Creating My Own Adventure

When I took my dad to the doctor a couple of weeks ago, I went over a speed bump a little faster than I intended and my car started making an intermittent pinging sound. Maybe from the entertainment console? But it stopped after a while and I didn't worry about it.

Then, last week, I started the car when I was leaving work and it pinged like it did after the speed bump. Only this wasn't intermittent, it was constant.

I turned the car off and back on again, but that didn't fix the problem. I decided to go home and mess with it there.

Only the constant pinging was driving me bonkers. Whenever I stopped at a light, I started pressing things and fiddling around with the entertainment system. Nothing fixed the issue.

I have one of those vent clip phone holders. At some point while I was fiddling, I was like OMG why is it so hot over here? It was right by the phone and my first assumption was that the charging cradle was overheating. I yanked the cord loose. The arms opened and I tossed the phone in the cup holder.

It didn't fix the problem.

More investigation showed that one vent was blowing air conditioning--as it was supposed to be doing--and the other was blowing out very hot air. I'm like don't tell me my air conditioning system is messed up now. I pressed climate buttons. The air kept blowing hot, but the pinging stopped. Win?

I was on the freeway when I noticed my side of the car was set at its normal temperature, but the passenger side was set to HI. Yes, the heat was blowing as hot as it would go on one side of the car.

Obviously, I touched something while I was trying to stop the noise. I reset the temp on the passenger side and the temperature returned to normal. That's about the time the next problem ensued. My GPS was rerouting me around a backup at my exit. Now I needed to see my phone, but the cord was unplugged and the arms were wide open which meant the phone wouldn't remain in place.

Yeah. I reached up and manually squeezed it closed. It didn't go all the way against the phone, but it was good enough.

It All Went Dark

I forgot to tell this story when it happened, but the panic is still planted firmly in my memory, so here we go.

When I took my dad for his second vaccination in March, it was raining. If you remember, the only appointment I was able to get him at the time was 45 minutes away. So we reach our destination, I dig my umbrella off the floor in back, and we head in.

This time, he was brought back right away, we waited our 15 minutes to make sure he was okay, did a little shopping, and then went back to the car. And my screen in the console stayed dark.

Okay, this has happened before when the system has been updating itself. We'll wait for a few minutes, it will come up, and we'll leave.

Only it didn't come up.

This meant no backup camera, no radio, no navigation (although I use my phone more than the car's GPS, and a few other less critical features.

I carefully backed out of the spot and drove the 45 minutes back home. I really expected the screen to come back at any moment, but it didn't. My last hope was that it would return the next time I started the car, but that Saturday, when I went out for groceries, it stayed dark.

When I left the first grocery store, I was trying to think of things I could try to get the screen working again. My mind was as blank as the screen.

My one and only thought was it's a touch screen, so what if I push? I pushed.

I don't know if it was a coincidence or if I really did something, but the system rebooted (like I'd expected to earlier in the week) and everything was back to normal in a few minutes.

It was a huge relief, but man, I'm dependent on that backup camera.

No Through Traffic

One of the things that I really appreciate about my new house and the neighborhood it's in is that I don't have to deal with through traffic. At my Minnesota house, there was so much traffic that I had an apron added to the driveway so I could pull out nose first. This was especially helpful in the winter when the snow mounds at the ends of the drive were high enough that it was hard to see over them.

I didn't really realize, though, that every street wasn't like that. I figured that unless I lived on a cul-de-sac, that I'd just have to deal. When I moved into my new house last year, I even tried to figure out where I'd add the apron, but because of the steep hill, there was really no good way to turn around.

As it turns out, I don't need the apron of concrete. I can actually back out of my driveway onto the street, without any worries. You see, my new street doesn't act like a conduit for other neighborhoods to cut through to get from point A to point B. The only people who drive down the street actually live on it. OMG, this is so blissful, and because I lived toward the end of the street, I have even fewer vehicles to worry about.

