Driving Economy

The average driver puts about 12,000 miles on their odometer every year¹. In the past year (Jan 13, 2009 to Jan 19 2010) I’ve put 16,244 miles on the tC. I know the exact number, because for the past year I’ve been using an iPhone app called Road Trip Lite to track my fuel economy and since this marks the roughly one year anniversary of very diligent tracking I thought I would celebrate by both purchasing the full version of the app (here) and disclosing some fun stats and extrapolations.

First off, some fun stats. In the past year, I’ve been pretty consistent on my fuel economy, which was the main purpose of this data gathering, as you can see from the graph below I sit right at about 25 MPG. For the sake of comparison the EPA rating of the ’05 Scion tC was 23/30 (city/highway) so I’m smack where I expect to be. Its hard to tell from the graph, but a close inspection shows an increase in fuel economy when I moved downtown in September.

Putting some of that into real dollars and useless ratios; I’ve pumped 655.65 gallons of gas in the last year at an average price of $2.686 per gallon for a sum total of $1,761.04. A little more number crunching and it looks like I spend a little under five bucks a day on gas, or more precisely I burn a little under $0.11 per mile, at 65 miles per hour that’s $7.15 per hour.

As interesting as it is (or isn’t) those numbers doesn’t really paint a full picture of the cost of owning and operating a car, there’s also the considerations of loan payments, insurance, maintenance and repairs to consider. Thanks to the miracle that is Mint.com, I can get those costs, and even put them in a fancy pie chart for your eye balls:

The small discrepancy between what Mint has for my fuel spending and what I’ve tracked is due mostly to using cash for fill-ups, I’ll be using my actual cost from the previous section for number crunching. The number for Service & Parts is also misleading; I put new rubber on the tC in January 2008 and it was no small expense ($837 for all four ties, mounted and balanced). Since I’m replacing the tires again in the next few weeks, I can conveniently say that the tires are an additional $418 per year.

So total cost for the year period (actually, its 372 days) is roughly $7,600 to own and operate my car. Going back through some of the previous calculations that’s $20 per day, or $0.47 per mile I drive.

So what’s the point? Why take such a close look at spending on one item? Truth be told, I did it mostly because I like working the numbers, but it really does give me an insight into some of my spending and points out the areas that can be trimmed to help save money.

There is no responsible way to reduce my auto payment short of selling the car and my auto insurance has actually gone down recently. Fuel, as well, isn’t really in my control other than keeping my foot free of lead.

What I can control then, should be rather obvious. Parking in the garage downtown is convenient, but at $100 per month its just not worth it. I’ve found that with my typical work schedule I can easily find parking on the street and at worst spend a buck on a parking meter (but usually I’m home well after 6pm). I already do all my own maintenance so I save a bucket load of money, but this tire situation is way out of control. Stock tires would be at least half the cost per year, saving me about $200 per year.

The final word? Park on the street, and get back on stock wheels and I’ll save myself $1,400 per year on auto expenses. Just one more way to get where I want to be financially. Better yet, if I could find a way to ditch the car completely …

My Car Made The Shoot!

The Scion United website finally got updated with pictures from the event, including a couple pictures of the cars setup for the commercial. And guess who’s car was in the shoot (if you read the title of this post, you cheated, haha).

You can see the camera in the lower left of the picture, my car is inconspicuously noted.

So it isn’t front-row-center, but I can’t complain. So when the commercials start showing up, look for my tC, second level about middle. Its the one with the silver grill.

Scion United Homebound

Our last day at the Scion United event was fairly un-eventful and felt really long. I stayed up late the night before putting the pictures and post up about the event so Kerry woke up before me at around 8am. We got dressed and headed back down to the cafe for another breakfast of sausage egg sandwiches and coffee.

We took a small walking tour around the hotel. They have a botanical garden, beach and doc that we hadn’t seen yet (Kerry took pictures, but I don’t have those pictures yet). So after the short tour, we headed back up to the room to finish our packing, checked out of the hotel and headed down to where our last bus ride was going to take us to our cars. We waited for a short time for our bus to get up front, boarded the bus and … waited.

30 miniutes past, an hour, finally 2 hours of waiting on the bus and we are told we are finally going to go. Turns out, the computer system that the marketing company uses to track everything (including who’s cars are where) was down and it made for a serious mess at the event site. Our bus was held at the hotel because at least there we could use the bathroom in the hotel, get food and drinks from the cafe etc. Some people weren’t happy about it, one pair of guys called a cab to take them to the event site (which was funny, because they only got their car one or two people ahead of me).

