...and again...

My friends know that I have a fancy for warm gloves that are good for winter cycling. It's amazing how difficult it is to find gloves that keep your hands warm! I have yet to have warm fingers on days between 0-20 degrees (F) on the 3,000ft. descent into Boulder from my house - unless I use the snowmobile mits. Therefore, I have yet to find the perfect glove. I think I may have found it (how many times have you heard that?), but I already bought my one pair of gloves allotment this year but they aren’t working too well (Swix’s warmest gloves). So someone else go check out the Ibex Climawool gloves and let me know how they work…they’re expensive but they’re the most warm feeling and comfortable glove I’ve ever tried on (albeit, in the store).

I also have a problem with buying bike and ski backpacks. I love lots of compartments and pratical utilitarian designs. Each year or two a company seems to come out with a better design that I HAVE (need?) to replace my old pack with. That, or I need one since I blow the zippers or sides off the pack quite frequently.

The worst of all these habits I have is the one I have with cars. I run cars into the ground pretty quick for some reason. That, and I tend to buy either too expensive cars (for me that’s over 14K) or too cheap cars (under $2,000). With the too expensive cars, I end up realizing that after about 6 months I can’t afford the car payments (or don’t want to afford it) because of rising credit card bills and student loan payments, among other things such as house emergencies (SEPTIC! Yuck.) So the cars that can last in Mongolia I end up selling to get rid of their monetary burden. So then I fluctuate to the really cheap cars like a 1988 Toyota Corolla All-Trac, an old Subaru GL, an old Toyota pickup truck, or an older Audi coupe. These cars only run $500-$2000 but the amount of money that goes into them gets incredibly large - quite fast sometimes - and they are not the greatest for air quality (older cars pollute much more than newer cars do if you didn’t know). Basically, as the Pluto Pilot puts it, CARS SUCK! But actually, Cars BLOW - fumes, and your money. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve tried to get rid of my car. Long ago I sold a truck to afford racing (while in pro class, ironically) for ONE summer. I hitched rides to all the races with friends, rode my bike with a Wheelie (a trailer) to the store to get groceries, and had a pretty sweet summer being free of the dinosaur. But since moving up to the Netherlands from the Rock it’s not all that easy to live without the coffin-on-wheels. So alas, I finally come to the point of my story.

I’ve done it again...I got another car. As me and my girl are trying to get rid of a more expensive good car for the mountains. I didn’t want to afford the payments of the Subaru Outback I currently have (and the timing belt just went too…bastard!), so I went with SMRP (my girl) to the Honda dealership looking for a Hybrid civic - the most reliable, best gas mileage, most economical car that currently exists (in my opinion). I am driving lots more these days and wanted to see if I could afford the payments on a Hybrid. I truly believe that if you drive, you should try to drive the best possible gas mileage and least polluting car as possible. I haven’t done this of yet, as I have a penchant for trucks and older cars, but alas, it was my time. We drove the Hybrid and it was sweet, not extremely powerful, but what do you expect if you’re getting 46-51 miles per gallon!? My 2000 Subaru only gets 28 mpg at the most..and that's not bad! But with a hybrid, it would be a huge savings on money and more importantly on all of our lungs. But as life is, making $31,200 a year in this area, I could not afford the payments even with my stellar credit. So I opted for the next best thing: a regular Honda Civic coupe that gets between 32 and 39 mpg and has much lower emissions than the Subaru (less than half)…and it was cheap…I manged to get a car in that middle price range. Hopefully I will hang onto this one for a bit longer than I usually do. This is not a typical mountain vehicle, but with the right tires it’ll do fine, just like the Audi Coupe w/Blizzaks. The civic is a full commuter car…the "Silver Bullet"…the new name of the Civic since it’s so sporty (untypical of me) yet efficient…and that was the name of my first real mountain bike that I had for a long time (an-painted 1987 Klein Pinnacle…polished aluminum color).

So friends, start shaking your head and chuckling...because it’s happened again.