This makes me really happy.

Thermostat Wars

I usually don't drive to work. I'm in a van pool and usually leave the driving to someone else, but recently I needed to drive to work. It was 55 degrees and the sun wasn't up yet. My car--which is almost too automated--puts on the air conditioner. I turn it off.

My window starts to fog, so I turn on the defroster. It's blowing really cold. So cold that the window begins to ice where the vents are. I turn it off. The car immediately puts the AC back on.

No. I turn it off.

My window fogs up again. Repeat the scenario in paragraphs 2 and 3. Not just once. Repeat it about half a dozen times.

I have my car's thermostat set at 72 degrees, so I can't understand why it's blowing so cold. I go to adjust the climate control and see that it's set at 60. What??? I know I didn't do that. It's been a cold winter in Atlanta. I bump up the temperature to 80. Within a minute, it's too hot. I take it down a few degrees. Still too hot.

I dropped it to 72 degrees. Where I had it set to begin with. The defroster now runs at the right temperature to keep the window from fogging and without causing ice. The car is also a comfortable temperature for me.

Automation is awesome, but my car was winning the battle of the thermostat. I know I didn't like that.

One Year With the James Bond Car

I've been driving my Ford Edge now for a little over a year and it has a few quirks. Keep in mind that my previous vehicle was a 1998 and I took quite a technological leap forward with the Edge. I call it my James Bond car because the only gizmo it's missing is the hidden rocket blasters. I like this car in a lot of ways, but oh, those quirks...

The first thing I noticed--and it's hard to miss--are the phantom vehicles coming from my left or my right. The beeping is hugely annoying, especially when I'm inside the one-car garage. No, Edge, there's really NOT another car coming on either side of me. It scares the life out of me every time it sounds, but I don't want to turn it off because some day it might save me from an accident.

And then there's the auto setting on the climate control. I have the temperature set for 72 degrees, so when it's 60 degrees outside, there's no reason why the air conditioner should kick in and yet it does. Frequently. The system also likes a high, loud fan. Me? Not so much.

The car is also makes decisions for me on my wiper blades. If I use the intermittent setting and it decides it's not raining hard enough, the wipers won't go. Honestly, I don't care what the car thinks about it, if I have them on, I want them running. The only way around it is to put them on the steady setting.

The corollary is that sometimes when the car stops running the wiper blades on its own, I don't notice because I would have turned them off. Then, suddenly, on a sunny afternoon, the wiper blades will run and I'm totally going WTH?

But the last couple of weeks, the car has started a new quirk. It's turning on the radio every time I start the car. If I'd left the radio on, that would be one thing, but I haven't. In fact, I turn it off well before I turn off the car. I had to Google this one. It turns out there's an auto on feature for the entertainment system.

I didn't know that because it wasn't coming on automatically before the last couple of weeks.  That was easy to turn off in the settings, so I hope that silences the sound because as much as I like Adam Ant's "Goody Two Shoes," I really don't want to hear it before sunrise.

All these complaints make it sounds as if I don't like the car, but I do. It's probably my second favorite vehicle, but it tries to do too much for me and it tries to anticipate too much. The James Bond car totally needs to chill a little.

Shifts

Last week I talked about the hero and heroine who have stayed stubbornly silent, frustrating me endlessly. After talking it over with a friend, I've shifted the books in the trilogy around and I'm starting with a different h/h. This is the second time this particular series has had the books shifted, so I'm hoping this time it sticks.

Since I managed to pick up some stupid bug that's left me under the weather, I decided to do some pre-book stuff for my new h/h. I didn't need to look for pictures of them--I already had those--but I did need to know where they lived and what kind of cars they drove.

I started on the houses first. It's really fun to look at real estate, especially in the millions of dollars price range. Neither my hero or heroine own a house like that themselves, but the leaders of their respective groups do.

