The Time-Value of Money

Earlier this week my parents sent me the original purchase contract for The Triumph. They bought it for just under $5100. It got me thinking: what could you buy with that today?

Adjusting for inflation $5100 in 1974 is equivalent to about $22000 in Dec 2009.

So off we go to Edmunds to see what comparable 2009-model car we can get for our $22000...

• Mini Cooper
• Pontiac Solstice
• Mazda Miata

Mini Cooper:
A base-model Mini convertible starts at $23,900. Close enough. For that you get 2745lb car with

• 1.4L I4 engine (114hp, 118lb-ft of torque).
• 6-speed manual transmission
• 28/36 mpg
• Four-wheel ABS
• Traction control
• Stability control
• Front and side air bags
• 5-star roll-over protection
• A power convertible top (with remote control)
• Power windows, door locks, mirrors
• Air conditioning
• AM/FM radio with CD-player

(On a completely unrelated note: I saw about 25 original Minis in Redmond this morning. Clearly a club headed out for some fun. Hopefully the 27-degree temps won't cause any problems.)

Pontiac Solstice
A base Solstice is $24,275. (And given the state of Pontiac I bet if you can find a new one you can get it for alot less.) The Solstice is a 2860lb car with

• 2.4L I4 engine (173hp, 167lb-ft)
• 5-speed manual transmission
• 19/25 mpg
• 4-wheel ABS
• Trction control
• Stabilty control
• Front airbags
• 5-star roll-over protection
• Power windows and door locks
• No air conditioning (it's a $960 option)
• AM/FM stereo with CD player

Mazda Miata
The Miata starts at $21,750. And that gets you a 2450lbs-reason why I have absolutely no respect for you. Why? Simple. In 1989 (when the convertible was considered nearly dead) Mazda came out with the Miata. By all accounts it was a fun, 2-seat, top-down, toy. Sounds good, right? Then they decided to market it as the "Return of the classic British Roadster". Sorry, no. It's a mass-produced toaster. So I refuse to spend any more time on it.


1974 Triumph TR6
The TR6 is a model of modern technology and innova... okay sorry, I couldn't contain that little laughing fit right there. A TR6 is 2450lbs chunk of iron. What you get is

• 2.5l I6 engine (104hp, 140lb-ft)
• 4-speed manual tranmission
• About 23mpg
• No ABS (unless it counts as ABS if the braking system doesn't generate enough pressure to lock up the rear drums)
• Organic traction and stability control (in the form of a gas pedal and steering wheel)
• 0-star roll-over protection. The windscreen can support about 300 lbs. In a roll-over it will surrender faster than the French.
• No power door locks, windows, mirrors. Not even power steering.
• No airbags.
• No air conditioning
• AM/FM stereo with 2 speakers strategically placed to play into the drivers right knee and the passengers left knee.

The conclusions:

1. You can get more bang for your car-dollar today than in 1974.
2. A Miata is a bad choice unless you're shopping for a victim the local Truck-A-Saurus. [Sunday! Sunday! Sunday!]
3. If you own a mini you'll have lots of company in Redmond.

Hemmings Motor News
Sportcar Market Magazine

Priorities Change

I felt old before. Sometimes I think I had a mid-life crisis at 22. But now I'm really old.

On Sept 18th I became a dad.


(Excuse me while *I* have to reread that last sentence.)

I'm an engineer. Sometimes, when faced with a nearly incomprehensible statement like that one, I have to put some numbers on it to cope. Unfortunately not all numbers help. Here are a few that have passed through my head lately

• She'll be in the high school class of 2027.


• I'll be 56 at her graduation.


• In-state college will be about $32,000/year. Private school will be twice that.(Inflation adjusted)


• If I save $365/month starting now I might be able to cover 4 years of an in-state school.


• My dad, when he was my age, had a 13-year-old daughter and an 11-year-old son.


• The ratio of eggs-to-baskets just went from 1:1 to 3:1. (Was two people supported by two paychecks. Now three people on one paycheck.)


• When she gets her license The Triumph will be 51 years old. (Luckily, by then, there won't be any gas and all the cars will be DeLoreans powered by "Mr Fusion" so I won't have to worry about her wanting to borrow it.)

This isn't helping.

So, what does this mean for the garage? I'm not sure yet. Certainly it will mean less funds to play with. The track season next year will be shorter (if it exists at all). I might have to give up the Seahawks season tickets. And, if you know anyone in the market for a Mallard TR6, please let me know.

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Stadium

Yesterday was the first Seahawks home game of the year. A preseason game against the Denver Broncos.

Football season is a mixed bag for me. I love football. There's nothing better to have on the TV while you nap your way through a Sunday. But it also marks the end of the summer. And around here that means the start of a long gray season.

Anyway, here are a few things I learned (or reaffirmed) yesterday:

• Segways aren't any cooler when they're branded by Ferrari. I saw one downtown with red fenders and chrome wheels. Sorry, dude, it's still a Segway. (And this is coming from a guy with a Ferrari-branded laptop.)
















• Clydesdales are ginormous. They're like snorting mountains with hairy hooves. Budweiser had one of their Clydesdale teams at the game. I swear they were over 6 feet at the shoulder.
• I'm not a classical music guy, but it's hard to beat an opera singer delivering the national anthem unaccompanied.
• Even preseason football is entertaining if the crowd is into it.
• Recession or not. People will pay to watch the NFL.
• Bleached hair, jeans, boots, and the ability to prop up your drunk boy-friend as he yells at the guy rooting for the visitors seems to be the main criteria for women attending the game.
• If you're flushed out of the pocket on 4th and goal from the 2 you eat the ball. Run out of bounds. Throw it incomplete. Dive for the goal line. Do NOT flick it up for grabs in the endzone.
• It's okay to leave a pre-season game early.

