CHU3140

As received. (Photo by BobbaLew.)

CHU3140 is eight years old.
Yesterday (Friday, February 4, 2011) I sent a renewal of its registration to the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles.
CHU3140 is our Honda CR-V purchased new in March, 2003, from Ontario Honda. CHU3140 is the plate-number we were issued.
It replaced our “Faithful Hunda,” a 1989, the best car we ever owned.
160,000 miles, 13 years, and never in the shop.
But it had been smashed up; the insurance company totaled it for $500.
I wasn’t sure I wanted to buy another Honda, since cars like “the Faithful Hunda” were no longer available.
But I was tilting toward Honda, it being reliable.
The Faithful Hunda was a car, a stationwagon, but All-Wheel-Drive.
It never got stuck.
Plus it was extremely dog-friendly. A low flat floor with plenty of inside roof clearance.
Beyond that the rear seats folded up to fill the dog-swallowing gap usually behind the front seats.
We looked at other brands, mainly Subaru.
They didn’t have a flat floor back then, plus they had a dog-swallowing gap behind the front seats.
I’d have to carve a plywood floor.
I have before, but it’s a pain.
Plus the Sube didn’t have the inside clearance of our Faithful Hunda.
And it was cramped.
I’d need to buy the largest Subaru, the Forester, to get the room I needed.
Back then the Forester was a bread-van.
The CR-V was bigger than our Faithful Hunda, with a much larger engine; 2.4 liters as opposed to 1.6.
“Get this,” the dealer said. “The CR-V gets 26 mpg highway.”
“Old car got 29,” I snapped.
But the CR-V was a Honda, and the Faithful Hunda had never been in the shop.
So we ended up buying the CR-V.
I figured a Sube would be just as reliable, but it was too dog unfriendly.
The rear seats of the CR-V fold up to cover the dog-swallowing gap, but they don’t fill it.
Folded up, they partially block a dog entering.
Our current dog, Scarlett, can handle this, but previous dogs couldn’t.
The CR-V is also a truck.
It rides high.
It drives like a car, but is a truck.
Use the brakes hard, and the rear wheels lock and slide.
But it can be driven distances comfortably.
If you don’t mind the measly fuel-capacity, only about 260-270 miles highway (220-240 miles stop-and-go).
We considered trading it two years ago for a car, a Suzuki SX4 stationwagon.

Suzuki SX4.

But with an SX4 I have to remove the rear seats, and carve a plywood floor to cover the dog-swallowing gap behind the front seats.
We road-tested an SX4, but there were two things wrong with it:
—1) My wife didn’t like the extra window between the windshield and the front-door — all to extravagantly slope the windshield.
—2) I could never adjust things so the top of the steering-wheel didn’t block the top of the speedometer.
What a pain! Duck to keep track of expressway speed.
Plus if I remove the rear seats to make it more dog-friendly, I’m removing passenger capacity.
Our CR-V will comfortably hold four.
With the Suzie-Q I’d be down to two.
Plus the SX4 was cramped.
It didn’t have the inside size of our CR-V.
About all it had was All-Wheel-Drive, and compared to our CR-V was a car.
So we kept the CR-V, and will probably continue to keep it.
Last Fall I discovered it was great to chase trains with.
I’m a railfan, and have been since age-two (I’m 67).
We drove up a dirt-track my friend Phil Faudi (“FOW-dee;” as in “wow”) was afraid to try with his new Buick.
The CR-V has All-Wheel-Drive and high ground-clearance.
Yet it’s not a Jeep.
It doesn’t assault your senses.
Driving it long distance is comfortable, which it still does reliably.
So now it’s eight years old, probably about half-way through our ownership.
A while ago I was riding with Art Dana, the retired Regional Transit bus-driver who has since died.
Back then it was seven years old.
“Still like new,” he said.

• “The Faithful Hunda” is our 1989 Honda Civic All-Wheel-Drive stationwagon, by far the BEST car we’ve ever owned. (Called a “Hunda” because that was how a fellow bus-driver at Transit pronounced it. [For 16&1/2 years, 1977-1993, I drove transit bus for Regional Transit Service (RTS — “Transit”) in Rochester, NY, a public employer, the transit-bus operator in Rochester and its environs. My stroke October 26, 1993 ended that.])
• “Scarlett” is our current dog; a rescue Irish-Setter. She’s five, and is our sixth Irish-Setter. (A “rescue Irish Setter” is an Irish Setter rescued from a bad home; e.g. abusive or a puppy-mill. By getting a rescue-dog, we avoid puppydom, but the dog is often messed up. —Scarlett isn't too bad.)
• Phil Faudi is the railfan extraordinaire from Altoona, PA, who supplied all-day train-chases for $125. I did my first two years ago, alone, and it blew my mind. He called them “Adventure-Tours.” Faudi would bring along his rail-scanner, tuned to 160.8, the Norfolk Southern operating channel, and he knew the whereabouts of every train, as the engineers called out the signals, and various lineside defect-detectors fired off. He knew each train by symbol, and knew all the back-roads, and how long it took to get to various photo locations — and also what made a successful photo — lighting, drama, etc. I’d let Phil do the monitoring. I have a scanner myself, but I left it behind. Phil knew every train on the scanner, where it was, and how long it took to beat it to a prime photo location. My first time was a slow day, yet we got 20 trains. Next Tour we got 30 trains in one nine-hour day. —Phil gave it up; fear of liability suits, and that newish Buick he’s afraid he’d mess up.
• Art Dana was the retired bus-driver from Regional Transit with fairly severe Parkinson's disease.