New Car

Well, well. Many a thing has happened since we last talked. The big one is that we got into a bit of a car accident and the Audi has been totalled. Not a very happy experience, and one that could be seen as mostly my fault. No need to rehash the details here, but it was, surprisingly enough, a low speed incident and not something on the highway as I'm sure you'll all expecting.

Here's a photo of the front end damage that ended the run of a 2002 A4 1.8T with a bit over 56,000 miles on it.



It's all very annoying because now I'm slightly on edge when I drive. It was more a lapse in judgement than anything else. Usually I'm pretty good about paying attention when I drive. Maria and I are both fine, by the way. My wrists were a bit scratched up, (thanks, airbag) and Maria found some bruises later on in the week, but they didn't provide any pain. Again, wear your seatbelts.

Anyway, on to other things. Namely, the poor car's replacement. We decided, for economical reasons, to go with a VW Jetta. Diesel. That's right. A 2005 TDI. There was basically one option, leather. So it's got almost everything the ol' Audi had save for heated seats in the back, 6-disc in dash and uh, more room. But that's fine. As most of you know, I used to drive a 1997 Jetta and so the change back to a smaller, more wily car is welcome. And yes, the car will have a manual transmission. The all-wheel drive is not there, though, so I'll be pretty tame come the first snowfall.

The diesel also gets about 38 MPG City and 46 Highway. That's pretty insane. With a 14.5-gallon tank, that's at least 500+ miles. Enough to drive to Pittsburgh and back from Lancaster without fueling up. Although the price of diesel is now slightly higher, it should fall back in line with regular unleaded then hopefully below.

The car should be here by the end of the week. We went for a dark gray exterior with light gray interior.

I'm really not sure why more cars in the States aren't diesel. VW has the Jetta, Golf and Passat available. Mercedes has their one E-series sedan. That's it. If you want to see something depressing, go to Mini's UK site and check out the gas mileage of their little diesel. Why can't we have that over here?

Ramadan is also now over. It ended this past weekend. I was able to lose four pounds during the daytime fasting. Rather unexpected, although I guess I was running a pretty mean caloric deficit for a while. The nice thing (well, sort of) was that for most of it I was working overnight shifts. So by the time I got home in the morning, it was time to sleep the day away. Fasting is much, much easier that way, let me tell you.