I'm Driving! I'm a Driver!

[Z%rø]

Of course as you know all too well, car ownership is mandatory for some 80% of the American workforce. The truth is that you didn't really have a choice and the anxiety about the financial insecurity that comes with that is perfectly understandable.

Originally I actually had a job that required me to drive, but eventually I got another job that allows me to work from home (for exceptionally shitty pay). So in theory the car isn't a necessity at the moment, but I think selling it and going back to 0 on that would be a bad step. There's something to be said for running errands for the family as well.

If the upkeep on a Premium-guzzling older Subaru gets egregious, I believe the conventional wisdom is "used Toyota Camry" since they tend to be simple and cheap to keep running.

So the problem is that the weather around here, 50% of the year, will fuck up a lesser vehicle. AWD/4WD is basically a necessity when shit gets buried under ice and snow. I'm not too mad about the amount going into it, because the car was still a pretty good deal. 2005 Turbo Subaru in pretty good shape for under bluebook with 161k miles.

My only actual regret about the vehicle is actually that it happened to be one of those rare vehicles that has some weird ass electronics configuration that means I can't replace the head/stereo unit without going in like $500 because I have to order a special part from Japan.

[mharr]

Bog standard bluetooth speaker stuck to the dash with putty then?

[Brantly B.]

I have a Bluetooth-to-FM adapter on account of the same situation (00s seemed to be a popular era for non-standardized, heavily integrated ESs) which works... okay. Android Auto is a requirement for my next set of wheels though.

[Z%rø]

I have a Bluetooth-to-FM adapter on account of the same situation (00s seemed to be a popular era for non-standardized, heavily integrated ESs) which works... okay. Android Auto is a requirement for my next set of wheels though.

Yep, that's what I use. And this is exactly my sentiments. Although I'd be fine with just a 3.5mm aux jack.

[Mazian]

My trusty but 26-year-old car has more repairs reasonably due in the next 1-2 years than it's worth, so I'm grumpily starting to look at replacements myself. I do take transit to work, but still need a car often enough that I can't eliminate it quite yet.

One option I'm exploring is ex-rental cars, a couple years old with 25-40k miles on them. Initially, in the compact-car segment, there seem to be quite a number of people that did well this way, and none yet with the sort of horror story that would go along with tales of what renters could do to a car. I imagine this is very category-dependent (asshole businessmen aren't going to rent Corollas for their repeated zero-to-100 testing) and location-dependent (bored teenagers aren't coming here for spring break).

[Grath]

I have a Bluetooth-to-FM adapter on account of the same situation (00s seemed to be a popular era for non-standardized, heavily integrated ESs) which works... okay. Android Auto is a requirement for my next set of wheels though.

I've been happy enough with just doing the Android-Auto-on-phone with a nice handsfree mount, although having it just take over the car's display (and have better integration with the car's buttons) would definitely be useful.

[Mongrel]

I don't listen to music ever when I ride, but even so I really ought to wire in a USB jack at some point.

[Thad]

My trusty but 26-year-old car has more repairs reasonably due in the next 1-2 years than it's worth, so I'm grumpily starting to look at replacements myself. I do take transit to work, but still need a car often enough that I can't eliminate it quite yet.

One option I'm exploring is ex-rental cars, a couple years old with 25-40k miles on them. Initially, in the compact-car segment, there seem to be quite a number of people that did well this way, and none yet with the sort of horror story that would go along with tales of what renters could do to a car. I imagine this is very category-dependent (asshole businessmen aren't going to rent Corollas for their repeated zero-to-100 testing) and location-dependent (bored teenagers aren't coming here for spring break).

The thing about rental cars is that, while their drivers treat them worse than an average used car, their owners treat them better. If you buy a rental car, you know it's had regular maintenance.

My wife's got a car that used to be a rental, and I've got one that used to be a fleet car for a business. I think both of them had about a year of use before we bought them. I can't complain.

[Mongrel]

To take the thread title slightly more literally than it usually would be, I finally got around to finishing off the portion of my driver's license for just plain old regular cars today.

I've had the second-last stage of "temporary" license for years now, which has no restrictions compared to a final full license, except of course that it expires eventually. Which it was finally close to doing. So it doesn't feel like much of a "milestone" or achievement or anything like that. But it's nice to have that out of the way.

It never mattered for insurance or anything else, because we don't own a car. Plus, since I've had the full bike license for well over a decade now (which are licensed separately from cars here, though you use the same driver's license for both), I'm still considered to be a driver with 15+ years of regular road experience.

It's always sort of funny to me how I came at driving all ass-backwards given that supposedly the motorbike license is ostensibly the more difficult and arduous of the two to get (not to mention being more costly in time and money). But I guess I grew up on two wheels and didn't have access to a car when I was a teen (rare for someone my age, but pretty common nowadays) and still have never owned one, so a bike's always felt more comfortable to me.

[atog]

tl;dr mongy just got his driver's licence

beep beep!

[Friday]

I'll warn the Prime Minister

[Mongrel]

We went down to Niagara (Niagara-on-the-Lake, specifically) today to see Starr's uncle, who was in town for a theatre festival.

On the way home, on the expressway downtown, one of those idiot crotch rocket bikers was zipping in and out of traffic doing 170 or whatever to show off to his girlfriend riding on the back.

Then his fucking muffler flew off and our rental car ate it, KDONK nom nom nom.

This is only funny because 1) It wasn't his girlfriend who fell off instead - there have actually been several cases of this over the years in the Toronto area, and 2) there is (thank FUCK) no visible damage anywhere on our car.

[Friday]

human beings never cease to amaze me with the whole driving like a maniac thing

like "oh man I'm in a metal cage going super fast surrounded by other cages of iron and death going super fast, but this BORES ME time to accelerate and then swerve and then brake and then swerve maybe if I am as erratic as possible the other IRON MURDER MACHINES will panic and crash into me, killing me instantly"

[mharr]

It's always fun having a crisis moment of existential clarity along those lines while staring at the fellow simian idiots flashing past in the other lane at 150mph impact speed. Meanwhile put me in front of a dozen pleasantly disposed adults moderately keen to hear my opinon on a subject and every cell in my body is convinced that death is only moments away, and also preferable.

[beatbandito]

My ride in got Corona'd hardcore today.

Normally I go in to the Bronx from west Suffolk to start at 7, so I leave by 5 and arrive a little after 6, 5:30 and I'd be late.

Today I had to get here at 9, 6:30 was the latest I could leave and still probably get here on time by any existing estimate. I left just after 6 to be sure and was here before 7.

[Büge]

The DeLorean Motor Company (that one, not that one) is releasing a new four-seat DeLorean model.

[Niku]

For someone (like me) who is very stupid about properly maintaining and looking out for problems on a car, are any of those things you hook up to your OBDL monitor or sit near your motor that connect to a smart phone worth using? Anything that doesn't have massive privacy concerns / subscriptions / stupid battery life that someone recommends? I'd like to have some kind of early warning indicator of what's going wrong or an indicator of WHAT'S going wrong when something inevitably does.

[beatbandito]

I got the cheapest thing on amazon years ago, and it still worked fine busting it back out last year. It takes power from the car so there shouldn't be any hardware issue. It does require a paid app, but you can go off-brand. I never found a truly free app, but both times I needed it the first one on the play store gave error codes with no details for free and I was able to find a technical manual online for my car that got me close enough to know what kinds of issues I was dealing with.