Blasting

Bachman Turner Overdrive - You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet 1974 Video Sound HQ
NEA ZIXNH

It's a nice day today, so I've got the windows down in my car, cruising up Highway 217 and this tune comes on the radio. Actually, YouTube Music via my smartphone and then through a headphone cable to the radio. So this tune comes on and it's a banger, so I wanna hear it loud. But I've got the windows down. Ever notice that nobody ever drives with the windows down anymore? Anyway, back to the radio. Can the radio handle it? And more importantly, can the speakers? I've dealt with dead speakers before (for example) and I don't want that. Unfortunately the only way to find out if they can take it is to turn up the volume, so I did. All the way to 35. Normally I'll have it around 15 or so when I am driving around in town, 25 MPH or less. On the highway with the windows up I'll turn it up to 20 to 25. This 35 business is uncharted territory, but the radio and the speakers handled it just fine. I think full volume on this radio is 40 or 50. Never tried it.

I think somebody spent a couple of bucks on the sound system before I got the car. The radio is a Kenwood with a detachable faceplate. It has one big knob that, besides turning like a volume control, it also acts like joystick to do I dunno what. I kind of learned a couple of things, but then I started using my smartphone and forgot all about the front panel controls. Now I use the buttons on the steering wheel. On the right side of the wheel I have buttons for the cruise control, which I use the heck out of. The stereo controls are on the left side of wheel. They allow me to changed the volume and channel and also mode. It has five or six modes (USD, CD, Radio, Blank/Inactive?, and Auxiliary, which is the one I use with my smartphone). So I no longer even have to touch the front panel.

Fun with Numbers

A couple of word problems told at Longbottom Coffeehouse today. The videos are not directly related to the text. 

Medicine

Skills Video: Programming an IV Pump
Student Nursing Organization at UNH

A nurse needs to administer 115 milligrams of a medicine intravenously over a period of 75 minutes. The medicine will be administered through a hypodermic needle via an IV line using a calibrated pump. The pump wants the rate in milligrams per hour. What do you set the dial to?

The problem can be taken as a proportion: X milligrams over 60 minutes is proportional (equal) to 115 mg over 75 minutes:

Multiply both sides by 60. 60 over 60 on the left side cancels out leaving X by itself. Notice that 60 and 75 have a common factor of 15, reduce that and you are left with 4 over 5, which is the same as .8. Multiply that by 115 and you get 88 plus 4.0 which comes out to 92. Closest setting on the pump is 88, so that's where you set it.

Driving

Acura TL 60-0 mph Braking Test
Born to Drive

You are driving down the freeway at 60 miles per hour following the car ahead of you at a distance of two seconds. (That is, you notice something by the side of the road that you can use as a marker. When the car ahead of you passes the mark, you start counting, one-thousand one, one-thousand two, until you reach that same marker.)

Trailing two seconds behind means you are 176 feet away. (60 MPH is equivalent to 88 feet per second, 88 times two is 176.) The question is - if the car you are following were to suddenly turn into a brick wall, would you be able to stop before you hit it?

For this I am going to pull out two of my favorite formulas:

• V = AT (Velocity equals Acceleration times Time)
• D = (1/2)AT^2 (Distance equals one-half times Acceleration times Time squared)

We know the Velocity (88 FPS) and the Distance (176 Feet). Will this be enough to solve this equation? 

Substituting Velocity for AT in the second equation will give us	D = (1/2)VT
Substituting what we know for Velocity and Distance we get	176 = (1/2)88T
Multiply	176 = 44T
Divide both sides by 44:	4 = T

So if we can brake to a stop within four seconds, we will not hit the wall, the brand new wall that just suddenly appeared in the middle of the freeway.

Okay, how much strain is that going to cause? And will our car be able to do that?

Go back to our old friend V=AT and plug in our Time and Velocity and solve for Acceleration, we find that we need to slow down at a rate of 22 feet per second per second, which is like two-thirds of one gravity, so it might be possible. A race car would certainly be able to do, but how about my Korean sedan? Google says:

When it comes to the 2008 Hyundai Sonata's braking distance, specifically from 60 mph, Edmunds review indicates it is quite good for its class, coming in at less than 130 feet.

So we should be good, assuming we are paying attention, our reactions are on a hair trigger, the road surface is free of any kind of friction reducing substances, like ice, oil, dust or debris. So, in the real world, if you wake up and get your brake applied in time, you will probably hit the wall, but you probably wouldn't die in this completely fictional situation.

Car Care

Accident on Highway 26

I have spent in an inordinate amount of time dealing with my car this week. Sunday I let my wife use it because her's was out of gas. I like to buy gas at Costco 'cause it's cheaper, but I don't want to go to Costco on Sunday because it's going to be mobbed. Let's wait and go on Monday, but she has someplace to go on Sunday so I let her use my car.

She runs her errand but when she comes back she informs me that the tags have expired and I need to get it fixed. I bought the car back from my son a couple of months ago and never bothered to get the title transferred, so I guess maybe it's time. So off to the DMV to get the title transferred. That takes an hour and a hundred bucks, but I can't get the tags without a DEQ (smog) test. So off to the DEQ I go. That only takes half an hour and $25.

