Flexcar: A Full Weekend

Monday, March 07, 2005, at 07:47AM

By Eric Richardson

This weekend I actually used Flexcar quite a bit. Kathy's car is in the shop, so I first picked up car 6926 (which Flexcar's site at the moment lists as a mini-van... I assure you it isn't) on my way back from work Friday and we made our way over to the west side. Then Sunday I again got a car -- though this time car 6925, just for variety -- for church and errands. I'm really enjoying the Civic hybrid, and I finally noticed that the trip odometer would let me get a MPG number for my time in the car. Average MPG's for the two trips: 38.1 and 38.6.

Kathy needed to buy some pants, so we went to the Santa Monica Promenade. Normally I'm not a fan of the Promenade, but the threat of rain had kept enough people away that it wasn't bad at all. Shopping done we watched Being Julia at the Laemmle Monica 4-Plex. After we got back I stopped by my apartment and grabbed my skateboard before taking the car back to Union Station. Instead of waiting for the subway I decided to ride the board back from there. Total trip time to Union Station and back: 25 minutes.

Sunday morning I walked over to the Pershing Square Red Line station to catch the train. The schedule showed trains running about every fifteen minutes, and one at 10:05am. I got into the station at 10am, only to see a train pull away as I walked down the stairs. I thought I was going to be screwed up by timing again, but instead another train came at 10:03. Now that's more like it. I had to snake my way around the marathon to get down to Kathy's apartment and pick her up, but we ended up there mostly on time. In the afternoon I ran a few more errands, hitting up the Organized Living store at the Farmer's Market to pick up a few things (I love that store). Then later I took Kathy to the grocery store. All in all I put 74 miles on the car yesterday (a lot for me... I don't drive very far) and averaged 38.6 mpg. I really wanted to get 40, but it wasn't to be at the end (I had it at maybe the 60 mile point, but must have accelerated too hard later).

The Civic's auto stop (where the engine turns off at stops) is a trip. You have to get used to appropraitely timing your stop so that the engine doesn't turn off an leave you stopped an awkward eight feet or so behind the next car. Sure, you could let your foot off the brake and it would start right up to move you forward, but that defeats the whole purpose.