My car was parked up in the same area that we had the event in and if rumor has it, my car was in the group that actually got filmed/photographed for the ad campaign. It was covered in a nice healthy coat of dust, but otherwise unscathed. I heard a lot of horror stories about people with massive scratches, dents, dings and general damage but to be honest I didn’t see any of it, so I’m not sure what to believe and what to pass as over-reactions.

I was however, out of gas. I droped the car off with about 240 miles on the odo and a quarter tank of gas. When I picked it up, I still had around 240 miles but was completely out of fuel. I’m still not really sure why they had it idle through a couple gallons of gas. I heard some speculation that they had headlights on or something to that effect for shots, but my drivers side low beam is out so you’d think that puts my car out of the running, or perhaps they just used the high beams.

I was able to make a stop and take some better pictures of the Scion xD “Hot Lava” RS1. I also spent some more time talking to the couple from Pennsylvania. They both have Scion’s, and both scions got picked to attend the event, but they only drove their BSP tC (represent!) because of the prices of gas.

The wheel in the last picture is not the wheel that will come on the RS1 off the lot though. The RS1 will have plastic wheel covers instead which is really lame. Kerry really liked the xD so I think I’m going to have to give Damon (of Elk Grove Scion) a call to see what we’d be into if we traded her aging Passat in on something (probably a used xD if any exist).

On the way out of the event they gave each owner a numbered badge (to be stick on the car I assume). I ended up number 243 out of 500 (I’d be interested to hear from #1 and #500). We left the event site and stopped at the first gas station to fill up on fuel (for both the car and us). I wasn’t paying attention to the pump I drove up to, and it wasn’t until I went to put my card in that I realized this was not an average pump. There must be a race track or drag strip in Boulder, because the gas station had 100 octane gas (for $5.999 per gallon).

After that the trip was fairly un-eventful. It was almost 2:30 by the time we got on the road so we knew we were going to be getting back late. We stopped and had lunch in Primm (a town on the Nevada side of the border with a casino, fashion outlet and some fast food places.

For a while along the way home I trained with a couple of other Scions but eventually they all pulled off onto other highways. We had dinner in Fresno, and finally arrived home a little after midnight.

In all it was an awesome trip and I’m glad that I was invited. I’m still waiting to see the event pictures posted up on Scion’s website. And I’m looking forward to seeing the commercials pop up. So keep your eye’s open for my car on TV in a few months!

Scion United Event

Today was the day. The Scion United Event. Its been a long day, but I’ll do my best to recap completely without rambling. It was pretty awesome.

Kerry and I started the day with a nice and easy breakfast from the coffee shop in the hotel and took a short shuttle ride into the main village here. Its basically an outdoor mall with lots of little shops, kind touristy but at the same time appealing to the people who actually live here. There is also a casino here. Nothing large, but it has all the usual slot machines and tables. We spent a short amount of time making our donation to the Nevada gaming commission before wrapping up the rest of our free time in an Irish pub.

Once we got to the event, the fun and swag started rolling. They had a few extremely unique cars parked right in front, it looked like at least some of them were corporately owned, but one or two of them may have been other peoples cars. Everything was in tents to at least provide some shade, and there were carts all around with free water, chips, pretzels, ice creams etc to keep everybody cool.

I straight away went to the tent where they were giving out free stuff to the owners. I got a shift knob, and the Scion carbon fiber B-pillar inserts along with some stickers and whatnot. Kerry and I also made a round in the tent where all the 3rd party companies were. More awesome corporate scions and free swag (pens, lanyards etc). There were a few items worth noting though. Alpine had a decibel booth setup where you could go into a small room, and they’d crank up the sound system to reach nearly 145dB. (thats roughly 10x louder than a jet engine BTW). TRD had a booth in this tent as well, and they had THE BEST swag to offer, a set of wheels were to be raffled off at 6:30 (or so the sign said, and the people at the booth told me, but more on that later). They were also doing a live installation of a TRD supercharger in an xD xB right there in the tent.

We toured more of the cars on display, merchandise etc. I stopped by one booth and meet Chris Rado and Ken Gushi. I ventured into the “Paint a Scion” tent, mostly because I was boggled as to what this meant when I read it on the list of things to do. It turned out that they had ceramic xB’s and paint so you could create your own custom xB. Mine came out looking like a 2 year old made it, so I don’t have any pictures of it.

