A year in the making

Well, I can finally say that I’ve known my car for a year. It was a year ago on the fourth of July that her and I first met. She was all wrapped up in syran wrap and had that new car smell. I went back to the dealer the very next day and signed the paperwork that made her mine. According to my mom she still does have that new car smell, but the girl has over 7100 miles on her as of today.

It seems just like yesterday that I was more anxious about picking her up and driving her to my friend’s summer cook-out showing her off. I remember when the dealership tried to deliever her to me with a scratch on the front bumper, and I remember showing her to Laura and having her be kind of dismissive (Which really sucked because I thought she’d at least be excited for me, but whatever)

I have learned a lot about my car and honestly about myself in the past year. I did have a wonder while driving to work today about whether or not I have truly learned how to drive a stick shift, or rather I have learned how to drive my car. I wonder if I just jumped in my friend’s Subaru would I drive it as smoothly as I do my car? Obviously there would be a period of time when I would adjust to the car, get used to when I should be shifting, the throw of the shifter, when the clutch starts to grab, but I wonder if I would drive it smoothly or if I would just become blatantly aware of any bad habbits I have picked up in the past year.

My present to her was a car wash, unfortunately due to the ridiculous heat that was around yesterday I didn’t get the chance to dry it so it would have an awesome shine to it. Now it has the obvious marks of water evaporating off of it which kind of bugged me a bit. I considered bringing it to the automatic car wash (the touchless one of course) just to have it washed again and then blow dried but my father said that no matter what, with the heat as high as it was, it was going to be the same way.

I’m planning on buying her some more stuff later one however she needs to get through the next weekend. Many of you don’t know this but I finally got an apartment closer to my job. Now instead of driving 152 miles a day, I will be driving 25. That will greatly save my cost in gas and obviously keep the wear on my car down. I’m going to debate whether or not to strictly take the back roads to work or stick with the Mass Pike (which I so dearly love as you can see from my past post)

Eh who knows. For now I just need to get everything order, do the 600 miles of driving and 4 days of work, and then organize my apartment as fast as possible.

Traffic Sucks.

Driving on the Pike.

I’ve kind of tailed off of this blog once again but with the anniversary of me buying my car quickly approaching I feel it is necessary to start up again. Personally, I’ve done a lot since the last post. I’ve graduated college on May 15th, got a job in Waltham, MA and started on June 14th. I’ve also hit 5000 miles and will be hitting 6000 miles on the drive home tonight.

Now the commute to Waltham is a bit hectic and that’s what I’m going to write about in this post. It is 76.1 miles one way, and with all the traffic going in and out of Boston during rush hour takes me 1.5 hours. If there were no traffic it would take a little over an hour. Driving a standard shift transmission car is hell in the heat of summer and gridlock traffic. I’ve learned a lot of things however, so let’s talk about those.

First, Don’t tailgate. This seems obvious but the urge is there because there is people who will force their car into the smallest gap you leave open. However, if you tailgate this obviously increases the risk of you hitting someone, but it also causes you to shift more. This is because normally the person in front of you isn’t driving a standard transmission, so they are going to move every inch they can because in their mind, that one inch is going to make ALL the difference in the world. By keeping your distance, when there is a burst of driving (Now driving in this traffic means getting your car up to 20 MPH), you’ll be able to make most of it without touching the brakes or having to downshift. For me this is awesome because it gives the clutch a little wind and time to cool down. My clutch burning was the biggest concern of mine and I’d often stress myself out to no end because of it.

This brings me to my second point. MUSIC! You’ve got to have it. I would recommend some happy songs, something that will calm your nerves. I have my iPod connected to my stereo with a playlist of like 80 some odd songs, most of them are songs that keep me happy and relaxed. This means that they are songs I’m probably going to start singing with, but really if I’m singing, it means I’m not tensing up about the people in front of me or paying attention to the sheer amount of time I’ve been sitting in one spot.

