Nearly New Car News

Now that Jean has her new car, I inherit the hatchback, a Honda Civic DX, manual transmission, with just 9,000 miles on it. The Ford Escort is in the driveway, awaiting 'disposal'. I'm still getting used to the clutch, and working out the controls for the radio, headlights, wipers, air conditioning, etc. But on the whole it feels more stable than the Escort. It seems a little faster to accelerate, but has less power overall; on a steep incline, I gradually slow down. This happened with the Escort too, but not so quickly.

One funny thing. The hatchback has an FM radio, while the Escort had just AM. Over the years of driving the Escort, I've gotten used to the quirks and limitations of AM. For instance, passing under highway overpasses, an AM radio signal fades. FM doesn't. Passing near high tension lines on a rainy day, the static makes the radio unlistenable. FM is more robust.

In fact, driving the Escort back and forth to Oregon Graduate Institute while I was getting my degree, I got so used to these quirks, that I came to 'hear' passengers' voices drop when we went under underpasses. My brain just expected the 'signal' to drop when we went under all that concrete "qbullet.smiley"!

So I'm really enjoying a stable signal while I drive. Another thing is that when I'm driving in the evening on a Saturday, such as when I am going to a movie with friends after a "NOVA" meeting, I have a better selection of stations. I'm not limited to listening to, I kid you not, "Cigar Dave", 'The General' and host of Smoke This. That's the only show I can get at that time of night, and I don't even smoke cigars! Now I can listen to a variety of music, thank goodness.