Year 4, Final 1998 Audi Numbers

It has become apparent that I am the custodian of a terribly dry blog.

I sold the old 1998 A4 Avant yesterday for $2000. I purchased it nearly 4 years ago for $4200 making the 'depreciation' only $2200 over the course of 4 years. See below for details on how all the other expenses stacked up. To me the most interesting numbers are down at the bottom. $/mi by year and accumulated. It will be interesting (no really!) to see what the 2008 car with 34k miles will be like with high depreciation but low maintenance costs.


Year 4 cost of ownership numbers...
Total miles: 246,684 (69,543 of them mine)
Year 1 miles: 20,195
Year 2 miles: 25,304
Year 3 miles: 12,653
Year 4 miles: 11,391

Total gallons of fuel: 3265
Year 1 gallons: 930
Year 2 gallons: 1155
Year 3 gallons: 618
Year 4 gallons: 562

Average miles per gallon: 21.3
Year 1 mpg: 21.7
Year 2 mpg: 22.0
Year 3 mpg: 20.8
Year 4 mpg: 19.9

Fuel cost total: $10,137
Est year 1 fuel cost: $3022
year 2 fuel cost: $3056 (cheaper gas this year, 5k miles for 'free' avg $2.64/gal)
Year 3 fuel cost: $1911 (avg $3.24/gal)
Year 4 fuel cost: $2148 (avg $3.82/gal)

Insurance total: $2201
Year 1: $380
Year 2: $486 (rates went up and I didn't notice?)
Year 3: $667 (added collision coverage)
Year 4: $668

Maintenance total: $4119
Year 1: $1730 (all sorts of random junk, some murkiness of what to 'count')
Year 2: $1442 (big timing belt and hose repair job and oil changes only)
Year 3: $426 (heater core, hatch struts, O2 sensor, oil changes)
Year 4: $521 (tires, oil changes, smog check)

Accident repair: $1695

Total everything cost of ownership: $21,185 (!)
Year 1 total: $11,608 (includes$4200 purchase)
Year 2 total: $5069
Year 3 total: $3086
Year 4 total: $1422 ($2000 subtracted for sale)

$/mile by year excluding purchase, accident repair, and sale
Year 1: $5,600/20,195 = $0.28 ($0.15 fuel / $0.13 ownership)
Year 2: $5,067/25,304 = $0.20 ($0.12 fuel / $0.08 ownership)
Year 3: $3,086/12,653 = $0.24 ($0.15 fuel / $0.09 ownership)
year 4: $3,422/11,391 = $0.30 ($0.19 fuel / $0.11 ownership)

All inclusive $/mi as expenses and mileage accumulated
After 1 year: $11,609/20,195 = $0.57 ($0.15 fuel / $0.43 ownership)
After 2 years: $16,677/45,499 = $0.37 ($0.13 fuel / $0.23 ownership)
After 3 years: $19,763/58,152 = $0.34 ($0.14 fuel / $0.20 ownership)
After 4 years: $21,185/69,543 = $0.30 ($0.15 fuel / $0.16 ownership)

Year 3 Audi Numbers

(a cool picture Jeff took this spring to add some value to an otherwise dry post)

Year 3 cost of ownership numbers...
Total miles: 235,401 (58,152 of them mine)
Year 1 miles: 20,195
Year 2 miles: 25,304
Year 3 miles: 12,653

Total gallons of fuel: 2703
Year 1 gallons: 930
Year 2 gallons: 1155
Year 3 gallons: 618

Average miles per gallon
Year 1 mpg: 21.7
Year 2 mpg: 22.0
Year 3 mpg: 20.8

Fuel cost total: $7989
Est year 1 fuel cost: $3022
year 2 fuel cost: $3056 (cheaper gas this year, 5k miles for 'free' avg $2.64/gal)
Year 3 fuel cost: $1911 (avg $3.24/gal)

Insurance total: $1533
Year 1: $380
Year 2: $486 (rates went up and I didn't notice?)
Year 3: $667 (added collision coverage)

