6/7/13 the Ford Focus Flex Fuel Model

So I flew to Michigan and drove a Wisconsin rental...

The Focus handled well, was very quiet, and came with a number of bells and whistles on what appears to be a lower trim class line, such as the radio controls directly on the steering wheel. It had pretty good pick-up when I needed it (rare in all that stop and go traffic) but it did seem to have the start of a throttle problem at low speed where the sputter was audible. This car had 19K miles on it.

It would, however, look so much better in black. Or blue. Or red or green or brown or green...

I already mentioned the little picture within picture mirror issue. It wasn't helpful to me at all, just confusing. 

The interior control panel is basic and functional. The front seats wouldn't accommodate anyone very tall comfortably.

And no one with legs once you plug in your ipod and have to leave the glovebox open because I couldn't find a way to wrap the cable through an opening in the door and close it up. You do not control the ipod from the radio, that I could see, in this version, as you were only running the AUX connection into the audio. That meant the box stayed open and the ipod had to be within reach.

And I held the camera at a funky angle here, but there is simply no leg room in the back at all. 

Here's the front seat leg room with the box hanging open.

 I also had my Garmin plugged in through the 12V, which was strangely positionsfacing up under the center compartment armrest. The Garmin plug could not be plugged in with the armrest closed, so it bounces along and you try to to lean on it.  Dumb.

But here was the worst of the design flaws. Do you see something missing? There are no buttons on the key. And there is no lock on the door. There is also no manual door post. You put the key in to turn it from the outside and hold it to lock the doors. But how do you lock the doors if you want to stay in the car?

 Oh, of course. There it is. Everyone looks for the power locks under the radio controls!

Overall, it got me there and got me back with very low fuel costs and, by myself, I didn't miss the lack of legroom in every other seat and found leaving compartments open all over the place to use my electronic devices pretty annoying. If I'd sat much longer in traffic and had it cut out on me (yes, the air was running), all the fuel economy in the world wouldn't have made up for it. 

6/6/13 the rest of the Michigan trip

checking out of the hotel, I always feel like to need to make the bed up...

Guess which side I slept on?

 My (blech) silver ride. A Flex Fuel Ford Focus review is forthcoming...

 Inside the atrium at security of Audi/VW Corporate

here's one for Sammi

Meeting with Ken, Audi Auditor and generally mega-feared guy.

With Kim in the WPRC (Warranty Parts Return Center)

They had us all pair up and work through a typical scan in of a couple of parts my dealership had returned. We scored As on both.

My favorite case of the day. They pull out the rare insane ones to demonstrate. Since it's not totally clear from the screen:

The repair order was written on 4/14. TAC (Technical Assistance Center) wasn't contacted until a week later on 4/21 (what was the tech doing for a week with the car?). They instructed him to check a particular fuse. They didn't hear back. Their system is designed to sweep up all cases past five days to recontact and find out the results. So TAC calls the tech back (now two weeks since the customer brought the car in) and the tech tells them things that don't actually check out. The misinformation leads TAC to have him do a wiring overlay for the headlamp and as soon as it was done to contact them back with the results. Once again, the tech doesn't bother calling them back. The Technical Field Specialist picks up the phone and calls the tech's boss, the Service Manager. "Oh, he's out for training" and, a few days later,  "Oh, we had to put a new battery in the car while it's been rotting out here." The customer is furious that a headlamp light in the dash means he hasn't had his car for a MONTH. He tells them to chuck the car and trade him out of it NOW (this will usually be done with the dealership working him a deal). The TFM now flies down to this dealership (at Audi's expense) to find out what in the heck is the problem.  In under a minute? He found the blown fuse (costs about a buck and takes a about 30 seconds to swap out) that TAC had told the tech was the problem the first time he called. Good grief. 

View of the atrium from the conference area.

Kris doing her part to reinforce P&P

Jasen on the left (my favorite) and Scott, doing handouts. This is pretty much what the bulk of the day looked like, meeting with lots of VIPs, and hearing about what's coming up. The night before I had met Jessie, who was also from Denver, and this morning as we waited as security (we happened to get on the off-site shuttle together) she ran into another woman from Denver, Khila, and the three of us spent the day trading war stories.

