It has been a weird few of days of late. Starting on Thursday, I started the car and was greeted by a new and cryptic warning message, “PKSB Malfunction.” Googling it did not elucidate its meaning much, PKSB stands for Parking Support Brake. Is that the parking brake? Further research indicated that what the message was referring to is what we call the nanny car’s parking-warning system. This is the system that beeps loudly in complaint whenever said nanny car approaches too closely any foreign object. Be it another car in an adjoining parking space or even a wisp of grass waving in the wind from the parking strip. Its idea of too closely is way further away than mine. I opened the hood and found leaves in the engine compartment. Not a good sign. Last winter a squirrel had nicked the fuel line and caused $1,200 in damage. Most of which the insurance paid for. We had a luncheon that day, so I scheduled an appointment at the dealer for Friday. It seemed safe to drive, but on the highway, a second warning message appeared on the dash, Low Oil Level. We got it home and then to the dealer for diagnosis—rodents. In this case squirrels. Anne had seen a squirrel with leaves in its mouth crawling beneath the car. There were the leaves that I had found at the top of the engine compartment and the mechanic found way more leaves at the bottom of the engine compartment, when he had the car up on the lift. The verdict was that the squirrel had chewed through not one, but two wiring harnesses, which was determined to be the cause of the two warnings. Toyota estimates that repairing this damage will cost $12K. Yes, that is more than a third of the vehicle’s purchase price. I called the insurance company and begun that process. Hopefully, it will lead to satisfaction. Right now, there are none of these wiring harnesses in the country and it is anyone’s guess when they will become available. The car is drivable now, but when parts become available, it will take a week to repair. We are having some fun now.

Today, the national average gasoline price is $4.32 a gallon, which is down from its high earlier this year, but still higher than it has been. High gas prices combined with covid caused supply chain issues make hybrid vehicles, with high gas milage much sought after, but harder to find. We experienced this situation ourselves back in 2011. Then too gas prices were also high, and the Fukushima disaster played havoc with Toyota’s supply chain. We were looking to buy a Prius at the time, but every dealer that we went to, gave us the same story, “No, we don’t have any now, but we are expecting to get some more in a few weeks.” That was the story we kept hearing until one day, after hearing the same line again, we literally bought one off the truck. We were just leaving the dealership, when the car carrier passed us and then the salesman whom we had been speaking with came running over to us. The Prius that was to become ours, had been sold, but that buyer’s financing had fallen through. Naturally, we paid full price for that car. I estimated that the hybrid feature of the Prius costed about five grand and even at fifty miles to the gallon, it would take quite a bit of driving to recoup that surcharge. Plus, within a year of buying the car, the bottom dropped out of the price of gasoline. Still, it was an excellent car, and I never did regret buying that car.

Fast forward to 2020. We still had the Prius, which was still running fine, but we had promised it to our son, which meant that we needed to get a new car to replace it. We ended up buying a 2019 Toyota RAV4 Hybrid Limited at a slight discount. It only gets 40 MPG, but unlike with the Prius, its hybrid system only costed $800. Now that gas prices are sky high again, this car seems like a good investment. Yesterday, on NPR I heard an article that led me to believe that it might have been an even better investment than I had thought. Today, I went on Edmunds and entered in the car’s data, and they calculated that our RAV4 is now worth more than 15% more than what we paid for it. I’m feeling pretty savvy.

Yesterday, I was waiting on the curb to cross Big Bend at Clayton, when a white Tesla turning left nearly ran into me. It was turning left and had misjudged on simply didn’t see the oncoming traffic that had the right of way. In order to avoid a collision, it served towards me, only to veer away at the last moment. This intersection is one of the ten most accident prone in Saint Louis. Earlier this year it was the scene of a double fatality when after midnight a couple traveling at over a hundred miles per hour literally flew through the intersection and then launched themselves into the second story of a medical building, kitty corner to where I was standing. I wish that I could count how many times that drivers in the east bound right turn only lane head straight and then try to squeeze into my lane as if it were their lane. Anyway, I lived.

I was losing my soul to YouTube the other day, when I encountered Dr. Eleanor Janega, a British medieval history professor. I watched a couple of her videos where she was rating various contemporary movies that featured medieval warfare. She was rating them on their historical accuracy. Turns out that she also has a blog, Going Medieval. It also turns out that she is more interested in the personal habits and sexual practices during the Middle Ages than any fighting. I’m following her now on Twitter.