A hybrid's distractions

MICHAEL JACKMAN

My wife Dana and I just returned to Louisville, Ky., from a whirlwind trip to New York City. In fact, it was hard to type this essay because my hands are still shaking from 14 hours of driving through the rain and drinking bad roadside coffee at every pit stop.

The point of our excursion was to introduce Dana to relatives and friends who couldn't make it to our wedding last November. But we had another purpose, it turned out: to test drive a new hybrid gas/electric car called the Toyota Prius. We rented this car after our original rental plans fell through, as all carefully made travel plans tend to do.

The Prius, we discovered, can be a dangerous car to drive. There are two reasons for this. The first reason is that many air-conditioning and audio controls are duplicated on the steering wheel. What's dangerous is how irritated your spouse gets when she's turning up the AC and you're turning it down, or when she's turning down the volume and you're turning it up. On the positive side, these "road games" help you quickly pass the miles.

Many fancy cars are designed with relationship-enhancing steering wheel controls. But what they lack is a color touch-screen display that tells you, up-to-the-minute, how many miles per gallon your hybrid with synergy drive is getting. This display is so compelling that I preferred to watch it instead of the road.

"Look," I'd say, "we just went from 45.8 to 46 miles per gallon!"

"Look," Dana would say, "There's a truck cutting in front of you!"

"Look," I'd say, "I bet if I put the Prius in neutral and coasted down this mountain, I could get it up 49 miles per gallon."

I did, by the way. And, in spite of my driving, we arrived in New York with our bodies and relationship still intact.

After the party, I got to fill in Dana on some of my New York history, which I did by introducing her to one of my oldest friends, who also happens to be my first girlfriend. I'm sure that alone made the two-day drive worth it for her.

Then we visited my aunt and uncle in Brooklyn where, as a bonus, we got some recipes from the Italian restaurant they used to own. One, a real relationship pleaser, is called Puttanesca, which is Italian for "prostitute quick sauce."

All told, Dana seemed to be a hit with my aunt and uncle, my cousins, who are all lawyers, and even with my first girlfriend, who is now a Freudian psychoanalyst – this is a tough crowd to please. We even found time to eat some great meals and to see the Empire State Building.

So I'd have to call the trip a success, meaning that we had fun, shared 1,600 miles of driving and returned home more intact than we left. Oh, and we averaged 48 miles per gallon, which, like the trip, was not miraculous, but turned out much better than expected.

Michael Jackman is a freelance writer and radio commentator who lives in Louisville, Ky. This piece was first broadcast on WFPL Louisville, 89.3 FM.

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