We finished up and had the option of going upstairs to visit with the people we talk to or email every day, or head out. I was a little torn, but I also knew Detroit traffic at 5:00. I headed out and hopped on the empty shuttle to get me to the offsite parking lot. The lady driver and I exchanged pleasantries and she said, "Where are you from?" When I said Colorado, she said, "Oh, I would have guessed Alabama!" LOL, I was tired and my southern was showing. I told her I'd been in Houston almost 40 years first and she said, "Aha! That explains it." I told her about the drive and she agreed: leaving now was the best course of action.

Sure enough... dead stop. The Ford Freeway going nowhere fast.

Cool mural stuck in stopped traffic on the I-94/I-75 exchange

and on the right? Oh, hey! It's my where I got lost hood from yesterday! I could probably drive around again and get some good pictures and still get back to this parking lot of traffic... But you'll have to do with this gem. It turns out I was driving through the heart of Milwaukee Junction. 

You know you're getting close when you spot the BUBBA (Butt Ugly Blue Bridge Arches). These were constructed as a "welcome" gateway from the airport into Detroit when it was hosting the 2006 Superbowl XL.

So, I've made it from Audi HQ to the off-site shuttle parking lot, driven from Auburn Hills back through the horrendous 5:00 Detroit traffic, exited past BUBBA, wormed my way into the filling station ($4.49 a gallon, cough, cough) which is when the Flex Fuel car finally pays off. Over 100 miles, 2 gallons needed. I'll take it. Then I get back in the traffic, get the rental dropped off, get on the rental shuttle, over the to the terminal, through the pedestrian bridge, down to the Frontier desk to get in line to print a boarding pass (and eyeballing security, which doesn't look bad) thinking, I could've possibly stopped in to visit, but been stressed as all get-out getting here. And if the traffic had gotten worse (likely)? Forgetaboutit. Right as I hit the kiosk, I head Khila's voice behind me. Turns out, we're on the same flight and she'd just made the same drive (in a Fiat, which she hated). Next time, we're carpooling!

So we sat down and had a quick bite of dinner and picked up a few souveniers for her nephews before finding Gayle's Chocolates. Oh my. The $50 chocolate tiger pump in a purse. I opted for a little dark chocolate bar of Coffee Toffee and congratulated myself on snagging some extra half and half for coffee on the plane. 

As it turns out, Frontier has half and half. Point to Frontier over Southwest, for sure. I sat next to a roadie flying in from Detroit to light the Red Rocks sold out concerts for Umphry's McGee. I felt old.

I managed to stay awake for the long drive home and, 36 hours after I started, was done with instructor-led training requirements for another year.

Good trip. Now to catch up on 100 claims awaiting me!

6/5/13 from Michigan

So when we were taking Sam to the airport yesterday, we remarked about how full the parking garage was.

When I showed up mid morning today for an overnight work trip to Michigan, apparently a whole lot more people had showed up before me.

The entire economy and garage lots on the east side (my side) were full. I had to navigate over to the west terminal (which is a mess due to construction) to find that its economy lot was also full, but there were a few spaces still available in the expensive garage. This also meant I made several passes around Blucifer, who was staring with his orange eyes down at me with really ugly gray skies all around. 

All of this searching for a spot had put me far enough behind that I didn't feel like there would be time to circle all the way out of the airport and backtrack to the far offsite shuttles and make the flight, so I bit the bullet and ponied up for a garage place. 

Everyone decided this is the week to head out into summer, it would seem. Security was unusually slow, too, so by the time I had my shoes back on and got over to the monitors to double check the gate, I was thinking I wouldn't even have a chance to grab my essential magazine  much less anything to eat.

And then I saw the dreaded "DELAYED" beside my flight number. Instead of departing at 11:20, the new time was 1:30. Greaaaat. 

First order of business: to the newsstand to buy the current Atlantic Monthly. I don't fly without it, even though flying is the only time I ever buy one. It's just my ritual. (If I can't find The Atlantic, or have already flown that month and have purchased the current one already, I can default to The New Yorker.)

Once that was accomplished, I contemplated sitting down at one of the restaurants to kill some time, but opted to grab something and go sit at the gate anyway. At 11:30, as I'm finishing up my Kung Pao Chicken, the attendant announces that Flight 626 is changing gates and, surprise!, leaving at 11:50. All of us haul ourselves out of our chairs and head for the new gate, which starts boarding almost immediately. I had a vision of myself blithely surfing the internet at some cafe thinking I had hours only to discover this wrinkle when I would have sauntered up to the original gate far too late. I've got imagine that happened to at least a few people. 