The third thing I’ve learned is that Semi’s aren’t the scariest thing on the road. They are very tame in traffic and typically try to keep their distance from the car in front of them. The thing you should fear most are SUV’s or women in expensive cars. The SUV drivers just simply do not care because they think that you will yield because they are bigger than you. Women in expensive cars don’t care either, they will typically utilize every inch of that cars braking system. I’ve seen a female driver slam on her brakes for no apparent reason while we were going 65. This caused me to swerve around her. If I had to pick a third thing to worry about, would be out of state drivers. These people could have been driving for hours and they could be very very tired and we all know that driving tired slows reaction time.

The two things I’ve learned to hate from this drive is Cell Phones and GPS’s. (GPSes?) The reason a lot of accidents occur in traffic is because someone is on a cell phone. Another thing is that once a GPS becomes hellbent on something it will constantly suggest a slower route just to get you back onto the way it wants you to take. I was trying to take a back roads way yesterday, and got through the part I wanted to take, and I figured it would calculate that there was a faster way, and go that way. Nope. It backtracked to the Pike. Essentially I moved one exit over. That being said there wasn’t anymore traffic so that was good, but it took me 1 hour 45 minutes to get home. Today I’ve mapped out a better way and hopefully it will be better.

I’ll do a post about 5000 and 6000 miles soon… I know I’m going to hit 6000 tonight but I only have a couple hours of relaxation before I got to bed, so I might not get to it tonight.

9 Months

It’s hard to believe that the year mark is approaching so very very very fast for my car. Not to mention that I am literally a month away from graduation, or that my car is closing in on 4000 miles. All of those facts are a bit exciting and scary at the same time. However with all that rush there has been an even bigger rush for me to find a full time job after I graduate. It kind of explains as to why I’m 10 days late on my 9 month post but whatever.

In the past month I have discovered something that I have been just kind of over simplifying. I have been pushing the clutch in when I am cruising to a stop, and instead of downshifting, or even leaving the car in neutral, I’ve just been leaving the clutch in and gliding. I’ve noticed that this is VERY bad because when you hit a bump, the car makes a weird noise. (This could have been my friends car that I was doing it however.) Either way now whenever I know I am going to stop, I put the car in neutral and use the brakes. The whole process is essentially a drawn out double shift, but hey it does the thing I want it to.

On other news, I highly recommend Meguiar’s tire cleaner. My sister told me about this stuff and I must say it is simply amazing. You can apply it to either wet or dry tires which is nice and all you have to do is spray the tires. They recommend not getting it on the actual rims so what I do is just spray it on the wheels, then wipe the excess from the rims with a paper towel or really just any towel. The results are amazing. You can pick up a can of this stuff at Walmart or Target, I believe I got it for 5 dollars at the Walmart near my University.

Looks like I don’t have any pictures of the after but I can attest that they do live up to the stuff they say.

Spring Break

Spring Break was kind of eventful for me and my car. First of all, I bought a new mount and a case for my GPS. The mount, which is from Best Buy, actually is pretty intense. The one I bought is made by TomTom, you can check it out here. I got both the case and the mount for a little over 33 dollars which was nice.

The Mount

I bought the new mount because the one that came with the GPS was simply inadequate. I would drive down the street and it would fall off of my dashboard. This happened so often that I eventually stopped using my GPS altogether because of the fact that I didn’t want to risk getting into an accident when the GPS comes flying off the dash and I tried to catch it. When I first mounted it I was very optimistic. The pictures below show what it looked like after I had mounted everything in the car.

This is the Front view.

This is the Side View.

I took this mount for a test drive three separate times, once was around my hometown, which was a rather bumpy road, once on a trip to UMass, and once on the Saturday of Break when my friends and I traveled down to Foxwoods.

Throughout the tests I have seen no troubles with it staying on the mount. The only time I have seen the mount on the floor of my car is when I leave it on the dash overnight, and I assume that this is because the weather has been going from rather warm to really cold and that is probably messing with the ability of the suction cup to hold its grip.