It actually didn't take too long to find a house that fit my heroine's leader. The hero wasn't quite as easy, but the house I found fit almost exactly what I'd seen when he and his father took a long walk and had a serious conversation. It was a total WHOA! moment when I saw that yard and the view that matched my vision.

The only drawback on the mansion was while there were a ton of pictures of the grounds and exterior, there were comparatively few indoor pictures and none of the bedrooms. I'll wing it when the time comes if it's necessary. It might not be.

I moved on to the cars next, and I confess, I didn't spend a great deal of time on them. The hardest part was figuring out what type of car they'd drive. Pickups and SUVs didn't feel right for my hero, but when I checked out Ferrari and Lamborghini, those weren't right either. I hit pay dirt on Aston Martin. The Vanquish. He liked the bronze color. I would have figured him for bright red, but that was a big no.

The heroine is classy and elegant and her car was relatively easy to pick out. Mercedes. CL65-AMG. I had to look that up because I don't remember numbers, but it's expensive and sporty.

Now to let the things I learned gently percolate until I shake the virus I've picked up.

The Trip To Nowhere

Since coming to Atlanta, I've relied on my car's GPS system a lot. However, it hasn't been 100% accurate. To my frustration, it often will refuse to let me input the address I want because it's not in a range that it believes belongs on that street. The GPS has been wrong.

The worst experience, though, was the one I call the Trip to Nowhere.

My parents and I were determined to buy a recliner for the house. I found a store in Newnan, GA and wrote down the address. GPS didn't like the number of the building for the street. However, there was a street name, south and GPS did like that, so that's what I set as our destination.

Things started out okay, but then it began to rain. They drive like Maniacs here, I don't know where I'm going, and it's raining??? Gah!

Despite all the weather, we kept going, confident we'd make it to the furniture place. Things started to get iffy when GPS directed us off the highway. It got worse. We ended up in the middle of a residential neighborhood, nothing even remotely retail in the area.

GPS Fail.

Or maybe it was me. After all, I did select Street South instead of street. I punched in the street name, lied on the number of the building so GPS would accept it, and we started out again. This time we ended up near a hotel that appeared vacant. It wasn't, but it sure wasn't doing a booming business either. It was raining harder now and it wouldn't be too much longer before it started to get dark. We decided to go back home.

I selected home on GPS, turned out of the parking lot in the direction from which we'd come, and was led on a roundabout route that ended up turning just in front of the rundown hotel we'd started from. Um, what? Why the hell didn't GPS tell me to turn right when I went past the road the first time?

GPS Fail. Again.

We did make it home after a drive through several Georgia towns, including one I'd never heard of before. I don't know if this was the most efficient route ever concocted, but we did arrive back at the condo.

I Miss My Cargo Space

In December, mere weeks before I had to move to Atlanta, my beloved Explorer decided it needed a lot of expensive repair work done. Since it was a 1998, I opted to buy a new car instead and went with the Edge. I call it my James Bond car. With all the high tech electronics on it (especially for someone who was driving a 1998), it can only be a spymobile. I swear the only thing missing is the hidden missile launcher.

I do like my Edge. A lot. Really. But there are definitely things I miss about the Explorer. And when I was packing up to leave Minnesota, the cargo space was a huge factor. Things I was planning to pack to take along, things like a vacuum cleaner, suddenly didn't fit and I needed to buy new down here.

For those of you unfamiliar with the story, my day job was relocated from Minneapolis to Atlanta. I chose to relocate with my job, but because of how difficult it is to sell a house in MN in the winter, most of my stuff is still up north and will stay there until I do sell my house and I officially move. Right now, I'm officially a commuter between the two cities.

I did make sure there was room for the important things like my computers. There was no way I was leaving those behind. But my couch? Still in MN.

Some of the lighter things, like my storage containers will get shipped down via UPS or the USPS. Other things that are too bulky or two heavy or not cost effective to ship will have to wait. I even had to leave my blankets and duvet behind because there just wasn't room in the Edge. As it stood, we were smashed into the vehicle. If only the Explorer could have hung on another few months.