Thursday I head to downtown Portland for a lunch meeting. This usually takes about 30 minutes. Yesterday it took 2 hours. Highway 26 eastbound over Sylvan can get creepy-crawly, but yesterday was much worse. I considered bailing out early but I figured any alternate route is going to be jammed with people avoiding this SNAFU, so I creeped and crawled at less than walking speed for over an hour till we got within shouting distance of the top of the hill and then the congestion suddenly vanished and we all resume charging headlong into the future. At the last minute I realized that the cars at the top of the hill (just over a half mile away) all had their brake lights on. Traffic on the other side of the hill might just be getting into regular creepy-crawly mode (20 MPH), or it might be another cluster-muck, but in any case I had had enough so I bailed out. Took me another half hour to get downtown, but at least I wasn't stuck in a giant traffic jam. There never was any sign of what caused the problem, but the internet knows (picture at top).

Today it's time to tackle the tags again, so back to the DMV I go. Wait 10 minutes or so to find out I need proof of insurance. I have a couple of insurance cards in my wallet, but they're both expired, so back to the house to root around in my files and finally find a couple of current insurance cards. Back to the DMV. This time it takes two hours and $200 but I finally get it done.

Along the way I stopped at UBAD to get a loose rocker panel fixed. The car was a rebuilt wreck when I bought it and this spring the paint on the hood was starting to peal, so I spent a $1,000 and got it painted and the entire car detailed. I think the loose rocker panel is another casualty of the original wreck. Anyway it's trying to fall off, so I stop at UBAD and Martin puts a couple of screws in it. It's not pretty, but it works so it's good enough for me.

I also bought a tank of gas at Costco for $50 and a car wash for $10.

Hillsboro Industrial Park

Driving from DMV to DEQ I took some back roads, just to see what there is to see. Northwest of town farmers are plowing their fields with giant tractors. I thought you needed a giant farm to justify a giant tractors. Well, from the city limits to the coast range, it's all farmland, so yeah, maybe they do need giant tractors. My route eventually took me back inside The Urban Growth Boundary and what a change has happened to this area. There are a dozen, maybe two, big buildings that weren't there last week. The place is going crazy. You can see where The Urban Growth Boundary is in the above satellite map. I don't know how old that satellite image is, but I suspect it's at least a couple of weeks old, meaning it's missing half a dozen new buildings or so.

More car news. I sold my truck. Bought it roughly 30 months ago for $25,000 and spent $1,000 getting the damaged tailgate fixed. Decided I didn't really need a monster truck. Yes, it's a Colorado which is supposedly a compact, but it's a crew cab with a 6 foot bed, so it's very long which makes it kind of a pain to park just about anywhere. Now the Hyundai has returned to my warm embrace, so I don't really need it anymore. I stopped at CarMax in Beaverton. It took 30 minutes from them to come up with an offer of $13,000.

That was disappointing so I thought I'd try selling it myself and placed an ad on Craigslist. There is a little check box if you want to receive text messages and I thought, sure, why not? All the cool kids are doing in now, right? Wrong. I started getting texts right away, but every single one was from a scammer.  I had one guy ask for my best price. I was getting annoyed with all this noise, so I bumped the prince up another $1,000. He writes back immediately, saying okay and promising a certified check. That certified check business is sure sign of BSMF. After a month I finally got a phone call about the truck. This is the first person to call about it and he bought it for $15,000. So, waiting patiently paid me $2,000. I'll take that. He paid with a cashier's check, which is more like a money order. And it was good.

So the truck cost me $9,000 to own for 30 months. I probably only drove about 10,000 miles, so roughly a dollar a mile. Kind of high being as a car, over it's lifetime, probably costs more like 50 cents a mile.

Today

Small, $2 retaining wall concrete block

Went to Lowes this morning to pick up some concrete blocks to reinforce a space next to the foundation of the new house. There is a step in the foundation and dirt had piled up against the wood that is sitting on the lower step. Osmany dug it out, but now we want to establish a 'no dirt' space between the foundation and hill so we don't have a repeat.

So I went to Lowes planning on buying 36 of these blocks. They are four inches tall by 12 inches wide. Two abreast they would stack up to six feet in height, which is what we need. I am hefting these blocks as I stack them on the shopping cart and I'm thinking they are five, maybe ten pounds each. I know I have a hard time gauging how heavy things are. If I can pick it up, it's light, if I can't, it's heavy. Along about the time I've got two dozen loaded on the cart I glance up at the label and notice that each one of these blocks weighs 24 pounds. That's a different kettle of fish. I decide that maybe I ought to do this in two lots. I don't want to load the cart up so much that it becomes unpushable. I'm loading the blocks in the trunk and I'm calculating just how much 27 blocks weigh (650 pounds) and I think maybe I should load some of these in the back seat so the tail end isn't dragging on the ground and that's when I notice that the right rear tire is looking a little low. Very low, actually. So I decide I should deal with that first, so I drive home, fire up the air compressor, pump up the tire and drive to the new house.