• The sound of a big Healey running through downtown on a summer night is something special. Judging by the look on the drivers face he knows it too.

Why Hast Thou Forsaken Me?

I have offended the motorcycle gods. Somehow, somewhere, I did something wrong and they became angry and vindictive.

I decided to join SBNW 2009 with a NESBA track event at ORP. Sounded like a good plan: ride the gorge Wed, Thurs, Fri, listen to Reg Pridmore speak, ride Maryhill Loops road, then head to ORP for the weekend. I felt one of the problems I had with the Ducati the last time at ORP was simple unfamiliarity. I hadn't been on it in months. A few hundred twisty miles in the gorge should solve that and I'd be prepared for ORP.

Unfortunately the gods decreed that it was not to be.

During the drive down on Wednesday it was 108. The fairgrounds in Stevenson don't offer air-conditioning or much shade and it was over 95 throughout the week. Riding was pretty much limited to the early morning hours. The afternoon was reserved for Gatorade and sitting in front of the fan wearing a cooling vest.

Friday morning I repeated the route Joe and I had taken at last years SBNW to the Goldendale Observatory. It's *much* better in the daylight. (Although still a little iffy in some spots.) That put me close to Maryhill Loops so, after a quick stop for a 396-oz Double Death Gulp at the local convenience store, I went to wait my turn to ride MHL.

I like the attention that the Ducati gets. I'm not ashamed to admit it. Red, white, green and Italian. It looks good. People, especially motorcycle people, are attracted to it. But, what I don't like is when someone is staring quizzically at my bike then says "Is the tire supposed to look like that?" My front tire, with only 600 miles and one track day under it's belt, was splitting between the bead and the main carcass. Doh!

No MHL for me. I headed back to the fairgrounds hoping to find a tire vendor and a professional opinion. Unfortunately none was to be found. My riding was over for the day. I decided I'd take the bike to ORP Saturday as planned and address the tire there.

Friday afternoon I spent the usual 2-3 hours converting the bike from street to track. Not a fun experience in the heat. In the middle of that project I got a message from Joe who was supposed to come to SBNW that afternoon. "TJ ... I had an accident. ... I think broke my wrist. ... I don't know where the bike is. ... " Luckily, after getting ahold of him (well, sort of, he wasn't entirely conscious) I was convinced that he wasn't calling from a ditch and was in fact in a hospital in Vancouver. Sounds like he'll be okay.

The heat at ORP on Saturday was nasty. There is *no* natural shade unless you're the size of a ground-squirrel. I missed the first session of the day dealing with my tire. (I swapped it out with one I had brought with me.) The 10am session I ended after 3 laps because I wasn't thinking straight. I got a few good lap in the 11am session but the heat wasn't making it fun. I skipped the noon session, and there was a lunch break from 1-2. The 2pm session was 2 laps. I felt good at the start (after the long) but by the middle of the second lap I was losing focus on the task. A quick risk-assessment and it was time to go. I rolled out of the pits by 3pm headed for home.

Two tracks days had been reduced to less than 10 laps. But the bike is still shiny and my leathers are still unscathed. Discretion being the better part of valor and all that.

I thought they were done with me. I had admitted defeat. I was headed for home. Contrite and penitent. But the gods had one more warning, just a parting shot. They decided to trigger the transmission-overheating warning light on the Nitro in the middle of nowhere. "Slow down boy. We may be the motorcycle gods but we're good friends with the tow-vehicle gods too." ... Okay, okay, I guess I can climb the hills at 45.

I have started a repentance plan. I stopped for a biker who had run out of gas on freeway.

Delegation of Power

I've been on a green kick lately. Replacing bulbs with CFL, looking into solar power (yes, even in Seattle) and a few other things. It's not an attempt to reduce my utility costs (although that's a nice side effect) but to use less power. We use 30-60kWh of electricity per day and that's too much.

But where does it go? 30-60kWh per day means at any given instant I'm using 1250-2500 watts of electricity. ... 2500 watts. That's a crapload of power.

Being a geek I need numbers. I bought a Kill-A-Watt from Amazon for about $25. It's exactly what I need. It measures the power consumption of a single outlet. Plug it in, plug an appliance into it, let it collect data for awhile, then move it to measure something else. It'll take some time to get all the data I want but here's what I found so far:

• A/C. We have a wall A/C unit in the bedroom we use for maybe 10 days/year. It draws an average of about 450 watts on the days we run it. That's alot but not a surprise. Since we use it so rarely I doubt this contributes much to our yearly average consumption.
• Office PC. Our main computer is almost always on and is a pretty hefty PC but I had no idea it draws 250 watts. Even when it drops into sleep mode and kills the monitors it's still sucking 180 watts.
• Garage fridge. I figured this would be a beast. It's a cheap full-sized fridge we bought about 4 years ago. But I guess it's pretty well insulated. 28 watt average.
• Dehumidifier. I live in Seattle, I have metal toys, rust sucks. So a dehumidifier seemed like a good idea. I should have guessed since it functions much like an A/C but I was shocked to see it draws an average of 375 watts. And since it's on all the time so far this looks like our big offender.

I'm still checking a few other things like the other PCs in the house, the stereo, the instant-hot-water tap, the home theater. I'd really like to find some other power hog. Even turning down the dehumidifier gives me the willies.