The Big 3000

So on Tuesday March 16th, My car hit 3000 miles. I was driving back from picking up God of War III (Which is easily the best God of War I’ve ever played) and purposefully took a longer route to get it to hit in a place where I can take pictures. This time it was in the Wilbraham Middle School driveway where I stopped and took the pictures.

Wrap it up

The Warm weather has been amazing to drive in, I am definitely noticing that I am getting a bit of a lead foot. I think the warm weather just makes me want to go fast and race and take fast curves and stuff. I’m a bit anxious to get my motorcycle out, well a working motorcycle. (I currently have two dead motorcycles which kind of blows.)

8 Months – For Reals this time

It seems just like yesterday that I had my dad drive my car back from the dealership, and then had to prove to him that I could handle the drive back. I remember he was trying to teach me to use the Parking brake when I am on a severe hill to prevent some serious rollback as I got the car going, and me ultimately failing miserably. I also remember my shifts from first to second be rough, my starts being high revs, all that fun stuff.

Well, I’ve gotten better I guess. I can easily do no gas starts, I can do rev matching with little to no problem, my shifts are smooth with the occasional little roughness. I would wager I am actually doing it a lot better than my roommate who has been driving a stick for his entire life. I think that he just stopped caring but either way his car is always bogging down, he is always throwing his passengers around.

6 Months with my Corolla, Wow time flew

Six months ago today, I was driving around with my dad stopping at a couple car dealerships looking for a car that was in my price range and something fun. I remember going to West Springfield after stopping at the Balise Ford dealership in Wilbraham. After looking at Nissan, Honda, we finally arrived at the Toyota dealer where Blueberry (as she’s been kindly named by my mother) was sitting all wrapped up. We noticed her right away. After a test drive of an automatic later (because my father felt that I should focus on the feel of the car rather than the driving of stick)

Well all I remember about the test drive was that I hated it. The car was unable to perform whatsoever, had no power, was shifting at weird places and just was a horrible drive. It felt like I was wasting my time but I asked to drive a standard version, if anything around the parking lot, and it was a lot of fun.

That being said, my driving has gone up and down. The last week or so, some of my starts have been rather poor. I rev the engine a bit too much. Smooth on the clutch but it’s kind of stupid for me to get the car up to 2000 rpm on a launch. I feel more comfortable driving it anywhere though, and I am no longer afraid of hill starts which is nice.

I have started to try actually rev match downshifting to get quick downshifts as opposed to putting the clutch in and letting the car naturally decelerate either through brakes or just cruising. That happened last night when  I was driving back from hanging out with my friend. I was doing something with my phone and felt that I was no longer going fast enough to warrant 5th gear so I did a rev-match downshift. Still have to get used to the idea of heel-toe but that’s probably something I’m going to wait until the summer where I have more miles on it and can make my own little race track which would warrant it.

Last night though was a lot of fun. When I was driving to a friend’s apartment to pick themup for the movie, there was a corner which had not seen sunlight since before the last snowfall. There was a good inch or so of packed down snow. I recognized it and realized that I had to slow down for it, but I still took the corner slightly fast and I intentionally kicked the back end out (which just was because I wanted to have fun) and the car showed me what it would do when it loses stability. This light on the dash started to blink like crazy and then the car made audible beeps until it got itself under control. On my way home though, I intentionally kept the tires spining, which wasn’t that hard. (I just left it in first and had it going around 2500-3000 rpms after the front wheels started spining) I wanted to see what the car would do, and the car didn’t really do anything. I guess it felt that I wasn’t really slipping or anything, but as soon as I shifted into second grip was restored and I would drive off.