Osmany showed up a few minutes later and we unloaded the blocks. He carries four at a time down the stairs. I head to Lowes to pick up the rest of the concrete blocks and some three inch plastic pipe and fittings so we can redo the rain drain so it is below grade.

I also pick up a roll of tape. One of the joints in the old rain drain was put together with some kind of plastic tape. The joint is still secure after 40 years (presumably), so that must be some pretty special tape. It looks and feels just like the plastic used in contractor's trash bags. Looking in the pipe goop section I find two kinds of tape. One is sold out, so I buy one of the other.

Now that Osmany is supplied, I can go to Les Schwab to get the leaking tire fixed. It takes them awhile but that's okay, I've got Master and Commander with me so I am glad it takes them a while. Then they tell me that my tires are bad and should be replaced.  I vaguely remember hearing something about that the last time I was there, and they only want to replace two tires for a hundred bucks each so I say go ahead.

Now I head over to Jack's house to borrow a hydraulic jack and he shows me something amazing.

Jack pushing magnets around on his welding table

He wanted some stronger magnets to hold his clamp to his welding table. It looks like he found some.

Car Wash Troubles

Car Wash from Far Side artist Gary Larson

When I was kid, I thought the automated, drive thru car washes were the cat's pajamas. We probably only went once, they cost money you know, but evidently it made an impression. Since I got married, and appearances are important to SWMBO, and I had more than two nickels to rub together, I started using the local car wash, which made my inner ten-year-old very happy. Not so my daughter. Girl can travel the world without having to call home, but can't go to the car wash without her pappy. Now I know why.

I've never been very good about keeping my cars clean. As long as they ran, that was enough. I did thoroughly clean a few cars, but that was usually because I was putting them up for sale.

Anyway, I seem to have had more than my fair share of problems with Kaddy Car Washes. I took our SUV there a few years ago and once I got fully into the car wash tunnel, water started pouring in. What the heck? Seems that somebody closed the sunshade but had forgotten to close the sunroof all the way. The wet interior was the least of my problems. Seems that sunroof mechanism is kind of delicate, and it wasn't up to the task of closing while the overhead brushes are beating on it. It closed, but something in the mechanism broke and now it won't close completely anymore. I have it propped up with a couple of wood blocks.

A few months ago I took my car to the car wash. I heard a bang, it seemed to come from the car in front of me, a late model Toyota Prius. They stopped the car wash to fix the problem, and then they restarted it. A few seconds later my car is where the previous bang came from and now something is beating the tar out of the side of my car. Seems a big rotating brush had snagged the side view mirror of the car in front of me and ripped it clean off. When my car got to that brush, the mirror assembly was still caught in the brush so every time it went around, my car got beat.

Kaady did right by me, they paid to have the body shop fix it and paid for a rental car for me to use while mine was in the shop. Cost them $2,000. They also gave me a bunch of passes for free car washes.

2016 Mazda 3 Roof Trim

Yesterday, my daughter comes by and she wants to get her car washed. Usually her husband washes it by hand, but he is tied up with work, so she's going to help him out. So we go to the car wash. Halfway through there is a big bang. We look at the car afterwards and don't see anything. Once she gets home her husband takes one look and notices that one of the trim strips that line the edge of the roof is gone. I managed to retrieve the trim strip from the car wash. It is a piece of aluminum with some plastic clips to hold it in place and at least one of those clips is broken / missing. So we are going to have to find a new way to attach it. I think a generous application of silicon sealer will do the trick.

I could holler at Mazda and Kaady, but being as the damage easily can be repaired, it's probably not worth the hassle. Mazda and Toyota may want to try making their cars more car wash resistant. I mean, a car wash brush shouldn't be able to rip things off of your car. Or maybe Kaady needs find some snag free brushes. Or they need to ban me from their car wash.

Hyundai Alternator, Again

Cutaway drawing of Alternator

It appears that the alternator has crapped out on the Hyundai again. It failed several years ago. They warned me at the time that there was an oil leak right above the alternator that I should probably get fixed. Not too long ago I took the car in for an oil change and ended up with half of an engine overhaul. One of the things they were going to fix was this oil leak. Didn't. Couple of weeks go by and it's pretty obvious from the smell and from the fresh oil covering the alternator that they hadn't fixed the leak. Turns out the valve cover was cracked. The car was in a front end accident before I got it, so the valve cover might have gotten hit in the accident, and gotten hit hard enough to start a crack that has gradually grown until it has become a real problem.  Or it might have been a flaw in the casting that was there from the beginning.

Whatever. They Fed-Ex'd a new valve cover in and replaced it, so the oil leak is fixed. However, it appears that the spirit of the alternator has gone to alternator heaven and its earthly remains will have to be removed and a new, live, alternator installed in its place.

Which got me thinking about tow trucks. (Cars break down and sometimes when than happens you are left stuck and you have to call a tow truck.) When I was younger, say 40 or 50 years ago, nobody ever called a tow truck. Nobody's car ever broke down, or if it did, you fixed it yourself, you didn't call for a tow truck, those things cost money! Nowadays I don't hear people complaining about the cost of a tow truck. My last run-in a couple of months ago cost about $100, which is chunk out of my weekly allowance, but not all that bad.

