meant she couldn’t get groceries, she couldn’t buy personal products or pick up a prescription, she couldn’t take her ailing dog to the vet, she couldn’t get herself to the doctor unless her son or a friend drove to her home, picked her up, and schlepped her around town.

Trapped in her double-wide, she grew increasingly depressed and listless. When her daughter visited from Seattle, she was appalled to find the cupboards low on food and Tootsie’s normally spotless house disheveled. She persuaded her brother that their mother should be put in a care home, and within a few weeks, off she went to the Beatitudes.

This old-folk’s warren is one of the better institutes in town. But still…an institution is what it is.

Tootsie, who had a resilient and up-beat personality, at first bubbled on cheerfully about how grand it was to have someone else to do the cleaning and cooking. But it didn’t take long for the depressing aspects of imprisonment in a one-room studio inside a facility with locks on the doors to take effect. Within a few months, she lost interest in living, withered away, and died.

Personally, I’d rather take a flying leap off the North Rim of the Grand Canyon than die a day at a time in an “assisted living facility.” I am convinced that Tootsie would have lived longer if she had been able to stay in her home, and the quality of the last year or two of her life would have been infinitely better.

Being able to get to grocery stores, drug stores, and other routine destinations on her own would have made that possible.

That’s why I see the planned self-driving, self-parking car as a life-saver in more ways than one. It not only may save lives by avoiding collisions, it will keep older adults independent in their homes.

Obviously these things are going to be ludicrously expensive when they hit the market. But consider what a year in a life-care community costs: thousands of dollars a month. You can hire a lot of cleaning help and buy a lot of restaurant breakfasts and dinners for six or eight or ten grand a month. And you could realistically get there in a car that will chauffeur you to the restaurant while you kick back and read your Kindle. Even at sixty, seventy, maybe even eighty thousand dollars, a self-driving vehicle would save so much over assisted living that it would pay for itself within a couple of years.

And you might have a shot of living life and enjoying it for that couple of years.

This is one of the reasons I decided not to replace the aging Dog Chariot in 2015. Admittedly, it’s way down on the list of reasons…but it surely does register. The lightrail extension past our ’hood will go into service late this year or (more likely) next year. A station will be within walking or scooter-riding distance of my house, and the train will run down to the Ghetto Costco, passing a Sprouts, a Walgreen’s, and two other grocery stores, as well as to the upscale AJ’s market and to all the downtown entertainment venues.

If that strategy works — riding the lightrail to reach places that sell basic needs — it will extend the ancient car’s lifetime by a lot. Even before I retired, I only put about 10,000 miles/year on the tank. If some of those miles can be traveled on a train, then the 30,000 to 50,000 miles that Chuck thinks he can squeeze out of the Chariot translate not as three to five years but as maybe six to ten years.

By then, automakers may very well have functional self-driving vehicles to put on the road. 🙂