Pioneer had a cool tent as well, they had a live DJ spinning sounds, and video that was projected in 360° on the domed ceiling. I tried to take pictures, but the tent was lit to look cool to a human eye, and my camera couldn’t make sense of it. We also got t-shirts custom made for us (we chose the colors and designs and they silk screened the shirts right there).

After spending a few hours touring everything we got off our feet at the hospitality tent (which was air-conditioned) and drank some water and munched on some snacks for about half an hour. When about 6:25 rolled around, I walked over to the TRD booth for the raffle and was completely disappointed. Turns out, whoever was running the event asked TRD to move the raffle up to 6:15, but forgot to tell anyone. So the winners were chosen, but you had to be present to win, so a ton of people were likely skipped and a few people got quite upset at the debacle.

Dinner was served around 7:30. We had salad, green beans, potatoes au gratin, turkey & roast beef. I was pretty famished, and I think Kerry was too, because both of us polished off our plates. Scion gave out more raffle items during dinner (non of which I won) and after a cake desert, herded us onto the main stage, where the mysterious secret event was to hold place.

The secret was threefold as it turns out. The major item (and something I somewhat expected) was the unveiling of the Scion xD RS1. I was in a horrible spot for taking pictures of it, so I apologies, but I was told I would get a chance to see it up close tomorrow, so I’ll get better pictures then. The other two events weren’t really my style, but it was fun all the same. They had Redman and then Flow Rider perform on stage (both are rappers for those that don’t know).

So after a very long day, and a bus ride back to the hotel I spent some time here going through the pictures (you can see all of them from the day here) and writing this entry. So I’m going to log off for the night, and get some rest. I have a long drive home tomorrow.

Scion United Registration

For those that don’t know already, a quick recap. Scion is hosting a massive party in the Las Vegas desert. Its part ad campaign, part owner rewards. Scion selected 500 owners from pictures submitted back in early March to be part of the event. I was lucky enough to be selected.

Today was the first day of the event, and for Kerry and I it was mostly just driving and registering. We woke up this morning at 4:30am, took our showers finished some packing and got on the road headed towards Vegas. We made pretty good time and got in around 3pm.

I had the car washed the night before, but it collected a pretty good deal of bugs on the way, so I stopped by a car wash and did some final pampering to the tC, headed to the drop off/registration location and … waited.

It was hot, but not bad for Vegas (low 90′s) so I spent some of the time waiting chatted with some other owners (one couple came all the way from Pitsburg, they left two days ago!). There is every kind of Scion represented, from the stock looking tC, to a bunch of crazy flamboyant xBs. You can check out all of the pictures from today in my flickr photostream.

After getting registered (and likely, sun burnt) I turned the car over to Scion (they are doing photo and video shoots with the cars while we enjoy the party) we headed to the hotel. Kerry and I are staying at the Lowes Las Vegas Lake Resort. This place is ridiculous, in every good way possible.

We did a little exploring of the hotel, and sat down for dinner at Ricks Cafe (its straight out of Casablanca). I had probably one of the best Beef Tenderloins I’ve had and Kerry had a new york steak. The bad part was that our bill came to about $100. So we’ve pretty much eaten through most of the food money that Scion gave us for the trip ($70 each in the from of a Visa gift card).

When we got back to the room, we found a nice little surprise waiting for us. Swag! The bags themselves are made from “recycled scion billboards” and filled with things like plush versions of their current model line (tC, xB, xD), an aluminum water bottle, sun screen and some other nick-knack items.

In all, its been a pretty good day. A lot of driving and standing around in the sun, but I quite enjoyed it. It doesn’t hurt that I’m sitting on our balcony, overlooking the lake listening to the quiet sounds of crickets and toads as I write this.

Scion Pix

[fa:p:a=blog-images,id=764745625,j=l,s=s,l=p]See A Need… Fill A Need. I’ve been an active member on a car forum (Your Scion tC) and I find that a lot of people have images but no good places to host them. So I created ScionPix. Its a place for people to host images, simply as that.

I’ve started giving away 500MB sections, but after a passed the initial setup period, its been reduced to 150MB chunks, which should be more than enough for any average user. In encourage you to take a look around on the site, enjoy the images, and if you have a scion, sign up!