So what I am wondering is - have people in general quit complaining about the price of tow trucks, or do people still complain about the price but I just don't hear about it because I don't hang around with those folks (because I'm old)?

Update: next morning. Just started the car to take it to the shop and the red battery indicator was out. Checked the voltage at the battery and it was 13 point something, so the alternator is back on the job. The check engine light is still on, so something is not right. The Hyundai expert at my local repair shop had a heart attack last week, so they aren't going to be able to look at it till Monday. I guess I'll keep driving it and pray it doesn't die and leave me stranded and looking for a tow truck.

Bad User Interface

From the 2008 Hyundai Sonata Owners Manual:

Dome Light

Interior Light - The interior courtesy light has two buttons. The two buttons are:

• DOOR - In the "DOOR" position, the interior courtesy light comes on when any door is opened or when a door is unlocked by the transmitter. The light goes out gradually 30 seconds after the door is closed. However if the ignition switch is ON or all vehicle doors are locked when the door is closed, interior light will turn off even within 30 seconds.
• ON - In the "ON" position, the light stays on at all times. 

---

The dome light didn't come on when I opened the door. What's up with that? The map lights work, and when I push a button the dome light comes on. The dome light I notice has two buttons, but only one bulb. Both buttons have the same effect: they turn the light on. Are there any markings that might indicate what these two buttons are supposed to do? Well, yes, there is. I can feel that there is something embossed in the buttons, but I cannot see it from where I am sitting in the front seat and given my eyes I would probably need a flashlight and my reading glasses along with some contortion in order to make then out. So I downloaded the manual. I still have to sort out which button is which, but now that I know what they are supposed to do, I should be able to handle it.

The $2500 Oil Change

Hyundai V-6 with Timing and Valve Covers removed

Took the Hyundai in for an oil change and to have someone look at the brakes. Picked it up this afternoon. The bill came to $2500. Seems there were a couple of silent problems hiding under the hood.

We'll start with the usual suspects. The brakes were making funny noises a couple of days ago. They were making the screechy sound you get when the disk brake pads have reached the end of their life, but it was kind of random, it wasn't happening just when I stepped on the brakes. It would start and then I would turn the steering wheel a fraction and it would stop. Then I would turn it the other way and it would start up again, and then it just quit. That would have been the end of it, but it pulled exactly the same stunt a month ago, and now it's due for an oil change, so let's take a look.

Turns out the brake pads had reached the end of their life so they get replaced, and since there's a factory in Asia churning out new rotors for a buck and half a piece, the rotors get replaced as well. Used to be standard practice to turn them on a brake lathe, but that was then and this is now and I don't know if anyone turns brake rotors anymore.

Then there was the leaking valve cover. This leak is probably what killed the alternator a couple of years ago, and that cost 7 or 8 hundred dollars to fix. We don't want to have to do that again, so let's get this leak fixed. While they are in there poking around they discover that the timing cover gasket is also leaking. Fixing it requires disassembling half of the  car. That was what jacked up the price. Since we are inside the timing cover, they also replaced the water pump because that is where water pumps live now. The car has 100,000 miles on it and while the water pump might last the life of the car, it might not, and it's the cheapest part of this deal, so they replace it as well.

So, lots of new stuff:

• oil & filter
• brake pads and rotors all around
• water pump
• spark plugs
• engine air filter
• cabin air filter
• valve cover gasket
• timing cover gasket

There were probably some other new bits in there as well. The car has 110K miles on it, which is pretty low for being 10 years old. I got a new set of tires for it earlier this year, so it ought to good for another five years or maybe even ten. I hope.

Head-light-bulb replacement 2008 Hyundai Sonata

High beam bulb with electrical connector attached. See the little silver tab at the top of the opening in the black plastic connector? Push that to release the bulb. A screwdriver works well for this.

Headlight burned out on the Hyundai. This happened once before so we should be able to fix it easily enough. The bulbs are concealed under black plastic cups, that much I remember. Getting the cup off is easy, and getting bulb out of its socket is not too bad. It's held in with a little spring wire rat-trap arrangement. Just push down and to one side and off it pops. 'Down' actually means towards the front of the car, and 'sideways' means up. It just depends on your orientation. Bending over the front of the car and hanging your head down till you are looking forward is the only way you can see anything. Now all we have to do is pull off the electrical connector. Easy, once you figure out that you have to push the little metal tab. We pick up a new bulb at Freddies and plug it in, but it doesn't fix the problem. The headlight is still burned out. That was Sunday evening.

Headlight bulbs, low-beam on left, high-beam on right

Today I took another look at the problem. Problem is that it is the low-beam bulb that was burned out and we replaced the high-beam.  Doh!

Lightbulb bases, lowbeam on left, highbeam on right

High-beam and low-beams have separate covers. The low-beam cover is a little more difficult to get off, but not too bad. I'm working on the passenger side bulb. Unclipping the radiator overflow tube and pushing it to one side improves access. Getting the light bulb out is not too bad, a little wiggling, a little jiggling and out it comes. The connector on this one just slides off, no secret handshake required.

