Rides

I just came home from a most refreshing bike ride. I usually spend the Friday noon hour with the family, but they've gone haywire and taken our neighbor and two of her boys to Ikea in Seattle (Meg offered to drive, since the neighbor's husband took their suburban on a skiing trip with the scouts). So I pumped some air in my slightly sagging skinny tires, and rode throughout the streets of South Salem under blazing-blue clear skies. I did have an ulterior motive, however, and I found two Inifiniti G20's sitting side-by-side on a used car lot on 12th street. I've walked their lot before, as they have lots of nicer but older Japanese cars, so I propped my bike against the lot's fence and headed straight for the Inifintis. One was ugly beige and an automatic, so it was immediately off the list. The other was a black '94 G-20t (touring edition), with sexy-black leather that my buttocks and back simply melted into--some of the most comfortable car seats to memory--and there weren't any tears or visible abuse to them. It was a manual transmission, had a moon roof--everything was perfect. The back seat was comfortable, too, even with the driver's seat pushed all the way back. Just one problem: it has 185k miles on the engine, and it costs $4k. The owner's son told me that it comes with a 5-year powertrain warranty for no additional cost. These cars' engines could potentially last 300k--Inifiniti is simply the best made car on the planet--and I could very easily plop another low-mileage engine from the wrecking yard, if needed.

But then I think, do I really need a new car? I drive about 5 miles a day, with the occasional running around on Saturday. And Alice is paid off, has 30k fewer miles--it's hard to argue that, despite all of her shortcomings (wimpy engine (but not as miserly on the fuel), leaky trunk seals, crappy seat belts that I don't think even work any more). But after all, it is just a car, and it's main job is to get me to the van pool park-and-ride daily, with the occasional trip to Portland. But the gas mileage would be the same, even with the much more powerful Nissan engine underneath the hood. But my car now sits outside a lot more than it used to (Jack sat in the garage most of the time, because I took Tri-Met to work), so having a "nicer" car isn't necessarily that great of a thing. Maybe I can keep both :)--Alice for the week, and the G20 on the weekends. We have a three-car garage, why not? Surely it couldn't cost that much to insure . . . Even though I'm a money-miser, we just took out a line of credit on our house's equity to pay off some of the fixes we did on the old Beaverton house to get her to sell fast, so it would be very easy to "finance" the G20.

Back to the bike ride . . . I haven't ridden since we moved to Salem, and it felt fabulous. I've always thought that I would be a better racer on the bike than on foot, because I can ride long and hard forever. On the flats, my gears can't keep up with me, but maybe I'm a slow climber. I can feel my knees starting to go, so I might have to take up biking and swimming before too long. I'm not sure if this is normal for 20 years of competitive and consistent pavement-pounding, but I do accept that I've peaked physically.