I do love my car, I’m not going to lie. I’m completely surprised that it’s already been six months. So much has changed since then. However 6 months to the day I picked it up (Which was July 10th) is the day that I crashed my truck 5 years ago. Sure my parents are going to be happy about that little fact

Winter Driving in a Stick

So obviously this is my first winter with a stick. The first snowfall took everyone by surprise so I wanted to actually go out and drive a little bit. But I went out a bit too late. For such a light car it wasn’t slipping that bad. However when this big snow storm hit last weekend, I opted for the safer route and left my car at home until I go home for Christmas. But the next snow storm I am going to drive it around in a parking lot and just to see truly how it feels. It shouldn’t be too bad considering that it has a lot of safety technology built into it, such as if one wheel slips power is transferred from it to the other wheels and stuff like that. Don’t really want to mess with that stuff but I want to get a feel of what I should do when the car does slip.

Hitting 2000

Alright so I lost track of time and forgot to update this for a while. I was actually doing a web ticket and in it some dude was ranting about how he couldn’t log into his blog, and I was like Oh yea I should totally do that…

Either way here I am. Working the winter of OIT again, but that’s not why people read this so whatever.

It’s been five months with my car? Wow time sure has been flying with it. I still love every second of it. Got to take it out in its first snow fall a couple weeks ago, but then a bigger snow storm hit earlier this week when I was home and I decided to leave it at home and let it chill. I don’t really need it this week anyways (However it would have been very nice since I’m in desperate need of a hair cut and to finish some christmas shopping)

So what’s happened since the last post. Oh yea I hit 2000 miles. That’s probably the big one. I did it over thanksgiving weekend. And looking at some old pictures of it I am actually shocked. Not only did I do it three months to the day of hitting 1000 miles, I almost did it to the minute!

4 months with the Corolla

Alright so I obviously failed at doing the three month and four month on time. But that’s alright I’ve been very busy with my Super Mileage team and being able to pass my classes.

I just hit 1900 miles in the car, about to hit the big 2000 which is going to be kind of interesting. I do love the car still. I love that it does have a bit of a sporty feel while still being able to get 36 mpg.

Driving has not been that difficult. I’ve fully become comfortable with almost all situations that I’ve encountered. There has only been one that I don’t like and that is the intersection by Lederle. It is an uphill climb and for most of the night it is stop and go traffic. It was the first time in months I smelt the clutch after driving and ultimately it pissed me off. I’ve been trying my best to just flat out avoid that intersection.

More posts later.

Oh yea, I broke up with Laura and have been with this lovely girl named Becky for over a month.

Two Months with the Corolla

Yesterday I have had my car for 2 months.

The car has 1445 miles on it, it actually hit 1000 miles on my half-birthday which I thought was kind of awesome. I took a bunch of pictures of it but I haven’t uploaded them to anything but facebook and the quality isn’t that good there. So I’ll eventually get off my butt and upload them.

What have I done to the car recently? I bought a GPS for it. The Tomtom 730. It’s alright, the maps have been pretty good and the blutooth hasn’t really been extensively tested (I don’t really have anyone that I would want to talk to for extended periods of time except my parents and typically if I’m in the car I am going for a short drive, shouldn’t matter since i can transfer to the handset from the GPS I just haven’t really thought of it while driving hah) It’s really cool with some stuff, but again I haven’t used all the features yet.

I am thinking of getting the traffic subscription. Right now I haven’t run into too much traffic simply because I’ve known where I’m going and have a general idea of how to get around the center of Amherst, or Ludlow or that nasty bridge connecting Ludlow to springfield.

How am I driving now? Always a good question. I got pulled over for speeding a couple weeks ago. Driving my car is just a little too much fun that I kind of didn’t notice me going so fast. HOWEVER I got out of it (Bonus points)

I’m not really afraid of driving it anywhere. Hill starts still bug me, but honestly they will bug everyone. I’ve realized that my clutch is ridiculously light and that’s cool.

That’s basically it. Maybe a video and some pictures later. Ignore the password protected posts. You won’t get the password to em.