I saw this at Chris’s over 3 weeks ago. Since then samuel has done it. Before actually making the list, I expected it to be longer. I think I must have been counting some twice. I include motorcycles in this list because I bought them primarily for transportation rather than leisure.

- 1981 Kawasaki 440 LTD – I bought this from a guy who went to school with one of my older brothers in 1985. I had been acquainted with him since grade 6, but, knew all of his siblings better than him. Him and 2 of his buddies had all bought bikes at the same time. One of them had an accident and this bike had sit in his fathers garage for 2 years before I bought it. We had to tow it with a car and drop the clutch (several times) to get it to start. This bike was incredibly good on gas, consistently getting over 80 CDN MPG. It wasn’t a great winter vehicle though. By the spring of ’89 Andrea and I were engaged and I discovered that she was afraid of motorcycles. So, it didn’t see alot of use after that. Sometime in the mid 90′s I gave it to my nephew.

- 1980 Ford Econoline short wheel base 3/4 ton van – I bought this in late 1986. It had almost 200K km on it when I bought it from the local telco. It had a couple extra spring leaves on each side on the rear axle because at the time the telco’s service guys had at least 1500 lbs of equipment and supplies that they carried around with them, so it looked jacked up. It was hard on gas and brutally cold in the winter, but it was a good running vehicle. During the first few months I had the sentra below, I hardly used the van. My brothers did use it. The transmission died because the transmission fluid got way to low (I’ve always assumed due to a leak).

- 1983 Datsun Nissan Sentra – I bought this from my brother in 1989. If I remember correctly, his wife bought it new. It got better gas mileage than most of the hybrids on the market today. In a way, it was a free car because it and its running costs were less than the gas I had been putting in the Ford van. If I could buy a new one of these today, I’d do it in a second. After driving it for about 2 years, I sold it to a second brother who later sold it to a third brother. (Just to keep that straight, the car went through 4 brothers). We all thought it was a great vehicle. It had over 300K km (185K miles) on it before it was totalled in an intersection in Fredericton.

- 1990 Nissan Kingcab – This is the only new vehicle I bought in my life. Andrea and I put almost 300K km on this as well. Other than the gas mileage not being as good as the sentra, I liked this truck every bit as much as the sentra. I sold it about 14 years after I bought it.

- 1984 Cavalier (technically Andrea’s but when she was given it, she didn’t have a driver’s licence) Andrea’s grandfather gave her her first car in 1993. He was getting a newer one and wanted her to have something to get her license with. The thing I remember the most about his car was that her grandfather never drove it more than 70 km/h and for the first few weeks it shook violently when the automatic transmission tried to shift into overdrive. We saw this one all the way to the junk yard.

- 1984 Volvo 740 – I regret buying this in 1997. I didn’t know that it was the European model until I started getting work done on it. So, getting parts for it was harder & more expensive (alternator – $600). When it was working, it was a nice car. It had had a fair amount of work done on it by a questionable backyard mechanic. I wouldn’t use this one to gauge the brand. I’ve known quite a few people who owned volvos and swore by them.

- 1989 Cavalier wagon – I bought this at a federal government surplus auction in 1998. It need some work at the start. But, I liked this cavalier quite a bit better than the 1984 version. We sold this to friends of ours at a very low price because they were in need.

- 1992 Chev Beauville van – When Emma came along we needed a vehicle that could carry at least 6 people. In early 2001, we were shopping for used mini vans and found this. For its age, it had really low miles and had only had one owner who only drove it in the summer. It cost about 30-40% less than comparable minivans. We sold it this year. It’s gas mileage was quite a bit better than the Ford van (due to a smaller engine) and except for fuel costs we did really well with this Chev.

- 1995 Yamaha 535 Virago – In 2003, I wanted to get a second vehicle because Andrea does alot more driving in the summer. This was a nice compromise on economy and enjoyment. If I’d driven the van the extra miles required to share the van and take me where I drove the bike, the gas cost alone would have comfortably paid for the bike. I sold it in 2005 for $300 less than what I paid for it.

- 2001 Ford Focus – I bought this last year and went for a newer vehicle because I knew I’d be travelling across the province twice a week for an indefinite period of time. I think we have put about 80K km on this since we bought it. Unless we have an accident, I expect we will see close to 300K km on this one too. I think the Focus may be a redesign/remodel of a European car. We are planning on buying a second vehicle next year and a Focus is on the possibility list.

I don’t normally talk about news in the blog. I talk about politics even less. Actually, several years ago we stopped watching the news on TV and buying newspapers since we found them so repetitive and narrowly focused to the point of being annoying and a waste of time. If we are looking for news, we use the internet.

The title of this post is directed to the President of Ecuador, who has asked for permission to set up a military base in Miami. A reasonable request, one would think.

HT: Roy

… in another small corner of the internet.

Andrea & I tossed the parental coin to decide who would go. Even though I would have liked to have gone, I’m glad she did. I probably would not have got a decent shot. She easily snapped 50 good ones.