Low beam compartment, rat-trap sprung, electrical connector pulled loose, bulb removed.  We're looking at it upside down. The windshield washer filler cap is the blue thing in the lower right corner.
The red 'wire' is actually the hook from the bungee cord I employed to hold the wires out of the way. See the two little prongs sticking up just to the right of where the yellow wire disappears? The tab on the base of the bulb goes in between these two prongs.

But now, getting the bulb back in place, that's another story. First step is do not connect the electrical plug first, save that for later. The rat-trap spring is a nice, cheap, secure way to secure the bulb, but when it's not doing its job, it wants to get in the way. Push it gently to the side. Since it is cheap, it sometimes wants to jam and and not swing all the way clear. A little wiggle and jiggle helps here. And hope it stays there. Any breath of air will cause it to swing back over the hole and block your way. Now, without breathing, slide the bulb into the hole, paying attention to the tab on the bulb base and the prongs on the socket. When you have it in position, now you can swing the rat-trap over and press down (forward) and down (down) to latch it.

Low beam bulb in place, rat-trap secured. Wires still hanging out. The two prongs mentioned above are visible on either side of the electrical contacts on the base of the bulb. Note that the bulb doesn't actually go in the hole, it just sits on top of it.

Got it all plugged in and tested it and it works, but now the high-beam, the one we replaced on Sunday isn't working. Guess I have some more work to do.

Tools I used: droplight, mirror, screwdriver, bungee cord.

There are several videos on YouTube that cover this same subject. One of them advocates removing the entire headlamp assembly. That is a more straight forward approach and probably a lot less fiddly. Your choice. The video has some good close up shots of all the nasty little bits, so it's worth viewing even if you don't decide to do it that way.

Details

Headlight Connector for 2008 Hyundai Sonata with a rectangular opening where the little black tab used to be.

Broken Tab from Headlight Connector for 2008 Hyundai Sonata

Headlight burned out on the Hyundai. Okay, open the hood, remove the little round cover off of the back of the headlight capsule and pull off the connector. Hmmm, doesn't want to come off. There's a little black tab on the side of the connector, push on that. Grr, not moving, push harder. Okay, the catch releases and the connector comes off of the bulb, but the little black tab has broken off. Oh well, next time this happens I'll just have to use a stick to push on the tiny metal tab that the black plastic tab was pushing on. Assuming the car lasts that long. It's eight years old now. Is it going to last another 8 years? It might. My Dodge Dakota is 17 years old and it's still going strong. It's getting a little raggedy around the edges, but it runs and drives fine.

2008 Hyundai Sonata

Difference in paint is almost undetectable

Difference in paint is obvious. Yes, it's the same car.

I didn't notice the difference in the paint until I started comparing this picture with the other two.

