A small update on recent events of our life — two pretty much separate stories. First one is the fact that Tanya — Alena’s friend from university days in Minsk — is in United States again. While the first time she was here for a tourist visit with us, this time she is here for work. We kept planning to visit her for several weeks now, but stuff kept getting in the way. This time around it was our car.

On Monday morning I got into our car to go to work. The car didn’t start from the first try, but did after a second try. When I got to work it did the same thing at a gas station near my office. In the evening I decided to leave earlier, in case it doesn’t start and it had no trouble at all. On Tuesday morning all was good as well. So thinking that it was some one time fluke I stayed late at work on that day and to my dismay the car would not start no matter what I tried at the end of the day.

Usually the most typical problem is a dead battery. But all the electronics seemed to work just fine. Lights were on, sound system played music well, but the engine would not even try to turn over. My dad had to come out and get me. We got home close to midnight. I spoke with Geoff and he very kindly suggested that I should leave my keys on his desk and he’ll try to sort things out in the morning, so I wouldn’t have to come out and not be able to get back again — I couldn’t ask my dad to make so many 140 miles long trips.

I was dreading having to deal with getting the car towed. But I guess luckily for me the car started in the morning when Geoff tried it, so he dropped it off at a local Chrysler dealership and it started having starting problems there, so at least they could start on troubleshooting the issue. Now here are two things — the car has 83,000 miles on the odometer. This was the very first time that it gave me any kind of trouble at all. When we bought the car we bought an extended warranty that runs out at 85,000 miles. I thought this extra warranty purchase was completely useless and kept thinking that warranty covering something was really a myth. I was glad to have been proven wrong.

So the dealer called me and told me it was a starter and the car would be ready on Thursday morning. My dad drove me to work again and when we got to the dealership we saw a bunch of mechanics hovering over my car with manuals — never a good sign. They replaced the starter, the car didn’t start. The suggested they get me a rental car (also covered by warranty) which I had not choice, but to agree too. It’s never cool to give up your car for a car that’s worth less than half of yours — bare-bone Jeep Compas. You just get too used to little niceties. Anyhow, since I’m not in Norwalk until Monday they agreed to let me keep the car until then.

Long story short, they ended up replacing the starter, the fuse box and some transmission sensors which finally fixed the problem. All that got resolved only at the end of Monday, which caused me a lot of stress. But all in all, I did have a temporary car, the warranty covered it all and I have my car back in a working order. Hopefully it will stay this way.

Back to Tanya now. This time we decided not to let this car issue stop us from visiting her. We installed our “Costa-Rica” child seat into our Jeep and using Google Maps on iPhone as navigation successfully arrived to the hotel where Tanya was staying with her mom and her 2 and a half (approximately) year old son.

It was a nice visit. We talked a lot about different topics — work, travel, kids, kids, kids. We went out to a local Outback restaurant for lunch, helped with some grocery shopping — Tanya doesn’t have a driver’s license which makes things very hard for them there, even though the company that hired her would cover a rental.

Aroshka played a lot with Antoshka. With went for a nice walk around a lake and they would run around and picked up all kinds of sticks, cones and other stuff. Arosha kept pulling Antosha by his hand in all different directions and Antosha on one hand wanted to play with Arosha, but on the other hand seemed to be kind of afraid of him. So when Arosha would run away on his own Antosha would say — let’s play together. When Arosha would come back Antosha would run back towards his mom and stick with her. All in all I think they had a good time as did we. We will definitely do this more. Tanya is in US until the end of the year I believe.

We are planning to invite Tanya for a weekend to stay with us as they are very much bored in New Jersey with no car. While big cities have robust public transportation systems for the most part, in rural America you can not do anything without a car. So there you go. This concludes my update for the past week.

P.S. Sadly I somehow managed not to take a single sharp picture of Tanya. I was running around with my manual lens and I think I lost some fast focusing skill since I haven’t used it in a couple of months.

When we were planning our trip we couldn’t make up our mind whether we should rent a car and drive or if we should stick to trains as it has worked so well for us in Japan. After thinking and thinking we decided to go ahead and get the driver’s license anyhow and possibly try to rent a car for a single day, but traveling by trains seemed like an easier and less stressful thing to deal with and that’s what we did¹. We ended up not visiting any small towns, but it was the right decision for the first trip.

We moved from city to city by rail via bullet trains. We used public transpiration around those cities and that was definitely the right thing to do. Even though city centers are quite busy and streets are tiny that wasn’t the scary part of driving. The scary part was the fact that there are some no driving zones even though roads lead there and tourists tend to drive into those parts and get fined. Plus who wants to deal with looking for parking on vacation?

