Shin the Homeowner (Prior)
Yeah, I own a house in the San Francisco Bay area. I just missed the anniversary of the date I purchased it, Nov. 1, 1981, and I hope it isn't too upset with me. Perhaps having a section of my website dedicated to this fine bit of paradise will make it feel better. Probably not as much as if I cleaned it up real nice, but it's a start.
This section has grown to include the house, the yard, the garage, the car and environs.
Last Update: November 6, 2024
The John Shinnick Web Site
Cruise control is another leap forward. Instead of just having the option of setting / resetting my speed at the speed I happen to be going, I could increment or decrement the speed in one or five m.p.h. chunks. Better still, if the car detects that I’m closing in on a car in front of me, it slows me down! Some might not like this, but I love it.
The handling is very nice, and I’ve gotten used to the smaller size. What I haven’t gotten used to is the gas cap being on the other side of the car. It was also a surprise when I first filled the gas tank that I had to push a lever by the door to open the hatch accessing the gas cap! It took me a couple of minutes to find that lever.
Keyless entry and ignition is getting easier. I told a friend I was visiting on the tour the problem I had with it. His solution was to simply keep the fob in my pocket. Duh. Old habits are hard to break, but I’m learning. I’ve got more buttons than I’ll have time to learn in this lifetime, but I’m learning them.
Like the Ford, I hope to realize some day that the car has given me 16 years and 200,000 basically trouble-free and economical miles. By then I’ll be 89 years old, and new car technology will be a moot point.
Imprezive
Last month’s main article was about me getting a sorta new car, a leased for two years 2022 Subaru Impreza. Actually, more of that piece was about my old Ford Escape. Well, it’s time to give an update on the new critter.
As you can tell from the main essay this month, the big news is that I managed to finally take the road trip I’d been wanting to take for quite some time. It all unfolded fairly quick – just a couple of weeks between my decision to actually do it until leaving the morning of October 10. Part of that was the realization that I simply didn’t trust the Ford to make the trip. It had already given me over 217,000 miles and I’d had the money tucked away to buy a new one for a couple of years. But then Covid hit and my Ford kept on running. But it was showing its age, and I went looking.
It’s always nice that when shopping for such an item, one jumps out and shouts “Me! Me! Me!” It’s not a hybrid, but still over 30 m.p.g. A bit small, but large enough to carry my gear from place to place. Not new, but new enough to have the various gadgets that I’d been wanting since they first became available after my Ford came out.
Of course, this meant that I needed to learn to drive all over again, and I needed to learn fast to hit the window I needed to hit for my road trip to happen. First off, while it doesn’t park itself like some new cars do, it has a camera that shows what’s behind the car, and adds graphics showing where the rear wheels are going and how much room they have in car body lengths. I hear a “beep” if there may be a problem. I heard such a beep when backing out of a parking space and couldn’t see into the road because I was parked next to a van. Great!
It also has blind-spot detection, something I’d really wanted since it first came out. I barely noticed it before I started my trip, but once on the highways and interstates, it was every bit the game-changer I’d hoped for. So much less neck-twisting when changing lanes.
The controls for working the radio are outstanding. While I can work them on the touch screen directly, there’s a means to channel-surf (I do that a lot) using a few buttons on the steering wheel. MUCH less concentration involved. Good news for my long trip, a three-month subscription to SiriusXM came with the car! Bad news, I didn’t think I had access to anything but their sales pitch until on the very last day I discovered how to access the actual stations. Oh well…
The same screen that displays the radio also displays my Google Map stuff. I still don’t like (or more likely don’t know how to use) Google Maps, but at least now I don’t have to use the kluge of a mounting device I made for my Ford. I’m still working with the interface, but I’m getting better with it.
Feeding my new car on the road was MUCH easier than doing it at home. This was Nevada, but it was like this until I got back to California.