I had seat 2F -- on the window where I like to sit, right up front but not in the bulkhead where I can't stow my laptop, for quick exiting. The only issue is making sure there is an overhead bin right at the front to put my carry on, else it is all for naught. And sometimes people tend to plop their bags in a compartment ahead of their seats, figuring they'll pass by on the way out and leaving no room. Have you ever tried to retrieve luggage from halfway back in a plane when everyone is trying to get out? Might as well sit in the back. I got lucky this time and there was still space in the first compartment. We pushed off right at 11:50 and hit the ground in Detroit at 4:40, having lost two hours.

Last year, I waited in the Dollar Rental line for a very long time, so this year, I got smart and joined their Dollar Express Members (for free) which gives you access to your own priority line since you'll filled out everything ahead of time and they just plug in your member #. Sure enough, there were five people in the regular line and no one in Express, so I was out on the lot in under five minutes. There also weren't any compact cars on the line, or economy, or mid-size. There was one mini-van. I'm telling you, everyone is travelling this week. Within another few minutes, however, two came pulling around freshly washed and another couple had joined me in staring at the empty spaces. The guy said one of us could take the compact and the other could have the midsize. The lady thought I was being really big to say, "There's two of you, you take the bigger car." What I was thinking was, the compact that had just been pulled in was a flex fuel Ford Focus and I have to fill it up within ten miles of this place (where the gas is $4.49 a gallon!). Yeah, take the lower MPG vehicle, please.

The Focus is a zippy little car, as long as no one needs to sit in the back seat, but I had two issues with it: the auxiliary port (more on that in a minute) and this:

Why do I need a picture within picture sideview mirror? It was really disconcerting. 

I'd brought the Garmin along, even though I have a hate/hate relationship with this thing. I swear, it's possessed and says things to me when I'm alone in the car and then reverses them just to screw with me. It never does this when anyone else is around. It's the Talky Tina of Garmins. I plugged in the address of the Red Ox Tavern where the Audi group was having a get together this evening before class tomorrow. I had also printed out the Google Map instructions (knowing Talking Tina might try to kill me) and vaguely knew the main route from Detroit up to Auburn Hills. She tried to take me a different way but when I ignored her, she recalculated to the path that matched Google. Then as I am cruising along I-94, knowing I will need I-75 north, I hear her say, in .4 miles blahblahblah exit on the left. I'm driving in the center lane, so I scoot myself over expecting a left ramp. Then she says, in her stupid stilted computer voice, "take the next exit, on the right" and in 5:00 traffic with eighteen wheelers everywhere, it ain't happening. I manage to get one lane away before I watch two big wheelers peel off and I'm stuck on I-94 swearing at the Garmin woman who is trying to kill me. So, as she's "recalculating" I just take the next damn exit, thinking I'll go under and turn around. And, as I'm on the off ramp, she tells me, "drive .9 miles to exit blahblah" which means this one doesn't have an under and around. In fact, this one leads me into the belly of the beast that is crumbling downtown Detroit, replete with abandoned buildings covered in graffiti when they haven't fallen down. I think about taking out the iphone and snapping some urban decay shots, but decide against it. About the time I'm cruising past some homes that have a lot of menacing looking men standing around in the front yards and front porches with several Detroit cop cars going up and down the street that I begin to think I should have studied the map a little more carefully. 

Talky Tina, however, has recalculated and gets me merging onto I-75 soon enough and into larking lot traffic. My little tour through the 'hood was actually far more interesting that what I'd missed hitting the exit. Because those two 18 wheelers that had hogged the off ramp? There they were, right beside me as I merged into the poking traffic. So as we move along at under 10 miles an hour, I do what any self respecting rental car driver does, and start changing the pre-set buttons on the radio as I find channels that aren't excruciating (or maybe just less so) to listen to. I'd brought my ipod and cord, since the car last year had a port, but I didn't get as lucky this time around. Well, I couldn't figure it out, anyway. There is an Aux option on the radio:

see?

but darned if I could find the port -- not in the center console, not in the front dash, not in the glovebox. So I went without. I have, however, since Googled the problem and for some inexplicable reason, Ford hid it in the ceiling of the glove compartment. At least I'll know on the ride back tomorrow.

