Blog

Short blog posts, journal entries, and random thoughts. Topics include a mix of personal and the world at large.

I get to gripe about gas prices again

Gasoline prices have uniformly shot back up above the $4 dollar threshold here in San Francisco, and it feels weird for me to once again be able to grumble about high petrol costs. After nine months of not owning a car, I’ve now got a vehicle to feed, and a super thirsty one at that. The 15 miles-per-gallon average I’m getting with the GT3 almost makes me miss having my previous MX-5 Miata, a car that in its worst day still averaged 27 miles to the gallon.

The GT3 is loads more fun, though. Obviously.

Nevertheless, feeding a 15mpg habit gets expensive really quickly, especially so because the GT3 has a 23-gallon fuel tank. With the latest uptick in prices, a typical fill-up is well into the $80 dollars territory; now I know exactly the pain drivers of heavy SUVs feel every time they’re at the pump.

It’s well known California has the dubious honor of the highest gas prices in the nation, but the real indignation is for that privilege we don’t even get the best possible grade of gas. While rest of the States get to enjoy the sweet nectar of 93 octane, California is saddled with lowly 91 at the maximum. Worse, highly strung sports car engines absolutely demands as much octane you can give it: the GT3’s flat-six is tuned for 93, so being restricted to 91 is not an unsubstantial compromise.

There are gas stations in the area that sells 100 octane petrol, but we’re talking about nearly $10 dollars a gallon. No thanks.

I wouldn’t mind paying the most for gas if we were able to get the highest grade of octane. Since that’s not the case, I’m going to protest along with the rest of the drivers whenever prices shoot up, as it has done this past week. Indeed, even though I commute using public transportation, on the weekends I put quite a bit of miles on the GT3, so I’m not all that different from the person who commutes via car.

Granted, no one ever said the car hobby was inexpensive.

I so wish I can get this California legacy plate and not the sort of ugly black and yellow one.

SFO vs. LAX

I am in the midst of planning for my usual summer holiday, and this year the destination is the isle of Japan. My friends and I are targeting the third week of July for this trip, and the obvious first order of business is to secure our flights. So on to Google Flights I went and executed a search for nonstop flights from San Francisco to Tokyo.

Sadly, the results were shockingly expensive.

For sure it was never going to be cheap flying to the other side of the planet, but nearly $1,800 for a roundtrip fare in economy is incredibly high – I can fly to Singapore for not much more. That fare is simply too rich for our group, especially considering Tokyo’s cost of living is world-famous for not being cheap in the slightest. We can’t blow a massive part of our budget on airfare alone.

An alternative plan, then: we dared to look at one-stop flights. As a general rule I’m wholly against routes with layovers, principally because it’s an enormous waste of time to be hanging out for hours at a transfer airport waiting for the connecting flight. Vacation time from work is already precious as is (thanks, America), so if I can pay a bit more to save time, I almost always do.

Unless of course the nonstop flight is untenably expensive. For the trip to Japan we found a one-stop flight for significantly less at $1,200 that involved a layover in Incheon, which honestly for me isn’t the worst thing in the world. I still hold fond memories the South Korea trip two years ago, so the opportunity to spend a bit time in that country again draws no protest from me.

My friends and I were all set on that itinerary, except I remembered that we are heading for Los Angeles only two days before the departure date, so what if we flew out of LAX instead? Once again to Google Flights I went, and to my utter surprise and indignity (at SFO), a direct flight from Los Angeles to Tokyo is even cheaper than our one-stop flight out of San Francisco.

What the heck!?

I understand there’s a larger Japanese population down south, but Japan is a popular travel destination for persons of all ethnic backgrounds, so I’m really quite miffed at why a direct flight out of San Francisco is some $600 dearer. In a childish protest sort of way, that’s not fair!

It’s an easy choice then for us to fly out of LAX. We’re still very ahead of the SFO-HND route in cost after accounting for the additional rental car down to Los Angeles and the flight back to San Francisco on the return. More importantly, we get a nonstop route over the Pacific, which is just the ultimate.

I can and will go back to South Korea at another date.

Fast mountain driving is an exercise

Can spirited driving be considered as exercise?

After what transpired this past Saturday, I certainly think so.

It was a glorious post-rain afternoon basking in sunshine, on a long stretch of winding tarmac where nary a car could be found (we were out in the middle of nowhere); I had the first opportunity to really explore the lofty limits of the 911 GT3 since I bought it back in January. For a word to sum up the experience, it would be ‘sweaty’.

