Northern Idaho Along the I-90 Corridor

As I mentioned in my post on my Fit First Impressions, I didn't really get to see much of Northern Idaho as it was night time and rainy. The mountains were fun to drive though.

Here is a small video of a car dealership in Kellogg that I drove past. It was a refreshing change to the monotony that modern life seems to always be offering (and the highway I was on).



I stayed in Coeur d'Alene that night, and I slept hard after a long day driving. The next day I made a quick stop at Lake Coeur d'Alene and was very impressed. It looked far too cold at the moment for a swim, but I imagine it is absolutely gorgeous in the summer. It looked like an excellent place to take a small company and their families for a corporate vacation. Maybe someday I'll get to do that, who knows? Unfortunately, the pictures I have were mostly for another panoramic picture, but Autostitch didn't like the ones I took, and they look pretty lame as individual pictures, so I am not going to post them. Here one that is alright on its own, taken from a pier:

It is a resort hotel that resides on the water front. It looked pretty posh.

On to Washington I went...

(Note: I think that is all I've got for the night. I'll try to wrap up the trip details over the next couple of days; there are more things I want to tell.)

Billings and Butte, Montana

The drive to Billings was fairly unremarkable, with brief pit stops in Sheridan, Wyoming, and the closed museum detailing the story of Custer's Last Stand.

Something I learned about Montana that I had not know before is that there are lots of casinos. What goes on in these casinos, I don't know, but I would guess that they are mostly slot and video poker machines, based on the one I went into. I blew $2 when I was in Billings, which seemed worth it while I drank a beer. That was the extent of my gambling adventures on this trip.

I was really impressed with Billings; the city appears to have grown well. The buildings in down town seem appropriate: they are big, but not too big. They are new, but not too new. They are well spaced, and it all appears very controlled and well organized. The university is nearby, and the residential areas are spread out, but don't have the modern urban sprawl feel that is so common today. It was refreshing. (The sprawl was there, but it at least didn't dominate the city like it has in Colorado.) Here is a panoramic picture of Billings from one of the buttes surrounding the city. I made it using the AutoStitch tool.

I stopped briefly in Bozeman, to see the university, but I didn't stay long before getting back on the road. The drive to Butte was windy, but I got this nice picture out of my window:

The city of Butte was a strange one, especially in contrast to Billings. The downtown area is built on the side of a mountain, and since it boomed in the early part of this century (before the depression, I would guess), the buildings are: 1) huge, and 2) old-looking. It seemed out-of-place to me. There are all these large buildings, and it looked like there was barely anyone around. This could have been because it was a Sunday afternoon / evening, but it left me with a strange impression, and I left town sans pictures.

I didn't really stop anywhere else in Montana, I just passed on through the rest on my way to Idaho...

Trip to Portland Summary

I am going to try to write up individual posts for important segments of my trip, some may be longer than others, but I can feel that my energy is beginning to wane, so we'll see how far this goes. Plus, I am hoping to get a phone call tonight, so that may interrupt this process as well. However, I wanted to give a brief overview of the trip to shed some light on where and when things happened.

Starting on Saturday, September 20th, I began my trip to Portland, Oregon. I headed to Billings, Montana, where I stayed for the first night. On day two, I headed west, stopping in Butte, Montana, for lunch / dinner before ending the night in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. Day three had a visit to Spokane, Washington, and ended in Yakima, Washington. Day four started with a trip to see Mt. Rainier, and then continued on to Portland, Oregon. In Portland, I stayed at the McMenamin's Edgefield, and visited Mt. Hood Community College and the Chinese Shao-Lin Center in Portland. On day five I drove across most of Oregon and Idaho, staying in Pocatello, Idaho. Day six was a visit to Jackson, Wyoming, and the return trip to Cheyenne.

I created this picture based on an interstate map, found on the wikicommons, approximately detailing my trip.

Fit First Impressions

As I mentioned in a prior post, I just got back from a week-long trip out and back from Portland, Oregon. I drove my new Fit, covering odometer miles from roughly 215 to 3155. As I spent so much time in my new car, I got a number of good first impressions that I'd like to share.