As I'm exiting to the Red Ox, "Bohemian Rhapsody" comes one, which causes me to laugh, as this song follows me everywhere. On the way to Mt Evan's on Memorial Day, Nick played it (he was playing DJ) and, as always, the opening of that song just frustrates the hell out of me. So as he sings "Put a gun against his head, Pulled my trigger, now he's dead" I reply with, "Well, what did you think was going to happen?" and the whole car cracked up. Yesterday, taking Sam to the airport, there it was again, and she leaned over with my phone, snapped a picture of the XM radio screen and sent it to Nick with the caption "WHAT DID YOU THINK WOULD HAPPEN?" So that fact that it graced my drive today was just icing on the cake. 

Dinner was nice, met up with several administrators, one from Denver and another from Texas who I chatted with for a good while, as well as one of the instructors for tomorrow's class and one of the Audi adjusters I work with on the daily basis via email. It's always nice to come to corporate and put some faces with names and voices you've only heard on the phone. 

I made it over to the Hampton Inn, a different one than last year, and this one is loads better. (Last year's post here.) I remembered to pick up half and half at the coffee station before hitting the elevators, and I didn't get the PIE room, but probably the next best thing:

The room is amazing: huge, clean and, thanks to last year's events, I remembered to bring my super handy dandy wall outlet that swivels to accommodate any space and lets me plug in three appliances and two USB ports into one spot, so I'm happily connected from the big king size bed and its four super fluffy down pillows. Which probably explains why I just spent this past hour blogging about what essentially was a day of  "Drove, flew, drove, slept."

6/4/13 the Sammi send-off

Ah, the time has come. My Sammi has departed for adventures across the Atlantic today. 

For her:

I had grand delusions of being able to say something profound as you headed out, but I've never been as good at extemporaneous speaking as reflective writing. So, now, as you are winging your way on the start of a trip that you will never, ever forget, here is what I wished I had said to you.

If you will think of yourself as a puzzle piece, with all kinds of interesting curves and angles, it will make more sense when you realize how many different people you fit with, as well as accepting that some people just weren't made to be near you.

Never, ever fall into the trap of saying you loved someone less because you aren't with them now. Just roll your eyes when you hear, "I didn't know what love was until I met X".  When you love, you love with everything that you are in that moment. That never diminishes.

Words matter. They aren't the power, but they are the wand. Never take your ability to wield that energy lightly, but don't withhold it, either. Your words can change the world for the better. 

That Forrest Gump thing at the end, where he's trying to reconcile two different philosophies about life and comes up with "I think it's both at the same time"? Yeah. That. Times five million. Never let the ones who seem so sure about the one "right" answer hoodwink you into thinking it's not.

Fear is the great equal opportunity crippler. Fear of saying the wrong thing, or being rejected, or of not standing up for yourself will be the fundamental stumbling block of at least half your battles. The most dangerous of these are the moments when wanting to be liked overrides your gut instinct to get out of a situation. You have my permission and encouragement to be bitchy or rude, or whatever people tend to call women when they assert themselves, whenever your gut tells you something is wrong. Trust it.

Do you know that, as often as we hear, "You two are unmistakably mother and daughter," it always fills my heart with such pride, which probably qualifies me as a narcissist. When I look at you, how beautiful you are inside and out, and think that I bear some resemblance to it, I am humbled.

Think of the next few years as the gathering. You get a very limited time to "find yourself" freely and without the constraints or expectations or responsibilities that creep in (your own and others). Use up every minute of it discovering new and wonderful things about yourself and the world around you before deciding what you've found is enough discovery to feed on for the rest of your life.

You are a child of the universe,
no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. 
Therefore be at peace with God,
whatever you conceive Him to be,
and whatever your labors and aspirations,
in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul. 
With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams,
it is still a beautiful world.
~"Desiderata" by Max Ehrmann

(As I was driving away, the Andy clouds were all around us, waiting for you to take off into them. And that made me smile.)

6/1/13 Celestial Seasonings Factory Tour

So, it's Denver Comic Con weekend, therefore, naturally, here I am touring the Boulder Celestial Seasonings Tea Factory.

 As it turns out, Bob's friends, George and Carol, are in town for the convention, George being invited as an artist (at Bob' suggestion) and Carol, like me, isn't into the Con scene and looks for other thing to do while George is busy meeting, greeting and drawing for the fans.

Carol is, however, a very big tea fan, and since Boulder is home to one of the best known tea factories in the U.S. that also offers free tours, I suggested we check it out.

The website says they offer a tour every hour, but in fact they do them every fifteen minutes, so we had just a few minutes to try their teas (you each get a "ticket" that is a tea packet but also a little ceramic cup to try the ten or so offerings already brewed, but you can request any of their many flavors if you are willing to wait). 