Winding Down at Work

Wow, so the past few days goes down in my book of records as busiest extended weekend ever. I’ll try to keep this post short and sweet, but no promises.

I took Wednesday & Thursday off work (I don’t work Fridays, so I had that day off too), and spent pretty much all day Wednesday driving around with Keith getting everything packed up for our camping trip. I swear that Keith and I spent literally half the day driving, trying to get cars where we wanted them (between my house, my parents and his apartment) and making sure we had everything we would need. We did take a short break to meet up with Damon of Maita Scion to have lunch at In and Out, but after that it was back to shopping and packing.

Thursday morning, I had to get up at 4:30 to go out to Elite Power to put in a few hours of work before we left my house to drive down to Lawson’s Landing in Bodega Bay. The drive was pretty easy, 2.5 hours with little or no traffic problems. The spot we had hoped to snag for camping was already occupied, but Matt and Tiffany found us a pretty good spot close to the dunes and ocean. I ended up taking almost 400 pictures over the three days that we were there, including some decent night sky shots. But I haven’t had a chance to upload any of them yet, so I’ll leave most of the details of the trip for when I get the pictures uploaded and I can link to them.

We came back Saturday morning, made a slight detour down Highway 1 because I wasn’t paying attention that wasted almost 45 minutes, so by the time we got home and brought the truck up to my parents we barely had enough time to get everything unloaded, grab some delicious stakes steaks, wish my Dad happy birthday and head down to RPM to begin our next event.

RPM was the beginning of Mikes Bachelor party, and was an absolute blast. I should see if I can scan in my time slips for the three races we did. Those little carts are wicked fast. My average speed per lap was around 35MPH, and I have little doubt that given a long straightaway they could get up to 50 or 60mph without a problem. Cody ended up taking first place overall, but no offence to Cody, with the particular course we were on and everybody’s driving level it was more a matter of where you started than your ability to push to the front (Read: it was nearly impossibly to pass without breaking rules).

After RPM we headed over to get dinner at Chevy’s in Elk Grove. Fairly un-eventful. To wrap up the night we headed back to our house for some typical bachelor night partying, but the details of that are for those people who were there

After some hard partying Saturday night, I still managed to get up at 7:30 Sunday morning and out to the Sacramento Raceway by 8:30 (including time for a carwash and a stop at Starbucks) to join Damon and the extended Scion family at Wide Open Scion. While the event was sponsored by the local Scion dealerships it was generally open to the public, so there were quite a few Honda owners there, and even 4 or 5 American muscle cars. I helped out by directing traffic and parking cars for the first few hours I was there. By the time Keith showed up the number of cars coming in was low enough I figured they could take care of themselves and so I went out to enjoy the event. Keith ran his car on the track a few times, did respectably, but ended up running really low on gas and had to stop before any real racing happened. The event was hoping to draw about 500 people, but it didn’t seem to get anywhere near that, so I’m not sure if it will happen again next year or not. Too bad really, Damon put a lot of work into it and it had a lot of potential, it just was lacking the necessary marketing and awareness in my opinion.

Keith and I left the raceway early so we could finish up the last of our unpacking. We ended up stopping at his house for a few hours, ordered a pizza and watched the Never Ending Story before we finally got around to going up to my parents. When we got to my parents we unloaded and cleaned up the last of our camping gear, and mostly just crashed, by this time I was ready to just sleep anywhere. I got my hair cut while I was up there because it was starting to get really out of control and I keep forgetting to call Kelly.

I got home around 10:30, and finally had more than just a few minutes in front of the computer, but I was really tired so I only spent enough time to copy all the pictures off the camera of camping and Wide Open Scion. I didn’t get around to uploading the camping pictures, but I did get the Wide Open Scion pictures up. They aren’t very good though and I’m not really happy with them. There seems to be a lot of dust inside my camera too that is really upsetting. I’m going to have to take it somewhere and have it cleaned or something because I can’t seem to get it out.

So that pretty much concludes my extended weekend, I’m at work now, trying to wind down mentally and catch up on some things. I’m still really tired, and coffee seems to have little effect this morning. Oh well, I may pass on magic night tonight to facilitate an earlier reunion between me and my pillow.

Long Time No Post

Yeah… so I was doing good for a while there about posting every other day or so, but I just haven’t had a whole lot to talk about lately. However, today I do!

