This Weekend

This weekend, Wendy and I drove up to the Bay Area to visit our newly engaged friends Raheleh and Pedram who were throwing an engagement party. It was held at Rah's parent's house and we had a great time! The place was packed with lots of family, friends and food, and everyone was celebrating the couple.

The party was pretty extravagant, Wendy and I thought it could easily have substituted for the actual wedding ceremony! There was a family exchanging of gifts, cake cutting, lots of flowers and (soon-to-be) bride and groom cake feeding! I can only imagine what the actual wedding will be like, I can't wait!

My dad recently got a new car, a Toyota Prius to replace his aging Camry. Actually, his Camry is going to go to my sister Denise and her car, which is about to fall apart, is going to the scrapyard.

I put about 100 miles on the Prius over the weekend driving to and from Rah's parent's along with a visit to San Francisco to help my good friend Tristan get moved in for his first year at USF Law. Overall, the car is nice to drive and certainly gets you from point A to B while getting very good gas mileage.

Coming out of my sporty WRX there were a number of things I wasn't quite satisfied with. The first thing I noticed was how high and hard the seats feel. I felt like I was sitting on an actual chair while driving. I would have preferred the seat to be at least a few inches shorter and the seats to have at least a little bit of side bolstering. It was way too easy to slide out of the seat going even a little fast around corners.

The next thing on the list was the very distracting and obstructive view out the rear view mirror. The rear hatch has a support going right across the middle third of the viewable area. You can still see OK out the back once you get used to it, but it is distracting.

Finally, the steering wheel feels a bit rubbery. I guess am spoiled by the leather wrapped MOMO wheel that is in my WRX.

I was suprised to find that the Prius seems to have plenty of pep when you need it, although I never floored it (my dad warned me multiple times to take it easy as it's still breaking in) the times I got into the gas pedal a bit the engine kicked in and the CVT let the engine rev up and make a decent amount of power. Going up and down the hills of San Francisco was never a problem.

My favorite part of the car is watching either the Energy Monitor or Energy Consumption screens on the center touch screen display. With one of these two screens running you can see in real time what mileage you are currently getting, where the car is getting power from (engine, battery) or if the car is using regenerative braking, as well as the mileage you've been getting for the past 30 minutes in 5 minute intervals. With these screens on, you quickly become obsessed with trying to get the highest mileage you can. It doesn't take long to figure out that speeds above 70mph will start hurting your mileage significantly as well as being too heavy with the right foot. During my driving, my mileage seemed to hover right around 50 miles per gallon.

All in all, the Prius is a capable and comfortable car and would work very well wherever you need to get from point A to B as efficiently as possible. It's no suprise to me that Toyota is having trouble keeping these cars on the lots! Now if they could build one that is a bit sportier they might convince me to get one, too.