The driving capabilities of the car are excellent. One of the neat features that comes with an automatic Sport edition is the paddle-shifters positioned on the driver's wheel. As an automatic, there isn't much need to shift, but there are definitely times when a quick shift down is much easier than pushing harder on the gas. For example, mountain driving.

On day two of my trip, I was passing through the mountains in western Montana and eastern Idaho; it was night time and raining. I got into a good groove driving, and at one point looked down and noticed that I was driving almost 90 miles per hour. Realizing how unsafe this situation could be, I decided to reel myself in and drive at a lower speed. However, I did want to comment that the car handled superbly.

I found the ipod connection nifty, and useful in keeping me entertained on the road. I was glad to have it. The only problem I encountered was when the ipod went on the fritz for a day or two when I was in Portland, which was alright because I probably wouldn't have used it there anyway. The ipod was in some sort of locked up state, and I guessed that connecting it to a computer might have solved the problem. Since I did not have a computer to hook it up to, I decided to let the battery drain itself dead in hopes that that would give me the hard reset I thought it needed. Two days later, the ipod started working, just in time for my return trip.

To the right is a picture of what the Honda manuals call the "Fuel Efficiency Gauge", however I have decided that I will call it the "Mpgometer". This 'o-meter' is pronounced in one of two ways: em-pee-gee-o-meter (distinctly sounding each syllable), or empagometer (with a quick run through each syllable). My personal disdain for the widespread use of the acronym "MPG" and the cultural meanings behind it, means I use the second far more commonly, but the first is fun if I am in a nerdy mood. This neat little gauge is always present on the dash board, and good at telling me that I am being fuel efficient when braking and going down hill, and fuel inefficient when I am accelerating and driving up hill.

As part of this feature, the car automatically calculates fuel efficiency based on miles traveled and fuel used (I would guess). However, I got the impression that the car was not as fuel efficient as it was purporting to be. I didn't know exactly what it was at first, but I had taken one final trip with my Civic around the state of Wyoming at the end of August, and it appeared, to my memory, that I had gotten better gas mileage on that trip than I was getting on this one. After some investigation, this was probably true, but more because of the nature of the driving I was doing. That trip was on small state highways with fair conditions driven at an average slower speed, while this trip was mostly on faster Interstate highways, with occasional bad conditions.

To add to that, I tracked the mileage and fuel fairly accurately for the entire trip and compared the car's reported miles per gallon to a calculated miles per gallon. The results showed a large degree in variability in the car's reported fuel efficiency in comparison to the calculated fuel efficiency. Below are some of the details of where I got gas, the mileage, and the amount refueled at each stop.

Location	Miles Traveled	Gallons of Fuel	Car Calculated MPG	Calculated MPG
Cheyenne, WY	0	0	-	-
Sheridan, WY	316.3	8.943	37.5	35.37
Billings, MT	140.4	5.120	36.0	27.42
Butte, MT	278.1	8.663	32.5	32.10
Coeur d'Alend, ID	287.7	9.144	36.1	31.46
Yakima, WA	261.2	9.037	31.8	28.90
Sandy, OR	294.7	8.699	38.5	33.88
Pendelton, OR	315.7	9.461	38.9	33.37
Wendell, ID	325.9	9.270	37.5	35.16
Pocatello, ID	139.6	5.069	33.7	27.54
Jackson, WY	136.5	4.390	39.4	31.09
Rawlins, WY	282.1	7.032	39.6	40.12

There may be some inaccuracy as a result of "topping off the gas tank" not accounting for all fuel used in the previous trip, but I doubt the net error from this is large enough to account for the discrepancies.

There are some interesting things I learned from this calculation. Notice that the calculated MPG is generally lower than the car's calculated MPG. This fits the impression I got early on in my trip: I wasn't getting as good of a gas mileage as the car said I was. On top of that, this mileage wasn't even as good as what I had got with my '98 Civic. But also notice the milage at Rawlins, WY. This was on the last part of my drive on slower state highways, with fair conditions; which is similar to what my prior trip had been. This is the one case where calculated MPG was higher than the car's calculated MPG, and it was even better than the Civic.

