Driving a Prius

For New Year's I drove down to an old friend's house near Roanoke, Virginia. Tracy and I had worked at the Blacksburg Domino's Pizza in the mid-80's and have been best friends ever since. She is the only person from my Virginia Tech college days that I managed to truly stay in touch with. I visit her family every couple of years. Now that she is only 255 miles away, we can see each other more often.

Because Enterprise failed to honor my reservation the previous weekend for a mini-van (which I needed to pick up my dining room table from my friend Rashmi's house up in Laurel, MD), they owed me a free upgrade for my New Year's trip. I asked for a hybrid and got a red Toyota Prius.
I can't get over the mileage that thing makes. Although the on-dash system reported 47mpg (on average) for the entire trip, in reality it made closer to 43mpg. I'm not complaining, though. I only paid for about 12 gallons of gas for the whole 514-mile trip. Not bad! Especially since gas is about $1.55/gallon now.

The Prius is a great car. I could find only a few minor drawbacks. One was that I had no idea how to work the heating and A/C unit, so I just used the temperature up/down controls on the steering wheel for the first half of the trip. On the way back I discovered that the touch-screen LCD display in the middle of the dash has a page for adjusting the air flow. It's too bad the thing didn't have a navigation system. The monitor was there, after all.

One drawback to this little car is that the standard guages are displayed in green LED lights just beneath the windshield. This didn't bother me until nighttime. The green dash lights are so close to the window that they reflect onto the glass, directly in the driver's line of vision. It's not a show-stopper, but it would probably bother me long-term.

The other thing I didn't like was the center console. It has an 18" oblong lid that flips up from the front, so it's almost impossible to open while you're driving, as you have to twist your right hand under the latch and move to open it. Otherwise your arm is in the way.

And lastly, it has a push-button to start the car. It also has a push-button to put the car in Park. That takes some getting used to. The little tiny gear shift is funny - you slide it over and up for Drive, or over and down for Reverse. The knob goes back to its original position, though, no matter what gear you're in. And every time I turned on the power and tried to put it into gear, it would only go into Neutral. But rebooting fixed that problem. Every time!

So, yes, I recommend the Prius if you are cost- and energy-conscious. The low gas consumption is unbeatable. And it comes with a pretty decent sound system.

My trip was fun. I love Tracy's kids - they are 13 (Elizabeth) and 14 (Matthew) and are two of the best kids I know. Very personable, affectionate, and active in their church. We all went bowling on New Year's Eve, including Tracy's mom and a sister I hadn't seen in about 24 years.

I had warned Matthew that I'm terrible at bowling. I bowled a 69, a 70, and a 67. I hadn't bowled in years and had forgotten how much fun it is. Tracy asked me, "Is this redneck enough for you, Floozie?" (Old nicknames: Susie Floozie and Spacey Tracy.) She does live in a very redneck area - it's a mountainous area of southwestern Virginia called New Castle. Population: 172 people. Percentage of white non-Hispanics: 100%.

You see a lot of confederate flags in that area of the country. Most people own a truck (for deer-hunting) and have a gun case in their homes. Heck, even Tracy has a refrigerator on her back deck. (When her husband put that out there a few years ago for his beer and deer meat, Tracy just rolled her eyes. I told her then that she had officially become a redneck.) She's gotten used to it now.

The stories she tells me are great. We were in the car on the curvy, hilly road when Tracy was telling me about one old local guy who'd had so many DUI's that his license had been permanently revoked. So he rides into town on his riding mower, complete with rebel flag flying. We laughed hard about that one.

Back to the city for me! Happy New Year, all!