Maintenance total: $3598
Year 1: $1730 (all sorts of random junk, some murkiness of what to 'count')
Year 2: $1442 (big timing belt and hose repair job and oil changes only)
Year 3: $426 (heater core, hatch struts, O2 sensor, oil changes)

Accident repair: $1695

Total everything cost of ownership: $19,763 (!)
Year 1 total: $11,608 (includes$4200 purchase)
Year 2 total: $5069
Year 3 total: $3086

Running $/mile
Year 1: $11,608/20,195 = $0.57
Year 2: $16,677/45,498 = $0.37
Year 3: $19,763/58,152 = $0.34

*some known errors and inconsistencies in this. But mostly correct ... ish.

Tilt shift again

Cool collection of tilt shift photography: here

Physics

Neat physics demonstration I had not seen before:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQX8I9ZWtPQ#t=44m2s

Explained:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelvin_water_dropper

via: reddit

Less annoying

If you've ridden in my car recently you've no doubt been annoyed by the head liner coming down in the back and the low oil pressure alarm going off periodically.

The oil pressure sensor was changed and it looks like the new one has a lower pressure setting so perhaps it will be happier in my high miles engine than the old one was.

And for the head liner, well ... I once heard something about how "The good enough solution often becomes the permanent one." Oh well, meh.

Fruit MRI

Via Reddit Someone took MRI scans of fruits and vegetables and animated the results. So awesome. My favorite is the mushrooms.

Playful Porcupine

Does this mean that all other porcupines are lonely and misunderstood?

Skiing on waves

Another skiing post - amusing!

Wow smoking is boss!

Where can I get a pack, I want to have those kinds of good times!

Ratatat

I had never heard of Ratatat before last night when Pandora thought to give them a spin for me. Enjoyable!

TV...

ENHANCE!
62" DLP, thanks Craigslist!

From forweb

Dry.

To all of you who patiently listened while I explained how the rear hatch on my car had become heavy because water was leaking into it. I was wrong. So wrong that I drilled a small hole in the bottom of it and no water poured out wrong. So wrong I pulled the trunk trim off and had to take a look wrong. My Dad told me the gas struts on the hatch were blown a month or two ago at least. He was right, good job Dad. A pair of replacement gas struts on the way at a cost of $32 each. A hatch that stays up all by itself in my very near future.

 

X-ray pin-ups

Haha, link pretty silly

Flying with Chase

This evening Chase invited me to ride along for some flying over Ventura County! Fun stuff, it had been about 8 years or so since the last time I was up in a small airplane. We checked the airplane out, took off from Camarillo and went a short distance over to Santa Paula. There we did a few landing and take offs with 3-4 other people doing the same. And then we flew over to the coast just west of Magu Rock. And then back to Camarillo for a few more landing and take offs. Here's the pics!

PhD's bum deal

You knew you didn't want to become a grad student for 7 years, but you couldn't quite put your finger on it...

You laughed at The Simpson's jokes perhaps.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XViCOAu6UC0

This _lengthy_ article lays out why PhD study is a bad deal for American grad students.
http://www.miller-mccune.com/science/the-real-science-gap-16191/

tl;dr summary: There is not shortage of scientifically trained persons in the USA, there is a shortage of research positions and adequately paying jobs. This is why American students are shunning the technical fields: it's a bad deal.

Cool flight tool

Let's you see how far you can get for given dollar amount.
http://www.kayak.com/explore/

Seaside Florida

I spent the last week at a beach house a few miles east of Seaside Florida. I had a great time. It only rained when we first arrived, and only that night, and not during any of the days. The temperature was near ideal most of the week with it starting to warm up on Friday and Saturday. We thought we might get some oil from the big spill, but Louisiana is taking the brunt of that, not Florida at all. Coming home took close to 12 hours, and I guess my only complaint is that for traveling for 12 hours perhaps a more exotic local than Florida could be reached?

