Craig's blog

I love driving. I love driving a large car pulling a huge travel trailer at 55 MPH on the interstate for 8 hours. I love driving a motorcycle on a nice, warm day. I love driving the kids to school. I love to challenge myself to do everything right while driving. I love to work to be the safest driver on the road. But most of all, I love driving a sports car, particularly on a beautiful windy road.

I’ve always enjoyed driving. I wrote essays about it in high school. My entire life I’ve taken every opportunity to be the person who drives, to take the long way home, heck even to build my home up at the top of a mountain, so that I could drive up and down it each and every day. I loved taking a Skip Barber racing school class and getting a Dodge Viper through the course faster than anyone else that day.

And as I alluded to, at the top of the driving pyramid is driving a powerful, topless, sports car on a windy road. I’ve never been particularly interested in high speeds on straight roads, or in trying to out-drag the next person, but give me some twisty’s to carve up, and I’m in heaven.

And my whole life I’ve been fortunate to have (and/or have access to) great sports cars. My Dad bought a ’66 Mustang convertible when I was 3 and it’s still in the family. I was fortunate enough to be allowed to spend many nights and weekends during my high school years driving that great V8 powered car. Since then I’ve always owned a great sports car and now is no exception. I drive a BMW M Roadster, which is a total blast. Everything about it is great. I love listening to the rumble when I start the car, slipping the clutch, shifting gears, accelerating, braking and of course cornering. And it does all those things extremely well (and rarely with a roof over my head). It's been great fun to teach my oldest daughter Kelly how and when to shift, as my Dad did for me when I was young.

Ok, you probably get the picture. So why write this post today? Well, as many of you know, while I’ve always been concerned about our consumption of fossil fuel, I’ve become much more engaged in the issue over the past 6 months. And I’ve vowed that our family would do what it reasonably could to curb our own consumption (as well as CO2 emissions). And you may already know that we have done some things (that really didn’t take much sacrifice other than money) like putting a PV solar array on our roof and trading in our Acura MDX for a Toyota Highlander Hybrid that gets twice the mileage. But I’m still driving my powerful (fun) sports car (that’s not a terrible gas guzzler, but it’s far from the most efficient car on the planet).

So I took a deep breath and I did it. I ordered one of the most efficient cars on the planet, a 2007 Toyota Prius Touring Edition. And today I got the call – it’s arrived at the dealership and I’m picking it up tomorrow.

I’m sure some of you are thinking, “what a spoiled, whining, brat”, and you’d probably be right. I get a new car. It has lots of fun technology that I’ll love playing with it. I still get to drive (I can even fit my kids in it) as much as I did before. But for the first time in my life, I won’t have a fun sports car. And until and unless I put my hands on a green sports car (Tesla?), my kids won't grow up with some of the thrills I did.

# posted by Craig @ 11:20 PM