0 miles per hour. Stopped at the Stadium / Liberty light. Loooooonnnng light and just turned red for me. Plenty of time to take a pic.

19 degrees F. No comment.

16.7 miles on the trip odometer for the week so far. I reset this every Monday morning because I am a Nerd, not because I am tracking gas mileage. I don’t have a clue what mpg the Ninja gets and I don’t really care. Close yer eyes and pump. 100 years from now, we won’t be commuting via automotive vee-hickles or maybe we won’t be commuting at all. Hopefully the road infrastructure will be maintained well enough that people like me who *like* to drive will still be able to go out and drive. More likely, driving and owning a car will be the privilege of a few elite 1% automobile aficionados who will pay beaucoup bucks for speshul hand-crafted autos and to maintain certain scenic by-ways so they can drive them. That’s as far as I’ll go with my sci-fi book idea. You’ll have to contact my agent [snort].

Engine temp? Warming up but not quite there yet. No heated seats in this thing but they are cloth so it doesn’t really matter. Heated steering wheel? Hmmmm. I know they make those. Definitely snow-mos have them these days. I learned that from a snow-mo gal up at the brewery at Tahq in February when it was 20 below zero or whatever.

Gas-o-leen… The GG might say this is a full tank. It’s pretty good but I will top it off this weekend even if it doesn’t go below half a tank by then and it may not. I’m not afraid I’ll run out of gas. I just don’t like to get low enough that I have to make a stop on the way to or from work. For the record, I have *never* run out of gas. Ever. Once in the Jurassic Age, I was driving my cute little Ford Fiesta to the yooperland and I *was* very low on gas and the engine started sort of “stuttering” or whatever. Like I was out of gas. I got gas. I made it to the parents’ house. But I also hadn’t been out of gas. I was experiencing carburetor ice-up. Who knew? My old WWII pilot dad knew. It was a characteristic of that vee-hickle and boy oh boy it could be a pain in the *ss.

Cruise control: on. At least I think that that green “Cruise main” light says that it’s on. I think that means I can use cruise control if I want to. I have never used cruise control in the Ninja. To me, manual transmission and cruise control do not compute. What am I missing? That said, the last time I used the cruise control in any vee-hickle we’ve owned was the Exxon Tanker Valdez (1989 red minivan). I did not get along well with cruise control in that vee-hickle and I have not used it since in any vee-hickle ever. I would rather control my speed with my foot, not to mention my eyes and ears and instincts. It occurs to me that I could make some kind of a Cruz joke here but I’ll refrain.

Tachometer. I guess that idling at a loooonnnnng stoplight renders 1000 revolutions per minute. I don’t totally understand this (speak slowly I’m blonde). Brother [engineer], where art thou?

One more thing. That [grrrrr] yellow light? You know what that means don’t you? No, I doesn’t mean that I have a flat tire today. I could probably drive with that frickin’ light on for six months and not have a flat tire. On the other hand, I could run over a blasted nail and that light would come on because flat tire. I hate dashboard lights in general. I particularly hate those yellow lights that alert you to things that may or may not be a problem. If you are not mechanically inclined (or INTERESTED in maintaining your car in your driveway), you have to find someone to help you out. I have about 5,000 more words about this but I’ll quit while I’m ahead. You’re welcome!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 24th, 2015 at 5:55 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.