My trips around the lake had slowed in recent years, due in part to my feeling a need to keep the miles off the Prius, which I figured would be my last car - I needed to make her last, right? Long, slow drives to nowhere left me with pangs of guilt, now. Do I really need to drive 37 miles to Watkins Glen just to see the lake from a different angle? I’d probably made fewer than a half dozen circumnavigations of the lake in the past 12 months.

Before I drove any real distance in any other direction, though, I knew I had to begin with one symbolic trip around this lake that I love so much in the new car…

I had driven my beloved Prius for 13 years. She had 17 years on her, and over 200K miles, and I figured with her hybrid battery replaced in 2017 she’d be good to go for another 100K miles or so.

My brother, Jeff, took a ride with me a month or two back and pointed out the roar of the engine - Prius’s aren’t supposed to roar - and some vibrating, among other things.

That was all part of the charm, I explained.

Other people don’t find it as charming, I guess.

Anyway, at some point between that ride and my birthday in March he decided it was time for a new car.