Perhaps an empty parking lot might have been the more ideal proving ground to start off with, because for the first quarter stretch of the road I was super hesitant with my inputs, not daring to upset the car. Admittedly I had yet to break the GT3’s backend loose even once, so I had zero idea what its dynamics were like. All I knew at the time was the Porsche has tremendous power and grip, and it’s up to me to find the edge where either of those begin to falter.

That is, if my body is up to the task.

For the first proper go on a twisty mountain road in anger, I can say I handled myself fairly well: my friend who was following behind told me afterwards that I got noticeably quicker the deeper we got into the route. That said I simply could not keep up with the driver in front of me in a Chevrolet SS; he’s had 60,000 miles of familiarity with that car, and in his capable hands the SS disappeared from my windshield in short order. No doubt the GT3 is capable of going much faster - a 475 horsepower sports car ought to be quicker than a 4,000lb sports sedan; the problem is obviously not the car, but rather me.

Nevertheless, I was absolutely hustling the car to my (not so great) abilities, and it was indeed quite the workout. Even with the automatic climate control set at the standard 72 degrees, my back was perspiring heavily, and my palms needed periodic wipes on my shirt. I had to take off my hat because sweat was forming on my head as well. A leisure weekend drive it certainly was not.

And I felt the affects the following morning: I must have gripped the steering wheel too hard because my fingers were sore, and due to the countless shuffling of the right foot between braking and acceleration, the calve muscles were barking. I guess I never appreciated - until now - how much of an athlete a racing driver has to be, and how sorely lacking my own conditioning is.

Looking forward to improving on both fronts: mastering the GT3, and making sure my body is up to the task of doing it.

Kofi did it.

I don’t usually cry when I watch professional wrestling: it’s the not the sort of entertainment that would elicit tears. But last night’s Wrestlemania 35 was quite different.

When Kofi Kingston pinned Daniel Bryan 1-2-3 for the WWE Championship, I was in tears for a solid 10 minutes, and still getting choked-up thinking about it now.

Pro-wrestling may be “fake” and “scripted”, but those emotions were as real as can be. Kofi’s climatic win was everything I love about wrestling: a dramatic underdog story of perseverance, mixed in with a solid dose of athleticism and high-flying acrobatics. It’s why I kept watching WWE since childhood and well into adulthood, even though I know results are predetermined; because who doesn’t get moved by a good underdog story?

And the Kofi storyline was fabulously executed: from the chance opportunity in replacing Mustafa Ali at a match nearly two months ago, to building up the ultimate underdog tale of the corporate deck stacked against him for 11 years, and then finally winning the gold at Wrestlemania. Us fans were rabidly behind Kofi since the match as Ali’s substitute, and credit to the WWE creative team for latching onto the momentum and giving us the catharsis.

The match itself was really well done, too. There was weight and consequence to every move, and the finish cannot be more perfect. We were at the edge of our seats the entire time, wondering if at any moment the dream can be snatched away from Kofi. It was beautiful.

It’s funny; I’ve had discussion with my friends over the years about how Kofi is just a world title win away from being a grand slam champion (having had held all the major belts in the WWE), but would the company ever give him such a push? For the past five years Kofi’s been flourishing as a member of the New Day stable, and it seemed inconceivable that he’d be singled out for a world title run (we’d always thought it’d be Big E who’d get the push when the time comes).

Which makes what happened last night so intensely more special for me. In a way I can’t believe it actually happened, and it could not have gone to a more deserving person. An indelible Wrestlemania moment for sure.

Life is a beach and then you perish to the sea.

Rich car guys discussing depreciation

Every day I frequent car forums because it’s a great place to chat with like-minded people and also to learn about cars. Model-specific forums are a fantastic resource to find out about the ins and out of a particular car; they’re extremely helpful for research before purchase, and to share in the ownership experience afterwards - truly a hive mind of knowledge. I’ve done this with every car I’ve own thus far, and presently with the 911 GT3 I’m a registered member of Rennlist.

There’s a strange phenomenon on Rennlist that I haven’t seen before in the dedicated forums of my previous cars: the constant talk and worry about a car’s value. I simply can’t believe the amount of chat regarding depreciation and how best to use a car to get the maximum resale value (don’t put miles on it, obviously). Honestly, what are all these rich car guys worrying about?

And those people are rich, because Rennlist is a Porsche forum, and transactions for Porsche cars can easily reach into the six figure sums. One would think that if you’re wealthy enough to pay 3 to 4 times the costs of an average new vehicle, you aren’t likely to fret over losing money on depreciation like the rest of us plebeians. So what if a 911 loses value like a Maserati luxury sedan (it doesn’t, but that’s beside the point)? Most of those guys can afford to buy the same car many times over!