According to EPA estimates, the Honda Fit Sport automatic gets 27 miles per gallon in the city and 33 miles per gallon on the highway. While the car's automatic fuel efficiency calculation may be a little wonky, the car's actual fuel efficiency fell well within expected norms. So I can't complain too much, I just have to take the car's fuel efficiency calculation with a grain of salt.

I have two more quick impressions I'd like to give to wrap this up. The car seems to be a bug executioner, as I had bug guts completely covering the front end of my car by the end of the journey (though most got there in Montana). I noticed a number of times pulling in for gas that my car would be the only one profusely covered in striking splatter patterns.

Finally, I haven't quite figured out the most comfortable way to sit for long drives. The two places for my left arm rest are a little too high and a little too low for optimal driving. There is an arm rest for the right arm, which is nice, but it tends to favor a relaxed, one-hand driving style with the left hand at 4:30 on the wheel. The shape of the steering wheel is different than in my Civic, and I found both of my wrists were tired by the end of the journey. I was playing around with the seat position towards the end of the trip, and it helped a bit. I guess I'll just have to see how I adjust - I drove the Civic for ten years, it wouldn't be surprising if it took some time.

My Brand New 2009 Honda Fit Sport

"We only have one future, and it will be made of our dreams." -- Soichiro Honda


This post is a couple weeks in coming, but I was slow in getting the pictures. Now that I have them, here is the full story:

When I was getting ready to head off to college for the first time, my parents generously bought me a Silver 1998 Honda Civic. I loved that car greatly. There were many experiences I had in the car that will live with me for the rest of my life.

My best friend and roommate in college, Joe, also had Silver 1998 Honda Civic, but his was a grade higher. We used to have the best times driving in tandem. One particularly fond memory is of the two of us e-brake turning, sequentially, to park in front of our apartment. Good times...

At some point, either near the end of my time in college, or in the following years, Joe told me about the Honda Fit coming to America. It had been the Honda low-end Civic replacement that had been in circulation in (at least) Japan for the last couple of years. Ever since then, I've had my eye on them.

I debated between the Fit and a Honda Hybrid for a number of years as the eventual replacement for my Civic; but eventually I decided the Fit was a better fit for me - for a number of reasons. Towards the end of August, I decided it was time to act, so I began an adventure through Cheyenne and Northern Colorado to find one. Unfortunately, I happened to decide at precisely the moment that no 2008 Fits could be found, and the 2009's were still a couple of weeks away. So I waited...

Fast forward a little bit to September 6th, 2008: I had not heard back from the dealers in Colorado, so after a little investigating, I found out that the '09's were not yet in stock and that the only one available soon would be a base model. Which would have been fine, but I was looking for the Sport model, primarily for the Cruise Control feature.

On a whim, I decided to try the local Honda dealer, Tyrrell-Doyle (note: I had a bad experience with this dealer in the past, and was not particularly looking to do business with them), and to my surprise, not only did Tyrrell-Doyle have a 2009 Honda Fit Sport, they had three. I came to the dealer immediately, to test drive one, to see if it was everything I had imagined.

I was in love at first sight, and everything I saw seemed to be screaming that this was my car. For instance, an inspection of the engine revealed a praying mantis hiding under the hood. To be very clear what this meant to me, I have been very interested in praying mantises for a number of years, but I had not seen one in the wild since perhaps my childhood, if ever. They are very rare here because the climate does not favor them, however, for some reason, there was one in my car. The number of symbols is astounding.

After a test drive, I decided to purchase the car, and after some negotiating, worked the price to $18,181. I like the number for its palindromic appeal, however I later realized that the perfect price was $18,081. The reason for this is that there are a vast number of nines involved with this car. For example, the car lot number assigned to this vehicle by the dealer was "90009". It is a 2009 vehicle, and I bought it in September, the ninth month. 18081 / 9 = 2009. Alas, I realized this perfection too late; I guess I will have to try harder for a numerically perfect car the next time I buy one. Still, I got pretty close...