You have to finish up and leave your cup, though, to start the tour, which is in a little theater set-up and the last place you can take pictures on the tour (which they also don't tell you on the website, grrr.) The artwork they are known for, fantasy paintings that attempt to convey the taste of their different teas, is all over the walls, even in the cavernous parts of the factory.

So, from memory, here's the tour highlights: the film goes over the history of the company, sort of, but they leave out a few things. Yes, pretty much hippie friends in Boulder in the late 60s went out into the mountains to find cool stuff to brew in their hot water, which technically isn't tea as there are no tea leaves in it, but calling it herbal infusions would confuse everyone. They started selling their best finds to local health stores. And if you know Boulder, there would be no better place in the universe for this to work well. Their business took off, and in good hippie fashion, they were doing fair trade and sustainable farming before those were actually terms. All of their products are kosher and all natural and many are certified organic. They skipped over the mid-80s when they sold the company to Kraft, who tried to sell them to Lipton, at which point they challenged the sale and got the company back under original management. 

Then the fun began. We all got to put on blue hairnets and make our way through the factory. We passed by the offices, included the master tester, who tries every blend batch they make, compares it to the master, and lets them know if they need to change anything before getting it bagged and sent out. His qualifications apparently include the ability to pretty much give you the exact address of the hilltop of whatever berry or leaf is included in the blend.

Inside the main area, the aromatics of the place were  fantastic.  They clean the various herbs with air before shredding them down. Then we went inside the tea room, which smelled even better. In the tea room (remember, only some of their products contain tea leaves) we learned about the three types of tea: green, black, and white. All come from the same plant, but green tea is not oxidized in a way that black tea is, and white tea is extremely rare, made from the tiny white flowers that bloom on the tea leaf plants one month out of the year. A place in Germany has the processing plant with the technology that decaffeinates tea leaves by using carbon dioxide, which creates what amounts to a mineral that can be used in highly caffeinated drinks. 

In fact, they pay the company to decaffeinate the leaves, and then also buy the caffeine to add to their Fast Lane tea, which is like their version of a Monster drink. (Monster and Coca Cola also buy this naturally separated caffeine, too.) Its ingredients include black tea, cinnamon, eleuthero, licorice, natural flavors (contains soy lecithin), caffeine, cola and nutmeg. It can only be purchased there in the store or online and isn't available in any other retail location. 

The other tea that caught my attention was our guide's description of the opposite end of the spectrum: the Tension Tamer. Said to be an excellent natural remedy for headaches, it has an ingredient not typically found in, well, any human food that I was aware of. It contains catnip. You know how adults taking Ritalin do so because it hypes them up, whereas it's prescribed to children to calm them down? Apparently catnip stimulates cats and chills out people. It does not contain any tea leaves, but is made up of eleuthero, peppermint, cinnamon, ginger, chamomile, West Indian lemongrass, licorice, catnip, tilia flowers, natural lemon flavor with other natural flavors (contains soy lecithin), hops and Vitamins B6 and B12.

After the tea room, we were led into the peppermint room, which was INTENSE. It was like aromatherapy on steroids. You are breathing in the air and feeling incredibly tingly and relaxed at the same time. I really do not remember a thing she said in here.

Then we headed out on the floor where all the machines do the bagging and boxing and sealing. As she said, they can make about 10 million tea bags a day when the demand in high (between October and March) and those boxes seal up in about 5 seconds, even though it will take you five minutes to get it peeled off at home (for freshness.)

If you take the tour on a weekday, you are actually on the line while the machines are churning out boxes, but on the weekends, everything is pretty quiet. 

On the wall right before we were exiting were big dispensary boxes of hairnets, mustache nets, and beard nets. Sam is poking me saying, "I must have a beard net!" and I'm ignoring her, until the point that I heard her whisper, "Cover me, I'm going in!" and snatched one for herself. My daughter. 

So back out in the Tea Store at his point, Carol handed her camera to a worked who took a picture of the three of us standing in our lovely blue hairnets and Sam wearing her beard net.  

They had a giant Sleepytime Bear (featured in the artwork of their best seller), as well as a million different artistic teapots and cups as well as the dress, hat, shoes, and clutch set made entirely of tea wrappers. 

Carol and Me

So when it was all said and done, I got both of the teas I mentioned above as well as . . . wait for it . . .  a TEA-Rex infuser!

Meanwhile, in Denver...