EARTH DAY 2008
Well, I enjoyed Earth Day yesterday. I spent the afternoon mountain biking in Stone State Park. Absolutely beautiful park, 70 degrees and sunny. A spiritual nature experience and a workout as well. I am a long way from being 'green' though, so Nicole and I talked about a few things we want to change at our house to do our small part. So, in honor of you, Mother Earth, I pledge:
1. To increase recycling at our house: Since we live outside city limits, recycling hasn't been as easy here, but I am going to the recycling center to get some big boxes to separate our recyclable plastics/metals/paper and have our own little organized recycling area in our garage.
2. Use less water: Turn off while brushing teeth, shorter showers.
3. Use products that use less waste and pollution: Uggghhh, I am going to try to give up canned pop, and only have pop from a 2 Liter at home, or at a restaurant. No more 100 calorie packs at our house.
4. Use less gas. Big one for me. My gas guzzling Explorer has got to go. Sooo:
FOR SALE:
2003 Ford Explorer
Limited Edition, All leather, 3rd row seating.
I am going to put an ad in the paper and going to sell the old beast. When I do, here is my next car:
Estimated 45 mpg on the highwayAT-PZEV CARB Emissions Rating
Idle-stop feature
I'm stoked. Unless someone can convince me there is a better car out there that gets 40 mpg or better, Travis is getting a Civy Cat. (I am open to other options, anyone?)
5 comments:
I talked to some of the more gas conscious people at work today, and they all said that the Honda Civic (behind Prius) is a great choice.
Plus I hear there are all sorts of modifications available for the Civic. Like Zebra stripes.
The Civic is a good choice, but even the non-hybrid Civic gets about 38 miles/gallon (highway), so I'm not sure it's worth the extra cost to me to get to 45 or 50 miles/gallon. My picks would be 1) Hybrid Toyota Camry, 2) Toyota Prius, and 3) Vespa (ha).
I sold my car in Oregon and Cory and I are now walking to work. I would recommend posting your Explorer on Craig's List (for free) and selling it there. Do it on a Saturday when you have time to meet people immediately.
Thanks Mary and Chad. I will take a harder look between the Civic/Civic Hybrid.
I stopped at Toyota and looked at the Camry Hybrid. You can't go wrong with the Camry in terms of safety, reliability and resale. A little extra cash and less mpg though.
You know, I kind of wonder whether today's hybrid technology is like the big screen TV technology of ~2003. Remember those big old projection screen TV that rich kids had in their apartments? They were gigantic and probably cost $4,000, but the screen quality sucked and there is no way your moving it without five other dudes. Today when I see one I'm happy I waited 3 years for my gluttonous purchase.
We might be in a time where there will be substantial gains in the mpg-hybrid arena within a short period of time, kind of like what LCD/Plasma did for TVs the past 3 years.
Then again, people probably thought the same thing in the early 1980's after the oil embargo...and look how that worked out.
And it's always cheaper to pay more to fill up a car that's paid for than to fill up a car that you are making payments on...
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