But having a European driver’s license in hand we figured that visiting Pisa would be a great time to try renting a car for a day. We were staying in Florence for 3 nights and Pisa is only 60 miles away. We weren’t quite sure if we’ll want to spend the day outside of Florence or if we’ll want to spend that day in Florence itself. However several things tipped the scale towards a drive to Pisa.

First we arrived to Florence pretty early on Sunday. Somehow we budgeted the whole day for the train ride, but since the ride wasn’t all that long we ended up going to downtown area on that very day and saw a good portion of what we wanted to see — Duomo. We also did our climb to the top and took a good set of pictures. Our second objective in Florence was Uffizi Gallery and it was closed on Monday — we had Tuesday for that. Third is the fact that Pisa Tower is a very famous place and being so close to it and not seeing it would not make sense. And fourth was simply the fact that we wanted to get some out-of-the-country car renting experience under our belt.

Before the trip I looked for car rental places, but all of them were near the central train station close to downtown or the airport. Neither one seemed exactly convenient, but I made a reservation near the train station, thinking that we’ll be spending time in the center of the city anyhow. On Monday morning we couldn’t really decide whether we still should do it. Driving out of the center is one thing, but not knowing where to drive is a whole other matter. Instead we went down to the reception desk of our hotel and asked if there were any rental places around. Turned out that Eurocar Rental was 5 minute walk away.

That’s where we went. Slowly moving guy, by American standards at least, said that they did have cars and their rates were very comparable to the rates that we got online for downtown rental. We also decided to include a GPS unit and all possible insurances that they were offering in addition to the mandatory theft insurance — none of my credit cards were offering insurance to cars rented in Italy and neither did my own car policy. The total for the day came out to $127. There were no hidden fees that and no problems whatsoever.

One funny moment or maybe a silly moment for us was that we decided to boast how cheap the gas is for us in the U.S. and how we can easily afford to drive big, V8 powered cars to which the guy gave us a sobering reply: “Our medicine is free. My kids will go to college for free.” And something else along these lines. In his words it’s nice to be middle class in Italy, but if you want to be rich you have much more chances of making it in U.S. I personally will take my chances. All other countries are fun, but there is no place like home and New York is it.

Now that was a long introduction. At this point we finally got into our Fiat Panda which sported a 1.2 litter engine at the most, but which was unexpectedly roomy. The car came with a manual transmission. Luckily for me I had a pretty lengthy manual transmission experiment running during my younger days, so I had no problems driving a stick. All the traffic was also no big deal after New York. And with the help from our GPS unit we were soon speeding away from Florence and on our way to Pisa via autostrada A11.

Weather-wise the day was less than stellar, no put intended. It was the only day when it actually rained throughout all of our trip. But it worked out OK for us. It only rained while we were driving and when we arrived to our destination the rain stopped. Rain was one of the reasons why we took a big highway straight to Pisa instead of small back roads. Another reason was the fact that we sill weren’t too sure of our navigational abilities, so we took the surest route. We hoped that on our way back we’ll take some smaller road and hopefully will get to stop in some small towns. Alas, that’s not how it worked out.

It took us an hour to get to Pisa. We spotted the tower from quite a bit away and soon after easily found parking fairly close to the central district of the city. There was a ton of elaborate signs explaining the parking rules, but in the end it came out to operating a very similar in use parking machine that New York City is covered in. We dropped the coins in, it spat a printed ticket out that goes behind the windshield. The restricted traffic zone was also very clearly marked, so I don’t think there really was a danger of us crossing into it accidentally.

We left our car and went on a hiking tour around Pisa. The town itself was somewhat of a cross between Florence and Rome architecture-wise, although the number of tourist was noticeably smaller than that of the other two cities. And beside the tower and central cathedral there really wasn’t much to do as far as our itinerary went. Even though the city itself has numerous other historic churches we decided to limit our whole Italian trip to the most famous locations in order to avoid a complete mess of memories at the end of our vacation.

The famous tower itself is indeed a sight to behold. I knew the tower was leaning, I didn’t realize how much. It really stands at freakishly steep angle. In fact the angle was so freakish that we decided to forgo the climbing to the top tour — our only such omission during the whole trip. We took a good number of pictures, although I ran into another problem here. While all the normal towers on my pictures were falling down because of wide-angle distortion, this one was actually coming out straight. Quite ironic. As a result I don’t really have any pictures that I’m proud of from this particular place.

We walked about around the central area, took some more pictures of the main cathedral and headed back to our car. Our next objective was try to head up north along the coast of Mediterranean Sea as far as the day (sun) would allow. We actually wanted to get all the way to Manarola for its picturesque views and it was only 60 miles away, but there just wasn’t enough time. The sun was getting close to horizon by the time we were only half way there. So we stopped in one of the coastal resort towns — Marina di Pietrasanta — and took a nice walk along some pier and watched the sun set over the water. The town itself was virtually deserted, but it probably is bustling with activity during the summer months.