Earlier this evening I read this paragraph over Andrea’s shoulder:

Within you there is courage, grace, honour, integrity. These are things that are not advertised but that resound throughout your life with far greater impact than appearance. They do not sell products, they are contradictory to you becoming one, but they are of the utmost importance. They do not mean that you cannot be beautiful, only that without them being beautiful is worthless. – Matthew Good

In the few hours that have passed since I read Matt’s post, the struggle I have had has been not wanting to distract you from what he has said. There is probably not alot that I can say that will improve upon it. He has done an excellent job of contrasting that which is priceless and that which is worthless.

But, I do disagree with him on one small point.

My main purpose in this address is simply to convince you that this desire is one of the great permanent mainsprings of human action. It is one of the factors which go to make up the world as we know it-this whole pell-mell of struggle, competition, confusion, graft, disappointment, and advertisement, and if it is one of the permanent mainsprings then you may be quite sure of this. Unless you take measures to prevent it, this desire is going to be one of the chief motives of your life, from the first day on which you enter your profession until the day when you are too old to care. – C.S. Lewis

Snobbery (under the guise of different names) has been around for generations.

I’m a few years older than Matt. I grew up in the time when the aura of the 60′s was in it’s death throes. I do not believe I was under any less pressure to conform than my children’s peers are. What is obvious is that they are under pressure to conform to something different, somthing more superficial. What’s come to mind while writing this post is what happened to “friends” when I turned down offers to participate (in a variety of things). For example, I lost alot of “friends” by turning down alcohol. It turned out that I wasn’t a friend at all, but someone to drink with. What I’ve always found ridiculous about this was that if I had wanted to blame in on something (Andrea, the wagon, religion, etc.), I could have escaped the dissociation. But simply not wanting to drink was unacceptable.

A young person today is likely suffer the same fate if they are unwilling to be shallow, self-absorbed, manipulative and materialistic (or, at least, maintain the appearance of being so). I did say, though, that it was a small point. One of the reasons I feel that way is that the “60′s ideal” may take 30-40 years to catch up to you. But, I expect that “today’s ideal” of superficiality catchs up far faster than that.

Last weekend Andrea wrote about the buckwheat hulls in our wall. We are in process of installing a pellet stove for heat this winter. There is an oil furnace in the basement. We don’t intend to use it. The first reason we looked at alternative sources of heat was that neither of us like oil heat. We haven’t owned a house that had oil heat. But, we lived in one for part of one winter and didn’t particularly care for it. And, I found a study which said that wood pellets cost about half as much for the equivalent heat in heating oil. Even if that is somewhat off, it would still make sense if the cost was based solely on the cost of fuel.

The other factor we considered was cost. If we were going to use the oil furnace, there were a few issues we were going to have to deal with. The oil furnace has not been used in 3 years, so it would definitely need to be serviced and I doubt we would have gotten away without having to replace some parts (we do know the fan works ok). The oil tank is so old that it does not have the tag on it indicating when it was manufactured (which means it is too old to be used). So, we would have to buy a new tank. Finally, the chimney is not quite up to code because it does not extend above the roof line enough. So, we were looking a potential cost of $3-5000 to get the oil furnace in working order. Getting a pellet stove setup and ready to use costs in that same range (most of the variance comes from range in price of pellet stoves). The particular pellet stove we purchased in manufactured in Canada but the design is licensed from the UK.

We also considered a wood stove. In pricing it out we found that the install cost was in the same range as the pellet stove. The issue we would be up against this time of year is that it would be difficult to get seasoned wood. Looking forward to future years, I also did the math on the cost of fuel. By weight, pellets cost about 40% more than local seasoned firewood. Pellet stoves do have 10-15% higher effeciency rating than most wood stoves do which should offset some of the difference in fuel cost. So, realistically, we will be looking at slightly higher fuel costs. To offset that the nice thing about the pellets is that they don’t involve continual cleanup and Andrea and the girls will have no trouble keeping the pellet stove in fuel.

Our house insurance requires that we document the installation of the main heat source. Since I’m doing it anyway, I thought I would share how to install a pellet stove here while I was at it. After deciding where we were going to put the pellet stove, I did some rough measuring and some exploritory surgery on the wall in the area where the vent was going. Tonight we picked up all the pieces for the vent except one. I put enough of it together, and after reading the installation manual, so that we could hold it in place to mark the area where the thimble will go in the wall.

Here is a picture:

Yes, we have wood walls behind our exterior plaster walls. Given the house was built 100 years ago, I think it was an interesting way to give the house some insulation. The buckwheat hulls that Andrea referred to were put in the wall between the plaster and the boards on the inside of the exterior wall. Behind the boards is blown in cellulose insulation. The white area is a plaster refinish job which was probably done just before the wall paper went on. The white area is slightly larger than the thimble at 13 inches high by 12 wide. I’m hoping that I am able to finish the installation this weekend. We’ll see how it goes.

Today we took over 150 pictures with the camera. Andrea has uploaded a few here. I was going to upload a few of my favourites but it’s now past 11:30 PM. Here’s one of my favourites: