A Ruby day and no playlist.

Thursday morning, cold and icy. Current local temperature is 28° F (-4° C) and wherever the roads still had snow or water on them from yesterday's wet-fall are ice.  I needed to drive Ruby (our Focus hatchback) in this morning, since she has studded snow tires on, just to get up our hill.  After that it was pretty much dry clear roads the rest of the way.  We live on a steep shady hill that tends to stay very icy longer than the rest of the area, and on those days M and I have worked it out that I take Ruby with her little clicking nails and she has one of her much-loved "no-drive days."

Ruby is the opposite of the Miata in so many little ways that I have to think more about what I'm doing (that is, how the car operates) when I drive her.  The most obvious difference (besides the two-door-two-seat versus 5-door-five seat and luggage capacity!) is that Ruby is front wheel drive and the Miata is rear wheel drive, which has a big impact on handling characteristics.  Then it comes down to small things: Ruby's wipers are activated in steps up, the Miata in steps downward, one has window switches on the center console, the other on the door panel, gas doors are on opposite sides as well.  Light switches are in different places, tach and speedometers reversed, one has stereo controls on the steering wheel and one doesn't, and so on.  Nothing of earth-shaking significance in any of this, just subtle differences that make moving between the two cars noticeable.

You'd think, after nearly eight years of owning and driving Ruby (really, a few more years if you count the Focus we had before Ruby, with its identical interior) and nearly five of the Miata (hardly seems possible I've had it that long already!) that this dissonance would have faded.  There is, however, a number to factor into this equation, that helps explain why time alone isn't the full story.  Ruby has barely over 40k miles on her (at this rate, by the time she reaches her upcoming 8th birthday with us she will have seen an average of 5600 miles a year) and the Miata has about 35k after nearly five years (so a little over 7000 miles a year on average).  We don't spend a lot of time in our cars, even counting my short daily commute.

No music this morning, since the Focus doesn't have an iPod input.  I opted for NPR instead, so no playlist to share and discuss today.