The James Bond Car and Publishing

One final James Bond car post and then I'll find something else to talk about. I promise.

When I wrote In the Midnight Hour, I gave Ryne (my heroine) keyless entry. In my mind (and in the scene), she opened the doors to her vehicle by pressing the button on her key fob. As I proofread a test print of the book, everything was fine. Then, months later, I got my author copies. My keyless entry had been changed to keys entry.

This bugged me. A lot. It still bugs me.

My guess, and this is only a guess, is that whoever did the proofread of the galleys for the publisher lives in New York City and doesn't own a car. I can't see how else that would have been changed. The thing that's so frustrating is that at the time I didn't have that feature on my SUV and I had to research to find out that keyless entry was called keyless entry.

Fast forward to my James Bond car. Can you imagine if I wrote a character with a car like this? One that responds to voice commands, automatically hooks my cell phone into the system as soon as I get in the car, and has a remote start? I can't help but wonder what these features would be changed to. :-)

Let me close by saying I love copy editors and I've been lucky to have really good ones on all my books. I'm grateful for all the mistakes they find and fix.

Adventures In Rental Cars

I've taken to calling my new Edge the James Bond Car because about the only feature missing is the covert missile launcher. The options are cool except there's one small problem--I'm still having trouble figuring it all out. I am a computer/gadget geek, so I found this rather embarrassing. Until the business trip to Atlanta.

Our entire department needed to attend a meeting in Atlanta last week, and because it was only an overnight trip, three guys rented cars and the rest of us rode along with them. The one I rode with most of the time had a Dodge Durango with the same kind of dashboard screen that I have. He couldn't figure out most of it either. We both were poking at buttons, trying to figure things out and still couldn't get what we wanted to happen.

But the best part was on Wednesday night. The driver of the Durango had come in the day before so this was day (and night) 2 for him with the SUV. The entire group drove about 45 minutes from our hotel for dinner. There were three of us in the Durango as we left to return to the hotel.


The driver makes a comment, "There's a police car behind us."


We drive a little farther and he says, "We're being pulled over."


We're all confused since he wasn't speeding or weaving or anything else that would warrant being pulled over. The officer comes up to the car and says, "Sir, would you turn on your headlights."


Huh? Aren't they on? Um, no, they weren't. The driver thought the lights were on auto, but they'd been turned off, and because of how bright the screens on the dashboard were, no one realized the headlights were off. We didn't get a ticket, but the driver swore us to secrecy--and then he ran around the office the next day telling everyone the story.

Technology is generally awesome, but sometimes it makes life more complicated.

The Unexpected New Car

If you follow me on Twitter, you know I bought a new (to me) car last week. I didn't want a new car-- Okay, let me rephrase. I didn't want to have the car payments that go with a new vehicle. If someone was handing out free cars, that would be a different story.

Anyway, I didn't plan on buying a new car this year, especially when I move to Atlanta just after the first of the year, but my beloved Explorer was having issues. It was a 1998 and it needed transmission work and a new muffler/tailpipe assembly. There was no way I could justify putting that kind of money into a 14-year-old car. I'd known this day was coming and I'd already made my decision on what the replacement would be, but it was still a "no, not now" moment.

I loved my Explorer to bits, but I decided to go with the Edge as a replacement instead. It's a crossover vehicle--part SUV, part car--and I liked the look. The price tag? Not so enamored, but sadly the prices on all cars have gone ridiculously high since I last bought one.

I'd checked out used Edges online, found one I really liked, and took it for a test drive last Thursday. I didn't plan to take it home that night, but since the Explorer I was trading in could die at any moment thanks to the transmission issue, I wasn't left with much choice.