At this point we got back into our car and headed back to Firenze. Since it was dark out already we ended up not stopping or taking detours towards any of the small towns, even though we took a different road back. When we were getting closer to Florence I went into some panic mode — I know, so unusual — thinking that we won’t find the rental place, our hotel or any gas stations to fill the car up at. I really wanted to return the car this day and not have to wait until morning and worry about this chore the next day.

“Strangely enough” there was no problem finding anything, although gas bill came out quite high even on 1.2 litter engine. We turned the car in and were back at our hotel room at around 7pm. Now I could truly relax and reflect on the experience of this fun and unique day. We decided not to take a bus to the center of the city and went to local restaurant for dinner on a recommendation of our hotel staff. We walked through the modern yet quite neighborhood of residential Florence, ate our dinner and drank our wine at Mi Amor restaurant, and were asleep soon after getting back to our cozy room of our Hilton Garden Inn.

Last Saturday we did an important thing — my parents bought and picked up a new car — 2013 Nissan Altima SV — to replace their beloved Sonata that drowned in the flood caused by Hurricane Sandy.

It was a hard loss for them to deal with. My mom did her share of crying and my dad spent weeks worrying and wondering why he had parked the car where he did. He understood that nobody expected such major floods to happen, but he kept replaying the scenario — what if he only parked it 2 blocks in other directions.

Either way, we can now happily put it all behind and hopefully they can enjoy their new car. Geico came through for them and did what they were supposed to. In fact it was a pleasure dealing with a company that handled everything professionally and didn’t give us any hard time about anything.

As far as the new car goes, my cousin, Arsen did all the hard work. He did a lot of research on a good replacement, spoke with multiple Nissan dealers when my parents decided that Altima was the best option, and found a great price for them. He also arranged all the financing and made sure that there are no extra hidden fees that dealers love to throw in. If it wouldn’t be for his help I would have to go through all that myself and even though I can do that it always gives me tons of stress. So I’m grateful to him for his help as much as my parents are.

The new car is more expensive than the “old” Sonata was, but it it’s a higher class car. It has a new body for 2013 and this time my parents decided to get a navigation system, which I think is a great decision. I never understood how useful a built in system can be until I actually ended up with one in my own car. We also corrected a mistake we made with the last purchase — no more low profile tires and sports suspension. My parents prefer the car to feel softer and don’t really care much about it’s cornering abilities.

Anyhow, the new Altima is great. I hope they enjoy it for many more years to come. By the way, they also picked a non-silver color this time. I think it looks much better and richer than boring silver that every other car seems to be painted in.

Yesterday was a big day. My parents have been talking about replacing their old 1997 Pontiac Grand Prix with over 130,000 miles with something new. They wanted something reliable, but didn’t want anything fancy — they just need to get from point A to point B in relative comfort and don’t want to worry about parts falling off like the Pontiac started having a tendency to do.

Hyundai seemed like a good candidate from the start. The company has been working on their reputation lately and we ourselves considered Genesis when we were looking for a new car. They give good warranty, make good quality reliable cars that are inexpensive which overall results in good value for the money.

That’s how our Saturday started. We went to a local dealership to look and test drive 3 models — Elantra, Sonata and Tucson. What nobody of us expected was coming back home in a new car. I originally though that Elantra would be a good fit for them. During the test drive my dad started saying that the engine feels too week. Coming from my dad that really means something. He doesn’t care about HP, but when the car doesn’t pull — it doesn’t pull. So 1.8 litter 4 cylinder engine was no good. It also felt somewhat cheap inside.

Next up was Sonata. A bigger 2.4 litter engine was what my dad wanted. He was happy with it. It felt nicer inside and it was quite a bit bigger too. The low end model — GLS — lacked certain features like auto-headlights, power seats and it had steel wheels with plastic hubcaps. My dad liked having auto-headlights and wanted good wheels instead, but they figured they can live without it. Then it turned out that they only had black and red cars in stock in that configuration which ended up being a deal breaker for them. They wanted something light and neutral.

At this point they were offered a step up SE model which they had in light silver color. This car came with sports suspension, 18 inch low profile wheels — which my parents weren’t very happy about, but it also had auto-headlights, fog lights, key-less start button, power seats and a bunch of small niceties like that. It also came with a built-in bluetooth phone system which I’m happy about, since my dad never could talk in the car and we sometimes worried that he wasn’t answering. We hooked up his phone to it already.