Bought this car so my daughter would have a way to get back and forth to work. She started making payments, but then she ran off to Argentina. That meant I had two too many cars. If you are driving old cars, a spare is a good thing to have, but one spare is fine, I don't need two. So I unloaded Chrysler Sebring, the infamous. It had developed several minor but annoying problems, plus I could sit up straight in the Hyundai.
    The Hyundai was rebuilt from a wreck. I bought it from my mechanic. He tells me it was rebuilt from a parking lot crunch. Hard to believe that a parking lot crunch would result in a car being declared a total loss by the insurance company, but then insurance companies have their own skewed way of looking at the world.
    The car looks fine except if you look at it at the right angle, you can see that the paint on the front of the car is slightly different than the paint on the rear. It's really kind of weird, but it only shows up at the right angle, and even then the difference is slight. But it makes me wonder. If this was just a parking lot crunch, how come they had to paint the whole front half of the car?
    The dashboard makes little creaking noises every now and again which makes me wonder if something got screwed up in the wreck and now the bits don't fit together quite right or something. But it might just be the nature of plastic dashboards in Hyundais. Hasn't gotten any worse and it still rides very smoothly, so I'm not worried about it.
    The car has been pretty reliable, except for that episode with alternator. When I picked the car up from the repair shop in Seattle they mentioned that one of the valve covers had a slight leak, oil from this leak was dripping on the alternator and this might have contributed to the alternator failing. I wondered why they hadn't fixed the leak since they were working on the car anyway, but they don't seem too concerned about it and I had a long drive ahead of me, so I took off.
    When I got home I took it to my mechanic. His verdict was that the leak was too small to worry about right now, but when the car gets to 100,000 miles, it is going to be time to replace the spark plugs, and since you have to pull the intake manifold (!?!?) to do that, then would be a good time to fix the leaking valve cover. So replacing the plugs, which I used to be able to do myself for $10 in parts and an hour of my time, is probably going to run $500.  Fortunately, it only needs to be done once every ten years or so.
    It has a Kenwood stereo with a removable faceplate. The audio is okay, I guess, but the controls suck big time. The power button is just underneath the faceplate-release-button. You have to be careful turning it off or on or you are liable to have the faceplate in your hand. The other controls on the faceplate are useless for me. There is one big knob that also works like a joystick and half a dozen buttons. I tried to figure them out once or twice, but then I found that there are controls for the radio on the steering wheel. The controls on the steering wheel allow you to control the volume and the tuning. That's all I really need. They are very simple to use. There are six buttons and they each have their own function. They are easy to tell apart because they all have little features that allow you to identify them by touch. There is no night light on the radio, or it's not hooked up, so at night you can't see where the power button is, which can be problematic, as mentioned.
    I don't know what is with the front door, but it seems to be the wrong size or the wrong shape or something. You want to swing the door out of the way when you are getting out, but if you push it open as far as you can easily reach, it isn't open enough, and if you give it a push so it opens all the way, it's too far. Maybe the doom-a-flatcher that regulates the door is too long, or the detents are in the wrong place or something. Or maybe I'm just old and fat.
    The car has a sunroof. I doubt I will ever use it. After my experience with the Endeavor I am seriously considering disabling it. Actually, the car manufacturers should put in a switch that automatically closes the sunroof if you close the sunshade. What happens is that you're driving along on a nice sunny day and you want to enjoy the sunshine, so you open the sunroof. After a while you start to get hot, so you close the sunshade, but you forget about the sunroof. Then you decide to go to the carwash and when water starts pouring into the passenger compartment you try and close the sunroof. Due to Murphy's law, this usually happens just when the big overhead rotary brush is scrubbing the roof. The little wheels and levers that allow the sunroof to slide back and forth are relatively delicate and not up to repelling the big, strong brush, so they break and now the sunroof won't properly close. The problem is worse with the Endeavor because it is tall enough that you can't see the sunroof when you are standing next to the car.
    The neatest thing about the Hyundai is that the speedometer goes to 160 MPH. I doubt whether I will ever see the North side of 100, but it's kind of neat that Hyundai would put a speedometer with numbers that big in this car.
    I picked up daring daughter, O-man and their six suitcases (2 small, 4 big fat ones) from the airport Tuesday, and we all fit in the car, though one of suitcases had to sit in the back seat. Now that diligent daughter is home from her sojourn in Argentina, it looks like I will be back to driving my gas guzzling truck again.

The $800 Alternator

2008 Hyundai Sonata

Last weekend darling daughter took the Hyundai and drove to Seattle for a friend's wedding. She took a girlfriend with her so we weren't worried. As they were leaving their hotel in Bellevue (home of Microsoft), the car lost power and all the lights on the dash started flashing, so naturally enough she called home. Mom got her the number of a towing service. The tow truck, with a woman driver, appeared directly and took the car to a repair shop. The girls called Uber and got a ride to the wedding. They missed the ceremony, but they got there in plenty of time for the reception.
    Sunday they caught the Bolt Bus to Portland, and girlfriend's boyfriend gave them a ride home. That was a pleasant surprise. I fully expected that we were going to have to drive to Seattle to rescue her, but no need. I guess my little girl is all grown up. Mostly, anyway.
    Monday I call the automobile repair shop (dutiful daughter brought me a business card). Yes, they have the car, and if I agree to a diagnostic charge of $150, they will take a look at it. $150 might be seem a bit steep, but since I was able to deal with this from 200 miles away and I didn't so much as have to open the hood, it sounds like a deal. It didn't hurt that Jason, the man on the phone, sounded organized, competent and knew which side his manners were buttered on.
    Tuesday I get the diagnosis. The alternator is kaput. They can replace it. The total bill will be $700 and change, which includes the charge for the tow. Once again the bill seems a bit steep, but this is the first time that this car has needed a repair. Besides, it's in Seattle, what am I gonna do? Drive up there and work on the car in their parking lot? Just the thought of driving to Seattle squashes that notion. We won't mention that the repair shop would probably not look kindly on my working on my car in their parking lot, nor will we  mention that it's a friggin' front wheel drive car with a V-6 engine, which means removal and replacement of the alternator will probably require the skills of Houdini. So, yes, go ahead on, fix the car and I will pay the bill.

    Now I need to start formulating how I am going to retrieve the car. One of the girls could drive to Seattle with me and drop me off, but that seems like a big waste of effort. Besides, they have plans, and driving to Seattle is not in them. That leaves public transportation. Flying would be like $200 and I still need ground transport on both ends. Amtrak has a business class seat for $80-odd, or I could take the Bolt Bus for $30. We're already into this debacle for a small fortune, let's see if we can minimise the damage. Bolt Bus it is.
    Wednesday I have things to do, Thursday I'm too frazzled to handle an expedition, so Friday it is. There is a bus at 8:30 in the morning, but because I have stalled and delayed, that one is sold out. The next bus is at 11:30. That's better, lets me take my time getting ready.

