I want to reassure those readers who have been anxious about the status of our Prius’ warning light, perhaps suffering through sleepless nights, or engaging in constant prayers to the Higher Hybrid Power on our behalf, that Priey has been returned to health, and we are enjoying the car a lot. As the post below posited, Marcus Aurelius’ advice was well taken, because it turned out that Toyota wasn’t out to drive us crazy by having a “check engine” warning light come on one hour after we bought the car.
No, seemingly Toyota is trying to drive many 2004 Prius buyers crazy, which supports my decision to take a Stoic attitude and not take this problem personally. The service department didn’t sound at all surprised when we called them Monday morning. When I explained what had happened, the guy who answered the phone said, “Oh, yeah. What we’ve been doing is reset the light, then take the car out on the freeway and drive it fast.” Well, that made sense. Why didn’t I think of that?
When we got to the dealership, we learned that some sort of greasy film is placed over some sort of engine sensor attached to some sort of part (sorry for the lack of details; I’m not very mechanical, and we haven’t even opened the hood yet on the Prius—hopefully there is an engine inside, which I suspect there is, since the car has been moving when we start it up and press on the gas/electric pedal). The film burns off when the part heats up, hence, I believe, the need to drive it fast on the freeway.
At any rate, the car is back to normal, and we’re getting more familiar with it. The manual is about an inch thick, what with all the electronic and mechanical gadgetry crammed into this $23,000 car (a bargain, really, particularly with the $1,500 Oregon tax credit and $2,000 federal tax deduction). We haven’t figured everything out, though, especially the security system. I met some people at the Coffee House café in downtown Salem this afternoon, the place where all the street people and alternative types hang out at the sidewalk tables, even on cold days like today.
I was able to park right in front of the café and show off the new blue Prius to my friends/business associates when our meeting was over. I was attempting to demonstrate how cool it is that you can turn the security system on and off, and lock and unlock the car, without using the “key” (buttons, really). But what I actually demonstrated was how quickly a man with a new car, which is parked in front of a café with quite a few people sitting around outside, can fumble around in the bottom of his fanny-pack for a key that he didn’t think he’d need, when the car horn starts blowing in an exceedingly noisy and irritating fashion after he inexplicably manages to set off the security system after sitting down in the driver’s seat.
If Toyota offered me a thousand dollars to recreate what happened, I don’t think I could. The security system worked fine the rest of the day. Probably some malevolent Toyota engineer with a twisted sense of humor somehow managed to surreptitiously design the security system so it only malfunctions when the driver is parked directly in front of a sidewalk café, and is eager to show off the Prius’ cool attributes to a group of people. Well, at least I got to hear, “Wow, that’s a loud horn.”
We had a wonderful experience selling our Honda CRV over the weekend to Emma and Eric from Corvallis. Emma is finishing up a doctorate in neuro-science/zoology at Oregon State University, and we had a great hour long conversation after they told us that they liked the car, and they liked our asking price, which made the monetary negotiations last about five seconds. We covered a lot of ground: are animals conscious? what is consciousness anyway? do animals feel emotions? what is the difference between a “feeling” and an “emotion”? and more besides.
I emailed Emma a chapter from my Plotinus book, “All Is Alive,” to see what she thinks of his philosophical perspective on the nature of life. And when she came to pick up the car (and leave us a cashier’s check), Emma brought a nice note with an artistic abstract photograph captioned, “To Laurel and Brian: a picture of cannabis receptors in the newt brain as a memento of our conversation.” Emma is doing her doctorate research with newts, but she said that even experimenting with newts makes her feel a bit guilty, so she is going to venture further down the evolutionary ladder to crayfish in her next experimental neuroscience work. An intellectual cut above your usual car buying/selling experience, that’s for sure. Best of luck to Emma and Eric when she, hopefully, begins her post-doc life in Wyoming, where the all wheel drive CRV will be a good friend for them.
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