summer

I don’t have to work until Saturday, and the week stretches out before me, unmarked by anything I have to do.

Big change after the seven day work weeks that were the norm since Spring Break.

Sorta boring, even.

My car, a 2009 Dodge Caliber SXT Sport, has THE BEST stereo system I’ve ever had.  One thing that came with the Sport package was a 458 watt, nine-speaker sound system, complete with a subwoofer.  I thought the base system in my blue Caliber SE Plus was pretty good – really good for a factory system, but the one in my black Caliber blows that one away.

(That’s my car fairy.  she looks out for the car)

The radio that came with the car is a six disc CD/DVD/AM-FM/Satellite unit.  (I don’t have a video screen, but, I guess if I did, I could watch movies in the car, since the radio plays DVD’s too).  This is, looking at Dodge sales literature, one of the highest powered car audio systems available in their cars.  It has a really clean sound to it, and with the subwoofer, a full range of sound, from bass low enough to shake the car’s mirrors to clean tinkling highs.

I have been just sitting in my car in the lot behind the apartment building listening to CD’s and satellite radio ("80’s on 8!")…it sounds sooo good.

I discovered something today:  The front seat folds flat, to make a
"work surface", the lit says, but if I fold down the back seats and the front seat, there’s almost nothing in the way of the sound woves from the speakers, and, yahoo, it ROCKS.

kinda trippy to drive it that way too, all the seats but mine down

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So, rockin’ sound system.  Cruise control.  I want to go somewhere.  A good, hours long cruise, speed set, CD on.

The day after I bought this car in March, I drove it out to The Painted Hills in central Oregon, a 490 mile cruise.  That first tank of gas, free from the dealer, returned 34 miles a gallon.  The car had, offically, 36 miles on it when I drove it off the dealer’s lot, but I put 29 of those miles on it myself, "test driving" it.  Like I needed one.  This car is pretty much everything I’ve ever wanted in a car.  I bought a Caliber last year, and drove it 15,000 miles.  It was a base model car, an SE Plus, and  I liked it fine, nothing was wrong with it, but there were options on these cars I wanted, and after a year of owning the first one, I reconsidered adding stuff to it and traded it up on a new Caliber that "had it all" from the beginning.  NO additions needed. (too bad no Caliber is offered with heated mirrors)  I didn’t have to add foglights, like I did to the blue one, the black one had ’em already.  The heated seats I was craving this last winter when it got COLD?  Already got ’em in the black car.  The cruise control I wanted to put in the blue car?  Yeah.   It’s in the new black car.

It’s really nice not to have to shift gears.  I read up on the Continuously Variable Transmission offered in these cars and really wanted one, it’s design appealed to me so much.  It doesn’t have gears, and works kind of like the deraillers on a multi-speed bike does, sliding a drive belt up and down cones to drive the car.  I haven’t done it myself (I would have in the past, but, maybe I never will with  this car-) but I found a video on U-Tube that shows what happens when you do attempt to drive this car as fast as possible from a dead stop.  The tachometer, and thus the engine, goes to maximum rps’s and STAYS there.  In any other transmission, you would have rises and falls of engine speed as you worked through the gears – 3, 4, 5,6, or even 7 these days – but with a CVT, the engine goes to max power output and stays there until the car reaches it’s maximum speed, with a smooth rise of speed that deceptively leads one to think, having grown up feeling gear changes and hearing engines change revs, that the car isn’t going any much faster.  Ignore all other sensations and keep an eye on the speedomter (watch the road too, of course) as you accelerate, and you will see a smooth, steady, rise in vehicle speed until you back off.  It’s like driving a jet powered car – not so much the sudden thrust of a rocket would be, but a strong pull all the way to top speed.  Smooth.

Incidentally, the CVT was first designed by Leonardo DaVinci.  The design is not uncommon in industrial applications, but is pretty "new" in cars.  Fluid mechanics had to be developed to enable the CVT to work with the higher torque loads of automobiles, but it seems to work fine in my Caliber, and uses the engine much differently than I would, if I was shifting gears.  My Sport edition C

aliber has an AutoStick option on it’s transmission, which simulates six "gears" for clutchless manual shifting.  I pretty much get in the car, start it, put it in Drive, and go, but the AutoStick feature is handy for using the engine to slow the car when coming off a freeway offramp, say, or going into a corner at sporting speeds.

Besides, if you want to nail it, just floor it and go.

Many of the reviews (I love the internet) I’ve read on this car are less than glowing, which I don’t understand, but then, I’m coming into these Calibers (3 so far.  The one we rented in 07, the one I bought in 08, and the 09 I have now) from a 1990 Plymouth Voyager, a poor old thing I bought out of a tow yard and which had most of it’s life used up by someone else, and a long series of used cars in my past – mostly 70’s and 80’s cars, and to me, this loaded Caliber is nearly like a Cadillac – power windows, locks, mirrors, sunroof, high powered sound system, and a smooooth ride.  This car is EASY to drive.  Start ‘er up, put it in drive, and go.  Don’t want to bother taking your hands off the steering wheel?  No problem, there are audio system controls on the wheel – in fact, although I haven’t really used this feature much, you can use you VOICE to tell the radio unit what to play – radio, satellite, CD, AUX, whatever – you can tell it what to do.

I’ll have to practise giving orders.

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I’ve always wanted a sunroof.  I don’t know why, exactly, but it seems so lux to have a sunroof in my car.  I see a lot of them these days (maybe it’s the part of town I live in?) but I finally have one of my own, and it makes me rediculously happy.  On the SE Plus I had, I really wanted power mirrors.  I didn’t mind rolling my windows up and down so much, and I can lock and unlock the doors myself (points for that with women, unlocking and opening their door for them), but the sunroof, AND the cruise control, and the automatic transmission?  Perfect.  This little car rides on big tires and wheels, 17 inchers, and rides steady and sure, even in cross winds, and feels confident and capable.  Only very rarely have I felt the car had less power than I wanted, and running the A/C with a full load of passengers places no great load on the car – it just revs up and goes.

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I have a trip in mind.  An easy drive out I-84 to exit 104 and US 97  to and across the Columbia up the Washington side of the Columbia plateau, and to the full size replica of Stonehenge:

I went there last in 2007, and I don’t suppose it has changed very much, but it’s a good drive out to Maryhill, where Stonehenge sits.  I can get out there in back in so many hours, so the cat’ll get his shots on time.

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With all the seats folded down and the cruise contol set, it’ll be a fine trip out there and back.

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2000: It’s not like I haven’t been there before… but the Black Caliber is one of the nicest cars I have ever driven out there.

(the nicest would have to be that ’92 Cadillac Sedan DeVille we rented – the blue whale.  It was a Nice ride.)

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So, maybe a trip tomorrow.

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