Bolt Bus

    At 9:30am daring daughter gives me a ride to the local Max Station. I arrive at the Bolt Bus stop in downtown Portland at 10:30am. There are already a dozen people lining the wall of the faceless building on Salmon between 5th and 6th. I stop in at Jimmy John's, buy an ice tea and read my book for half an hour, then I go back and join the group on the corner waiting for the bus. Buses come and go, but most of them are city buses and none of them are Bolt Buses until we get one about 10 minutes after 11, but it doesn't stop. Hey, bus! Where you going?
    This drags me out from around the corner and now I see a line of people stretching all the way down the block. Starting to get a little antsy. Where's the friggin' bus? And then it shows up. It stops right by the A-frame sign sitting on the sidewalk and does that little kneeling trick where it lowers the front step down to curb level. A man dressed in gray appears in my field of vision (where'd he come from?), walks up to the bus, the door opens and he talks to the driver.
    Okay, time to start loading. The man in gray opens the doors to the luggage compartment. There is something wrong with the first door, it doesn't want to stay open. He fiddles with it. The driver has come out on the sidewalk. He makes an announcement, but he isn't loud enough to be heard, so everyone converges on him. All the A ticket holders get on first, then the B's, and lastly the C's. That's me, tail end Charlie. I get on the bus and I see that there are plenty of seats available near the front, which surprised me. They are all aisle seats and the adjacent window seats are occupied by women. There is a black woman in the seat right behind the driver, I could have sat there but I am befuddled. It takes me a couple of seconds to choose. I find one a couple of rows back next to petite, middle aged white woman. Should be safe enough. I sit down.
   The bus has Wifi and the woman next to me made full use of it. The driver made several announcements during the trip and surprisingly he was very clear. Every other time I've been on a bus, the driver has sounded like a graduate from the mumble bumble school of enunciation, i.e. totally incomprehensible.
    I do believe the bus is roomier than a Boeing Dreamliner. Perhaps because I was only on it for four hours instead of a 9, but I was able to easily get stuff out of my backpack that was sitting on floor. I tried to catch some Z's. The seats recline, but when they recline my head tilts back at an uncomfortable angle. With the seat upright I could rest my head against the headrest comfortably. I slept a couple of times. Both times I woke myself up with a snore. Nobody beat me.
    I chatted with my seatmate briefly. She was going to visit her boyfriend. They are both divorced, both were married for about 15 years, and they have 7 children between them. They were going to visit his father and I joked that it must be getting serious.
    You'd think that Washington, being a biggish state, with a big, important city like Seattle, would have a bunch of roads, but it doesn't. Our route took us up Interstate-5 which runs through Olympia and Tacoma. Between these two cities I-5 is hemmed in on the south side by JBLM (Joint Base McCord-Lewis, a giant military base) and Puget Sound on the north side. It is effectively the only road so everyone uses it, which means it is totally jammed all the time.
    In Seattle, the bus dropped us at city-bus-central in downtown. My plan says take the 554 Issaquah express to Bellevue. I look around and see a sign for Bellevue that points down the stairs. There are two sets of stairs, one on either side of a central pit full of buses and trains. You don't want to go down the wrong stairs. I find the bus to Bellevue, but it's the 550, not the 554. The 550 driver tells me I need to go back upstairs. I do and I eventually find the sign for the 554, about 50 feet along the sidewalk from where I started.
    Buses come and buses go and here's a bus extending a wheelchair lift that was concealed under the front steps. It deposited a tiny misshapen woman wrapped in a puffy green parka. She managed the joystick on her chair well enough and was soon rolling down the sidewalk.
    Now I hear someone hollering off in the distance. It sounds like "no". I look around but see no sign of trouble, but the hollering continues a couple of times a minute. Eventually the perpetrator comes into view. He stops and looks at a sign on a post and hollers "no". He wanders along and stops at a scraggling looking bush and hollers "yes". Okay, we've got some variety now. This continues on. Nobody pays him any mind, and he doesn't appear to be bothering anybody, other than with his hollering. It takes him a long time to get out of earshot. Or maybe the bus rescued us.
    The Seattle Transit System web site said the fare would be $5, the sign at the stop says $2.50. I offer the driver a $5 and a $1 to take me to Bellevue. Eastgate?, he asks, when I agree, he asks for a dollar, which I dutifully feed to the machine.

SounderBruce/Flickr

    It's a bendy bus and it's full, so I'm standing. When the bus goes around the corner something weird happens to my feet and I realize I am standing right on the joint in the middle of the bus so when the bus bends, my heel and toes go in opposite directions.
    The bus immediately gets on I-90 eastbound and my stop is the second one. I am the third one off the bus. Turns out half the people on the bus are also getting off here. 'Here' is at the top of an exit ramp where it meets an overpass. The bus crosses the intersection and heads back onto the freeway. We wait for the light to change and then start the march to the parking garage and transit center on the north side of the freeway. Everyone except me takes the catwalk to the garage and the stairs four stories down to ground level. I keep going up the hill and then down and around and in 30 minutes I am at A & M Auto Repair, there's my car, and there's Jason. Big sigh of relief.
    Not relishing getting into the rush hour traffic heading south on I-5, I ask Jason if there is another route and he tells me about highway 18, about 20 minutes east of here. I've accomplished my mission, I'm not on a schedule, let's go for a drive, so I head east.
    The Cascade mountains start immediately. Traffic is heavy, but flowing steadily. I see signs for some towns I've never heard of, but nothing about highway 18. Not to worry, it appears at the appointed time along with a line of cars stopped in the right hand lane, and we are still a mile from the exit. Well, I'm not doing that. As I drive by the exit I can see highway 18. It heads south in a straight line and it is packed with cars all the way to the horizon. I might have to drive to Spokane, but at least I'll be alive, not dying in some god forsaken arterial clog.
    I press on east. Now we are really getting into the mountains. They have really gone to a great deal of trouble to put this road through here. There is one place where the westbound lanes are separated from me by a good quarter mile. They go along the base of near vertical cliff face that has shed big pile of rubble that covers the bottom part. The eastbound highway is built on pillars that are planted in this rubble. It looks like the most unstable kind of construction, I mean standing concrete pillars on rubble you found lying at the base of a cliff? I supposed they know what they are doing, and besides, each of the those pieces of gravel probably weighs five tons. They aren't going anywhere.