We never got to testing anything else. The rest of the day we were working on the price. I think we got a good deal which I’m even more sure of after doing the research online. It’s not as stellar as deals used to be in 2008 when everything was falling apart, but by today’s standards they came away with a very nice car for a good amount of money. We also ended up redoing my dad’s insurance with a different company which came out a little bit more for full coverage than my dad was paying for liability alone. Geico rules.

The old car ended up getting donated. My parents felt very sad letting it go. They also felt extremely nervous ending up with a new purchase, but I remember that I went through the same very thing. I didn’t want to leave my new car outside alone. But it will pass. I wish them many years of enjoyment of their new purchase. Let the new car bring them only happiness.

Not all is good about the snow. On Thursday I had to drive to work and naturally the car was buried in hard ice. The just run huge trucks down the strips with massive snow plows and all the snow ends up on the cars. Then everything freezes over through out the night and in the morning you have a fun exercise.

It took me over an hour to get all the ice out of the way. It was frozen solid and luckily I was able to borrow a real sharp metal shovel to get the job done. A regular snow shovel would do nothing.

I got an e-mail this morning.

Dear 300:

“Happy Anniversary” from your friends at Fullerton Chrysler Jeep Dodge!

I hope you and Daniel are getting along well and that Daniel is taking good care of you. If you have any bumps and scratches, aches or pains, just come in and see us.

Hard to believe it’s been a year already. Time really flies. I don’t want to jinx it, but it’s been really good to us with more than 20,000 miles on the odometer.

When we took delivery of our car the sales guy folded down the sticker and gave it to me. This is my first new car and so is the sticker. I wanted to scan it in for a while now and here it is.

Unfortunate incident on the way home — got a flat tire. Heard a popping sound right in the middle of a bridge, but wasn’t sure what it was. Checking out the tire pressure monitoring system revealed a rather quickly dropping pressure in the rear tire.

Got of the highway right after the bridge. When I got out I could hear a loud hissing sound. Luckily the car came with a spare (donut type) and all the tools needed to change the wheel. The process was painless and it took me about 15 minutes, completely unlike my previous blown tire experience.

Now I have to get the main tire fixed tomorrow in the morning before work. Like I don’t have enough things to do.

Our Thule Doubletrack bike rack was delivered yesterday. The box was huge and pretty heavy. It did contain the rack and all the accessories that I ordered inside.

Putting it together involved 6 nuts and bolts and the whole process didn’t take more then 15 minutes. The final construction is very sturdy for the most part.

At this point I haven’t been able to fit it onto the car, but I’m starting to wonder whether this construction will fit into the trunk if the need arises. The central pole with hooks does go down, but it still is big.

The locking anti-rattle bottle is great. It solves both of the worries that I had about an L-shaped adapter for our hitch. It actually does remove all the rattle by replacing a simple pin with a massive nut and bolt, which also has a lock fitted onto it.

The only complain that I have so far is that the hook mounts on the central pole could be more sturdy. The plastic mounts do not seem like they can take a lot of beating, so hopefully it’s not going to be a weak spot of what seems to be a great setup.

I also replaced the buttons with Thule locks and used a locking bolt to attach the rack to the hitch.

The 2nd hardest thing after choosing all the components was actually installing the hitch. Not that it’s a complicated procedure — lower the exhaust, screw in 6 bolts, raise the exhaust back up. But it’s not possible to do without a lift, so a shop has to be involved.

Either way, it’s done. Dealer has quoted me $135 for the job (are they insane?), and my regular guy took $50. The hitch is completely invisible on the car when not in use because of the hidden design. To attach anything to it I need to put on an L-shaped adapter (15 second ordeal) and we’re good to go.

Now we just need for the bike rack itself to get delivered (Monday) and we can travel. Questions is — where to?

The other day I was coming home from work while trying to keep the MPG as high as possible. I was really babying the gas pedal trying to keep the engine in 4 cylinder mode all the way.

My record of the day was 28.4 miles per gallon. Sadly as soon as you start doing some stop and go driving it all goes to hell. But nobody is surprised on this side of the keyboard.

Of course this all is highly unscientific.

It took us a bit over a month to do the first car mode. Last Friday, right before our drive to Pennsylvania, we got the windows of our car tinted¹. It’s not nearly as dark as the previous car — 35% on the doors and 20% in the back. It does make it more comfortable inside though.

More then a week ago Alena and I took a couple of shots of interior of our car during the night with all the lights glowing. One of them is HDR, but the colors are slightly off on it from the true ones. The other one doesn’t show as much detail, but the colors are realistic.

I didn’t want to post them before I had a chance to take a couple of shots during the day time. And we did that today.

Mouse over the images for a detailed description.