1949 Harley 45

I got to ride the old Harley this weekend! This bike was my uncle's way back when, and my Dad recently brought it back to road worthy status. Really interesting to ride with the foot operated clutch and 3 speed hand shifter!

(click to play short video clip)

LA Galaxy Game for Kevin's Birthday

Fun times were had Saturday night at the Home Depot Center to celebrate Kevin's Birthday and watch some professional soccer. (My first time to a game, and also the first time I have watched a whole game, actually the first time I've watched anything more than highlights haha!) The LA Galaxy were playing the Philadelphia Union. I learned a bit about soccer from Kevin during the game. Apparently are only 3 substitutions allowed per team through out the 90 minute game. A dude from the The Union got a red card for pulling some stupid slide tackle move when the game had already stopped. From that point on The Union played a man down, I didn't realize that they wouldn't be able to sub another guy in. 8 of the players will be on the field for the full 90 minutes. Pretty crazy endurance! A good group turned out and Kevin's birthday package deal got us great seats. Although from the looks of it, it doesn't really seem like any of the seats are that bad. The stadium seemed smaller than when I was there for a concert a few years ago. I guess the grass looks smaller than rows and rows of thousands of chairs.

The LA Galaxy scored a goal in the first minute of the game, and were up by three by the end of the first half. They didn't seem to be struggling too much to retain control. The crowd was pretty mellow with the exception of the two "fan sections" that had drums and chants going back and forth between them. It would be fun to go to a sold out Chivas USA game where I imagine that enthusiasm spreads to the rest of the Stadium.



(Yay phone camera!)

A couple clips of the game, just to give a flavor for the stadium.

Will Rogers State Park - Backbone Trail Out and Back

I dusted off the MTB for a real ride this Sunday. Mike has a fancy new bike. So he's all about the MTB these days and will be dragging me up more hills in the very near future I'm sure. We decided on Will Roger's State Park, Backbone Trail that I had done once or twice before with Justin. We did it as an out and back, but it can be done as a loop. The parking is up to $12 at the State Park, a bit much if you got in the habit of doing the ride frequently. There is parking on the side of the road into the park so you can just add a bit of mileage to your ride and save some bucks. Their parking lot was nearly full so it's kind of hard to fault them too much for the price of entry I suppose.

We rode from the parking lot at the polo field past the horse corrals and then up the dirt path to the main fire rode. The backbone trail takes off from a kiosk with a useless map to the right shortly after you get onto the fire road. Pretty much up hill for 6.8 miles to "The Hub." Mike did a good bit of waiting for me. I was huffing and puffing quite a bit and by the top was starting to get a bit 'bonky'. Thank goodness the camel back was stocked with a couple of CLIF bars and a granola bar. What seamed like an excessive 3 bars this morning really paid off after 90 minutes of climbing. Our average speed ended up being 6.0 mph. When I did this ride with Justin 11/2007, we had an average speed of 6.9 mph. Not exactly progress. 14.03 miles at 6.0 mph and 2:20 of ride time by my bike computer.

The trail conditions are pretty good for most of it. But a nontrivial portion of the trail was severely over-grown with vegetation. Most of the time the trail was still visible but your legs were displacing a good 3-9 inches of vegetation on either side. That got old pretty quickly and was even somewhat painful at times. Mike already having open wounds on his shins wasn't all that impressed with that aspect of the trail. Check out the picture below for a section of the trail that was totally obscured by the vegetation. There are some really great sections on this trail that are smooth and covered in canopy. Also the descents are fun, though well suited for a bike with suspension as it is rocky in places.

Mike saw what he figured was a gopher snake near the top. It decided to put things into a leisurely reverse after Mike almost ran over him with his front tire. There were a few hikers and some other bike traffic but certainly not over crowded. Some of the hikers were happier to see us than others. Also there were fantastic views of the Santa Monica Beach and pier today. Definitely a trail worth checking out if you mountain bike in socal!