Keechelus Lake, Snoqualmie Pass area.  I-90 in the foreground.

    The road heads up to Snoqualmie Pass, a name I remember from my childhood in Seattle. We used to go up there all the time, at least in my ten year old mind, which means we probably went at least twice. The interstate wasn't there then, so it was no doubt an arduous trek.
I stop in Easton for a cold drink. They have a map on the wall, but it only shows the immediate area, and nothing that looks like an escape route.
    I push on. As I approach Ellensburg I notice a sign for the highway patrol. Now, typically, I did not plan my return trip, much less an alternate route. I don't have a map or a cell phone. If one of the girls was with me I would have a smart phone and a someone to operate it, but I don't, and given that maps are almost impossible to come by these days I think I'll just ask the guys who know, hence the highway patrol. Besides, they are right here. I pull into the lot and as I am walking up to the door, a highway patrol car pulls up and the driver roles down his window. He gets out and tells me this office is unattended, but he has the key and lets us in. He rummages around and finds a map. It's old. One of the creases splits when he unfolds it, but it's all there and it's just what I need. Looks like I'm going to Yakima. There simply aren't any roads that run north-south through the Cascades.
    After Ellensburg the traffic dries up and so does the ground. I saw giant stacks of giant hay bales in Ellensberg, but after that the ground turns brown. No more mountains but big foothills. The road south from Yakima goes through Indian territory and is pretty flat. A few miles south of Goldendale we go ever the edge and start our descent into the Columbia River Gorge. Driving on I-84 along the river, the hills on either side look big. Driving down that hill you realized how big it is. It's BIG.
     I am following a pickup truck with a flashing yellow light towards the Sam Hill Memorial Bridge. When he gets to the bridge, he stops and starts to unlimber his lane closing crew and equipment.  What can I say? My timing is spot on. The bridge was redecked a few years ago, but now it looks like they are working on the steel superstructure. It's all encased in scaffolds and draped with tarps. Sandblasting and painting perhaps?
     After that it was just a couple more hours to Portland and home. The trip took me 13 hours. I drove 350 miles and spent almost $900. No expense for food 'cause diligent daughter packed me some snacks.
      Drivers in Oregon give me the impression of older and slower and maybe not so quick witted. Washington drivers seem to be more crazed and aggressive. Of course, it's only the odd ones that stick out, and being outbound from Seattle on a Friday night and inbound to Portland may have skewed my experience.

Shift Lock Release

I've been driving a 2008 Hyundai Sonata lately and it is a pretty nice car. We picked it up a couple of years ago so dutiful daughter would have something to drive to work. We looked around for a bit, but anything that looked like a possible deal got snapped up before we could make a decision and we were running out of time. My mechanic had this one for sale and while it was a bit more than we were originally shooting for, it wasn't out of reach, so we bought it. Dutiful daughter drove it for ten months and then ran away to South America. Kids these days, I tell you, no respect.
    So I take to driving it occasionally, you know, just to make sure it's still running smoothly, and I notice that it's a little larger than Chrysler Sebring, the infamous. For one thing, I can sit up straight whereas in the Chrysler I end up leaning on the console. For another my friend Jack can get in without having to struggle. I gave him a ride in the Chrysler, once. That was enough.
 Anyway, everything is going smoothly until I get back from the train station this morning and it won't shift into park. It will shift into neutral, drive and low, but not into reverse or park. What's going on here? Then I notice that the ESC (Electronic Stability Control) light is on, and pushing the ESC button doesn't change anything. Hmmmph. Then I notice this little label near the shift gate on the console, Shift Lock Release, next to a little tab and hole. What's the owner's manual got to say about this? There is a folder in the glove box full of papers, but they are all warranty dispute resolution procedures. Nothing about how the car actually works. Fine, turn the engine off, leave the key in the ignition (it won't come out unless the shift lever is in park. Notice anything funny about the picture?), go inside and look it up on the internet. Root around for a tiny screwdriver, return to the car, pry out the little tab, push down with the screwdriver, and presto! We have park and I have my key.
    Rumor has it that the problem is with the brake light circuit.