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As we were leaving Yosemite on Friday, we almost ran over one of the park rangers. She was crossing in front of us at the booth and didn't hear our approach. Looked like a deer caught in the headlights! She stopped us and asked us about it.

Also had a kid (20 something) ask me all sort of questions about it in a gas station in Mammoth. Small wonder with gas prices there at 2.80/gal.

 

I get asked fairly often about the Prius while at a gas station.

The way I see it:

40% of the people are seeing red as they watch the price to fill their tank slip into the $40 ~ $60 range . . . and they were just there last week!!!! :x :x :evil: They aren’t much into socializing at that particular place and time.

20% are totally oblivious to anything outside their three-foot six-inch sphere of existence.

20% believe everything they ever read or hear . . . and in their rational, the negative always trumps the positive. No need to ask that foolish Prius driver about his car with them $5,000 batteries which must be replace every two or three years. “I read about it in the Enquirer.â€

10% are too snobbish to ever be seen in a Prius. (But what the hell are THEY doing at a gas pump anyway?)

10% . . . that is the magic number. That is the percent of people who want first hand accounts from the people actually in the know.

[In Detroit, that number may be lower due to company affiliations. :wink: ]

 

A guy stopped me in a parking lot today as he was going to his plain old fashioned non-hybrid highlander. He wanted to know all about it. Plans to go to the Toyota dealer tomorrow and take one for a test drive.

 

We were pulled over by an unmarked police car just so he could look at our car. As I was not speeding he had no reason to pull us over at all he asked for my licence and didn't even look at it. The guy was just looking at my energy screen then said well you have good night and go off to bed. :roll:

 

One guy at a light kept yelling at me, so I opened the window and he says..hey your car is stalled!!

 

With my previous cars, when I was driving on the Interstate and was driving just a bit slower than somebody else, they would pass me, very slowly, by first pulling into the left lane, then slowly inch their way past me without altering their speed, and then eventually move back over into the right lane once they were well past me.

One thing I started noticing the very day I picked up my Prius back in January (out of state, which required a 300 mile trip on the Interstate to get back home), was that people would start passing my as desribed above, then when they are about 2/3 past my car slow down a little bit until they fall about one carlength behind me, stay there for a minute or two, and then accelerate again to get past me. First time I noticed that was when I was being passed by a Suburban full of geezers!

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(ltu1542hvy\";p=\"108307)</div>

Just how old is a Geezer?

 

I used the word "geezer" as a hidden and admittedly obscure pun, in the sense of a group of elderly people gazing (staring intently) at my Prius. They probably never saw a vehicle as odd looking as it was and couldn't help but stare (or gaze) at it.

I did not mean to offend or be derogatory towards my elders, and apologize if I came across that way.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(ltu1542hvy\";p=\"108320)</div>

Just kidding.

FWIW, my daughter calls me geezer.

 

My parents (both in their 70s) refer to themselves as geezers, and sometimes I call them that too, however more as a term of affection than anything else.

 

i get asked nearly every time i'm out washing my car. so weekly or so. but never at the gas station.

 

ltu1542hvy: Bill, from geezer Fred, where in the world did ltu1542hvy come from. I forgot to ask you Saturday.
Again, nobody ever asks me anything. I guess it's because of my geezer status. They overlooked that when I had the Insight. I couldn't get anywhere on time if I ever stopped.

 

LTU Airlines, Flight 1542, Heavy aircraft. Bask in the mid 90's it used to be a once-weekly non-stop from Duesseldorf to Phoenix, which I thought was a very unlikely city pair. It's an inside joke for a close friend who is a heavy-duty aviation fanatic. I started using it as an Instant Messaging handle a long time ago and it has pretty much stuck ever since.

 

LTU, first time I ever heard of it.

"Every year, LTU carries more than 5.7 million passengers on its 24 red and white coloured jet aircraft and more than 70 airports worldwide are served."

 

LTU = Lufttransport-Unternehmen GmbH

 

The first month I had my car (11/2003) I was parked in a McD parking lot about to go in for lunch. The manager came out and asked to look at my car. I let him sit in it and play with the MFD. He wanted a Prius but the dealer he went to did not have a demo and new nothing about the car. I answered a lot of questions for him and then he gave me a card that said BE MY GUEST. I could go in an order anything I wanted, then hand over the card as payment.

I still get the DO YOU HAVE TO PLUG IT IN? question.