After Katrina I just stopped driving my Jimmy, even in town if possible, and tried to make sure that if I was going off to the airport (El Paso--3 hours away) I'd do shopping along the way for anything I really needed. Since last August I only drove my Jimmy to and from El Paso twice (to catch planes) and all the way to LA (for Christmas). Aside from that, I just wouldn't drive down to shop. To put it in perspective...to really go shopping (other than WalMart) at a Lowes, a Home Depot, or even a Target I have to drive at least 2 hours one way. Rural living is great most of the time...except when you need that new faucet and everything in town is not what you want or need. The Prius has given me the peace of mind to travel and lifted the driving restrictions off. If I still had my old car I don't think I would have driven to Phoenix last week in a 35-40 mph headwind to visit my sister who was attending a conference. The low profile and mpg of the Prius allowed me to do that.
I'm guessing Tony is quoting (wittingly or not) a book on punctation called "Eats, shoots and leaves". Apparently there was a description of a panda's lifestyle that added one itsy-bitsy unnecessary comma, and the author used that as an example on the importance of proper punctuation. nerfer
Good call, Nerfer. I'm reading the book now having just finished the audio collection of the BBC4 radio program "Cutting the Dash", the program that inspired the book. As I was writing my reply, I had the thought and just went with it. Part of me wanted to see if anyone would get the pun.
my commute got longer, but my old car would have driven the same number of miles. it's only a couple mile difference. we drive back to visit family and friends now rather than fly, which i'm sure uses less gas than taking a plane.
Somewhat decptive poll so I answered it literally, I drive many more miles. I used to split my driving between my minivan anbd my convertible. Now I hardly ever drive those and drive my Prius. I do not drive any more aggregate miles, I just combined.
I wish I had my Prius when I was putting at least 26,000 miles a year on my Geo-class cars in the late 80's/early 90's. Only one of those was totalled in an accident: I killed the rest by overworking them...
_ Don't have a Prius to drive. Just read about others driving their hybrids and look at their pictures. If I had a Prius I'd be out driving it in circles.
My answer (as usual) skews the results since it really doesn't make sense. My Prius is replacing an electric car and a gas car.... neither one of them driven much since we MOSTLY drive the electric car that we're keeping. Our Prius will see about 3-4k/year while our primary (EV) car will see 11-12K/year. And if not, I'll just shoot the panda and be done with it.