VW R32: Eight Years and Counting

Hard to believe I've been driving my R32 for eight years, now.   It boggles my mind.  Has it been that long?   While the R32 may have picked up a few cosmetic flaws over the years, I think I've kept it in pretty good shape.  My biggest concern these days, from living in southern Ontario, is potential salt and/or rust damage the R32 might be accumulating hidden from view.  My R32 is mostly a weekender, these days, and during the winter I try to rinse off the salt regularly, but you never know.

The VW fuel consumption estimate for the 2004 R32 is 19 mpg (city) and 26 mpg (highway), which in my experience has been reasonably accurate, with one caveat.  In 2011 (fuel economy data for previous years can be found here) I had an average of 18-19 mpg with a mix of city and highway driving.  Pure city driving it can be as low as 13 mpg.  On a more positive note, with pure highway driving it's easy to average 26-27 mpg. 

In celebration of eight years, I've uploaded some audio clips of the 2004 Volkswagen Golf R32, oddly enough located in a section titled R32 Audio.

Finally, here are some pictures of my R32 over the years. Most of these have been posted previously in one form or another.

2004

2005

2006

2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

  

Read More....

"#Moon + Venus" from #Vancouver 2012 Jan 26, 17:00 #iPhone4s

Taken at Starbucks

Read More....

Motorcycle vs. Car Drift Battle 2

Motorcycle vs. Car Drift Battle 2 is a video that shows how much fun skilled drivers/riders with capable machines can have on a twisty, closed-circuit road. After watching this my heart was racing and my foot and wrists were twitchy. I didn't know if I felt more like getting back into my Subaru Impreza WRX STI or Suzuki Burgman 400c scooter.

By the way, the road in the video is the Maryhill Loops Road in Washington. It's closed to public vehicles, but available to rent for special events. Too cool.

Drive safe!

Read More....

My #GMC #Denali from earlier today. #snow #iphone4s

Read More....

Clickfree Automatic Backup Transformer SE = Awesome!

I was at Fred Meyer on the weekend and bought the Clickfree Automatic Backup Transformer SE. It's a small USB device that allows you to convert any external hard drive (or any iPod/iPhone) into a Clickfree drive. I bought it not so much for the backup function, but mostly for the "Bonus Feature" listed on the back of the package that says "Automatically copy the music from any iPod to your computer." I thought that this would be very handy in case the music on my desktop was ever lost. I'm so happy with the way that this worked that I had to write a review.

When I first plugged the Clickfree into my computer, the program opened up and asked me to plug in the hard drive or iPod. However, when I did that, the software did not respond. I went to the Clickfree website for customer support and they had a page that showed very clearly how to update the Clickfree Transformer to the latest version. Once I updated to the latest version, I started over and everything went very smoothly....

When you connect your iPod to the Clickfree Transformer, the program starts automatically. There's a 30-second countdown timer that shows to allow you to choose options before it starts to back-up your data. One of the options on the screen is to copy music from your iPod. When you choose that option, you are given a choice of copying All Music or selecting only the playlists that you want. You can also select the directory on your computer where you want it to be copied to.

The most impressive thing is that it copies the songs and playlists and adds it to your iTunes Library automatically. There is no extra work that you need to do. I know they advertised it as being easy, but I didn't believe that it would be that easy!

The fact that I was able to buy the Clickfree Transformer SE for only $10 makes it extra sweet. I saw it for sale at that price earlier in the summer and I think that Fred Meyer is trying to get rid of old stock. There were only a couple of them left on the shelf on the weekend, but I'm surprised that they weren't all snapped up sooner.

Read More....