Beautiful, isn't it? (Please ignore the mess in the garage.) I'm trying to get used to it. My 1998 did not have any of the fancy stuff in it that this car does. It's like going from a World War I biplane to flying the space shuttle. I actually had to read the instruction book and my motto has always been: If all else fails, read the directions. Sadly, I bet I'll only use a fraction of the car's features because I'll forget they're there or forget how to turn them on.

Some of what I'm learning. No keys needed. I just have a remote clicky things. I need it with me, but I just keep it in my jacket pocket and press the dashboard button to start.

My cell phone is hooked into the car via blue tooth and I can verbally tell my car to call someone without having to touch anything. I'm not much of a phone person and I hate people who yap on their cells while driving, but this could come in handy at times.

However, I won't need to call anyone for directions on how to get somewhere. Not anymore. The car has GPS built in! This is the feature I really wanted because I don't know the city of Atlanta or it's suburbs at all and I'll need all the help I can get to find my way around.

It's all cool, but TBH, I miss my old Explorer. I recognized the sounds it made, I knew where to look and how to handle it. I do like the Edge, though, and while the car was used, it was still a 2011 and has a ton of bells and whistles on it. More than I needed, but I took what was on the vehicle.

The Atlanta Trip

I was down in Atlanta last week to look for somewhere to live. Despite working for an airline, we drove down because Thanksgiving had the flights packed. Over the course of the week, there were lots of events that I thought would make entertaining blog posts. Unfortunately, I forgot most of them by the time I got home.

There are some things, though, that are stuck in my mind:

It gets dark early now. We were in Illinois and there were no lights on the sides of the freeway. It was drizzling. I was going 70, which was the speed limit. I got passed. Constantly. By cars doing 80-85 mph. There was one guy driving so fast, he had to doing 90. In the dark. So FYI, Illinois, Indiana, Missouri and Michigan drivers go far too fast. I wasn't even a little surprised when we came across an accident in the center median involving 4 vehicles.

And in the dark, somewhere in Illinois, I had to slam on the brakes. I was lucky no one was tailgating me at that time. As I zipped down the freeway, my headlights picked up an animal in the middle of the two lanes. I don't know if it was a dog or a coyote, but I nearly hit it. That was major scary.

My impressions of Atlanta. I liked it. They drive like maniacs there, too. Seriously. I didn't think it was possible to get a more stressful commute than I have in Minneapolis. I was wrong. I might have to check into a van pool to get to and from work. Although if I had a clue where I was going, it might not have been so bad.

The weather was great! Okay, so the people in Atlanta were complaining about how cold it was, but I'd been wearing my winter jacket and hat in Minneapolis. In ATL, I was wearing my spring jacket and I was comfortable. I actually hated the idea of going home because I didn't want to go back to the cold (and it snowed the day after I got home). The weather in MN got even worse since then. On Tuesday, it was 15 degrees in MN at 5am. It was 62 in ATL. I'm thinking Mother Nature is trying to make me eager to move.

The trip home also had a few moments. Like the rest area we stopped at in northern Georgia where I almost got a cat. The two workers who clean up around the place found an abandoned house cat who was as friendly and sweet as could be. First thing in the door, they asked me if I wanted a cat. I thought about it while I washed my hands and thought, well, why not? Then I found out the cat was pregnant and I was like I can't deal with that on top of all else I have.

After dark, again in Illinois, I caught movement in the corner of my headlights. A deer was on the edge of right-hand lane. All I could do was think: Please, don't let her run out in front of me. Luckily, she didn't, but that was enough to encourage me to stop for the night. In the hotel room, the radar showed freezing rain ahead of us so stopping was definitely the right choice.

The next day, in Wisconsin, we stop for gas. My dad notices my tailpipe is broken. We stop at a Ford dealership at the next exit and they took it off. The mechanics were awesome! They didn't even charge us for doing that, but the rest of the trip home was a little on the loud side. ;-)

And of course, we hit Minneapolis in rush hour. But it was good to be home. When I saw the snow coming down on Saturday, I reconsidered that statement.