February 12, 2007

OK, the pictures have been out there for a couple days in the photo section. We bought a new car. The reality was beginning to set in. The Rover wasn’t going to last forever. In fact, it was going to start costing me money. At the same time, I am looking at an income increase that will free me up to drive practically anything my heart desires. Oddly, I ended up with a Subaru Forester.

I began doing some research a while ago. I really wanted something more fun to drive. To me, that has always meant a manual transmission. When I have owned automatics, I have quickly found myself craving a manual. This time I made it almost four years, a record for me. I started contemplating a third car, perhaps a sports car, but quickly decided that nothing was really exciting me, a third car would be complicated, and it didn’t change the fact that the Rover was going to need replaced or significantly repaired at some point. So I focused in on vehicles that would be good at everything, fun to drive, roomy enough for gear, and capable of some rough trail use. I thought the Porsche SUV looked inviting, but the price wasn’t great and the body design resulted in strange compromises on interior space.

I looked at every brand available. The internet simplifies searching because you can do things like look at all SUVs with manual transmissions or all station wagons with manual transmissions and AWD. This gave me a real short list of possibilities. Americans don’t seem to have many manual transmission options. The Subaru stood out because it is so small, a foot shorter than the Rover in both length and height and six inches narrower, but has almost as much interior space. It is rated high in crash tests and reliability. The visibility makes you feel like you are driving a greenhouse.

The available turbo, making it the fourth fastest car I have owned, was an intriguing bonus. I have always been concerned about the reliability of turbo cars, but my job has put me in touch with dozens of turbocharged diesels used in industrial applications in remote areas where reliability is key. I have had a turbo car before but it was a lease. I decided that Subaru has been making turbocharged 2.5 liter boxer engines for enough years to make them a reasonable choice.

I wasn’t really researching for the purpose of making a quick change, but when I realized that the only vehicle that made any sense to me was soon to be replaced by a bigger SUV with rumors of no manual in the turbo version in the first year, I began to think it was a limited window of opportunity. The only dealer in town had only two turbos in stock. It seemed like a logical decision. The color choices were bad, black or silver. I love black cars, but I don’t keep them clean enough. Silver hides the dirt much better.

Our garage is now a strange boring container of silver Subaru Impreza based automobiles, Kris’s Saab 9-2X and my Forester. The bodies are significantly different, one sporty, one boxy, but the undersides are almost identical. The two cars handle almost identically, a result of the shared chassis design. The controls are almost identical, an advantage that should not be underestimated. Switching between the Saab and the Rover was always painful, fumbling for the window controls or worse, the windshield wiper controls. It is a little silly to have two of essentially the same car, but they are significantly different enough in the critical areas, ground clearance and interior space, to make the Forester a practical addition.

I decided to experiment with something I have been suspecting for awhile. I see so many four wheel drive vehicles with all season tires that I was beginning to think I was overly conservative in putting studded tires on my AWD vehicles. I bought the car without winter tires. It snowed heavily the next night. The car is predictable in how it slides, but it does slide. The turbo charger adds torque as the RPMs build, causing the tires to break free midway through a gear rather than during clutch release as normally expected in a manual transmission. I have had to drive sanely, but at least that is consistent with the break-in advice. I think I can get through the remainder of the winter, but I am suspecting the value of studs.

The weather has changed. After a couple weeks of cold sunny weather, we got some snow. It was a brutal stretch of cold weather with double digit below zero temperatures almost every night and daytime highs rarely reaching double digit positive numbers. Right now it is 23 degrees. 35 degrees warmer would be summer, but 35 degrees colder was just a couple days ago.

We didn’t ski on Saturday since it was really cold. This cost us the price of a new car and the better day of the weekend. Sunday was supposed to be the warmer day, but they got that wrong. We skied anyway. It was cold again, but we had fun. The snow was still nice even though it hadn’t snowed in weeks. The cold temperatures prevented the formation of ice except in a few heavily trafficked areas that were predictably scraped and firm.

Monday was probably my last hurdle in the hiring process, a visit to a physical therapist. I was tested for flexibility, strength and some fitness. The therapist had to take my blood pressure and heart rate several times throughout the test. The blood pressure was almost disturbing. One reading was 90 over 40. Even after the step test, it was only 100 over 50. My resting heart rate was a mere 54 beats per minute and that was after a half a cup of coffee which I was advised not to have before the test. They advise that because a resting heart rate over 100 would prevent testing, but I barely broke that during the step test. I should have had my coffee.

I am still waiting. Chevron uses a contractor to handle this testing. The contractor is somewhere in the lower 48. The contractor uses a local facility to conduct the testing. As a result, the local facility does the testing, but Chevron doesn’t get the results for several days. Hopefully it will be this week. The waiting is killing me. I am really ready to move on.

Tonight we met my friend Bryan at a tappas and wine bar. The owner talked us into participating in the chef’s experimentation in preparation for Valentine’s day. We had fun providing feedback to the owner and had some great appetizers, a dessert, and wines.