The depreciation talk is especially acute in the 911 GT car section - covering all 911 models with a ‘GT’ moniker attached, where seemingly every other thread is someone asking about best practices in speccing a car to get the most on resale, or is a particular model a good buy given the market trends. These are special 911s with prices well into the six figures – why is depreciation such a concern? I have to question do these owners truly love cars and driving, or merely the symbolism that comes with owning a Porsche.

In my past experience, there were no such silly discussions in the Subaru or Mazda forums; people there buy cars to drive and enjoy - that’s it. No one cared that not opting for the sport package is going to negatively affect the resale down the road, or question is it okay to daily-drive a car because the value will go down.

I guess I’ll have to keep saying this: cars are meant to be driven.

Going back to eight hours

Thus far this year I’ve been “only” getting roughly seven hours of consistent sleep each night, which is lower than my optimum of the standard eight hours. I fell into the trap of wanting more hours out of the day to do stuff, and figured that robbing an hour out of precious sleep time – as opposed to, you know, maybe not surf twitter so much – would be the thing to accomplish this. Idiotic, I know.

Armed with seven hours sleep, I was still decently productive and mentally sharp, but I’d be lying if I said it’s exactly the same as getting the proper eight hours. Is the productivity trade-off worth it? That’s a resounding no as well: the extra hour I gained ends up almost exclusively used towards frivolous activities, like the aforementioned twitter surfing, or watching car films on YouTube.

Reading more pages on a book or writing more words on the blog? That’s hilarious.

Starting this week, I decided to not be so wasteful and reverted back to sleeping the standard eight hours. Like meeting an old friend again or finding something long lost, the increased energy and focus I’m getting from my slumber is nearly revelatory. I feel great, and far less annoyed when the alarm clock wakes me in the morning. I’ve rediscovered why I started sleeping the proper amount of hours many years ago in the first place: for health and vitality.

All of this may sound trivial, but when you detach and see how important sleep is – a third of our entire lives, the move back to eight hours is quite significant in my opinion. As I creep further into my 30s, I need to be exceptionally guarded with the sleep schedule; at a decade removed from my college days, I simply can’t pull all-nighters with impunity and feel zero ill effects.

Sleep is nature way of healing our bodies and keeping us well, millennia before any forms of medicine. So please do get enough amounts of it, my friends.

Should I get a second car?

Wait a minute; how did I go from no car at all to now pondering the necessity of a second car? Funny how perspectives and situations can completely turn around in less than a year.

Back in May of last year I embarked on the ‘no car’ journey, having sold the MX-5 and then henceforth only used public transportation and the occasional ride-sharing to get myself to places. That experiment ended this January when I bought the GT3, though I’ve still been taking the bus to and from work. The 911 isn’t the greatest of cars to commute with for many reasons, some idiosyncratic, some innate.

One of the idiosyncratic reasons is the lack of secured parking at where I live. There’s absolutely no way I am street-parking the GT3, especially since my neighborhood is not of the high-income and or gated variety. So instead I park the car at work, where there’s a covered parking complex. It’s not the most ideal situation to have my beloved car be located on the other side of the city, but it’s the best option short of paying monthly for a parking spot or storage unit closer to home. The carpark at work is somewhat secured, and more importantly the GT3 is not exposed to the elements.

Obviously then in order for me to go out driving on the weekends, I basically have to first head to work – every single time. This in it of itself isn’t too bad because I quite enjoy riding the bus and listen to podcasts. The problem starts whenever I need to do more than taking the GT3 out for a spin, such as maintenance work or giving it a solid detailing. Any gear required for such servicing, I’d need to schlep it with me on the bus, which can vary from merely inconvenience to downright impossible depending on the size of the job.

What I need is a second vehicles for parts running.

It needn’t be fancy or remotely sporting: all I need is a simple car that’s easy to drive, while small and inexpensive enough to be conveniently parked in San Francisco without worry. The cheapest new car on the market - those tend to be subcompact in size - available for lease should suffice.

But that presents a conundrum: do I use the second car to commute as well, and forgo using public transportation? In terms of being a kind citizen to the environment it wouldn’t be a good decision, and in terms of costs it’ll be significantly higher than the $78 I’m paying for the monthly pass. Dealing with the grind of Bay Area traffic is also a huge negative against this move. However, the convenience factor is difficult to ignore: the many hours saved, and not having to carry a bucket of tools with me on the bus.

We shall see what happens.