I’m dubbing this weekend a Creative Explosion Weekend, and I am deeming it a holiday to be celebrated around the world. Actually… it wasn’t really all that creative, just more-so than my weekends usually are.

Friday Nick and I took the garage from being a junk pile that you could barely fit a car into (mostly my fault, but generally there was just a lot of junk in there) to something that if you were careful you could park two cars in. I wish I had some pictures because I’m pretty proud of how much room we cleared. Basically we took all the boxes and stuff that nobody had touched since moving in, and tucked it all in the little nook where the water heater is, and put as much stuff as possible on shelves so it was off the floor. We even took the shelving that was in my room when we moved in, and put it up in the garage.

Saturday, I spent some time (with Nick’s help again) cleaning the car to get it ready for what was to ensue on Sunday (I’m starting to realize that it wasn’t much of a creative “weekend”, more of just a creative “Sunday”). I was impressed with the ease of using Nicks Mr. Clean AutoDry to wash the car, and it’s definatly something thats on my wish list but the two other products I used didn’t impress me. I wont go into the details, just let it be known that the wax did not come out the way I was hoping.

Saturday night The Usuals played at the Coffee Gardens. It was a very interesting show because it was supposed to be acustic, but nobody told the bands, so they compromised by trying to play really quiet. Mike brought out Tony’s electronic drum set so they could control the volume, and although there were some leveling issues at first, by the end they were rocking in their Usual way (albiet, with a slight 80′s undertone).

Since the show was over at like 9:30, Keith, Meghan, Lindsey, Nick, Cody and I came back to our place for a somewhat pathetic “after party” which was mostly consumed by Mario Kart on the Game Cube. Cody and I ended up drinking 48oz and 40oz of Coffee respectively, so we stayed up until about 1 am watching “Caravan of Courage“. Yes, thats right … we watched Ewoks Adventures (the first part anyway). And he also brought up some scripts that he had lying around that he wanted to do … and here starts the creative-ness.

Sunday morning, Cody came over with the scripts, explained what he wanted to do and before long we (and by we I mean mostly Cody, with me giving what little thought I could muster) were planning shots in his computer room, and gathering props and equipment. We filmed the first few minutes of what is sure to be the most awesome short you’ll ever see. But for now I’m not revealing any secrets.

Afterwards, around 6:30, I took the tC out to a parking lot near my office and shot 150+ pictures, of which I uploaded 30 into a new gallery. I’m pretty happy with the way they turned out, although I kind of regret not uploading some of them in color instead of the -75% saturation that they are in right now so I may upload some duplicate images, but in color when I get home tonight. I also updated the Scion tC page thats linked at the top of this page, so if you get a chance check that out.

So that was my “Creative Sunday”, some filming and photography. But I had a good time of it, so even if it wasn’t all that creative, it was fun all the same.

Cars

Most everybody seems to already know, and that takes all the fun out of this post, but I bought Keiths 2005 Scion tC on Friday. It was the easiest car purchase I’ve ever done, not only because it was from my brother but because we both use the same Credit Union, so it was as easy as 2 signatures each and the car was mine.

Keith’s been cruzing around in my car now for a week while he finds a new car for himself. Why did Keith sell his car you might ask? Mostly economics. His plan (and he can correct me if I’m mistaken) is to buy a Kawasaki ninja 250, and a cheap car using the cash he got from selling the tC.

Also relating to cars, A group of us went out to the “Historic” Sacramento Raceway (I’m not sure whats historic about it besides the fact that its old, but thats what the annoucers kept saying). Saturday night was their Nitro-Night Fire, pretty much all pro racers, and two races with jet cars. It was pretty fun to watch. I took the camera with me and took so many pictures I had to delete some about 2/3 through the evening to free up room on the memory card (I know the next thing to buy for my camera now!). You can check out all the pictures I took in the gallery here. Or if you are in a rush, some of my favorites are linked below.

My Brothers New Exhaust

Keith bought a Scion tC about a year ago and has recently been making some customizations to his car. Just a little while ago we bolted on a new exhaust. And before you groan and roll your eyes, its not a stupid sounding rice rocket thing, its a nice mellow sound reminiscent of BMW’s of old.

For the specifics, I’ll let Keith do the talking:

Ok Ladies and gentleman, the Creative Compacts exhaust kit with Magnaflow muffler and high flow cat FINALLY arrived (I ordered it 3 weeks ago tomorrow) and is on the car.

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