Category: cars

The Mood in May

Time again to assess how the net feels about the state of the union under Trump.

As backdrop:

So much winning! Here we go.

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The Chrome Car Dream

I had a dream which I can’t quite remember.

It involved a chrome sports car. The fragments I remember include a young me looking at the car. The car was very low and slick, chromium, more like a toy from Mattel’s Hot Wheels collection than a ‘real’ car.

In some scenes, I was designing it. Other times, I was making yet I also remember it being given to me, and I remember getting ready to drive it.

Throughout this, the background is dark, like a starless, moonless night.

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Cooperating

I drove down Siskiyou Boulevard under bright sunshine. Traffic was light. We traveled at 30 MPH, just over the speed limit.

The blue Subaru in the left hand’s right turn signal began blinking. The driver started over. Realizing that my car occupied the space, they veered back into their lane.

I dropped back to give them turning space. Seeing that, they completed their turn, and gave a big wave of thanks out the window.

Laughing, I waved back and headed on toward the coffee shop. That simple exchange gave me a shot of happy energy.

Things go so much better when we cooperate and don’t turn everything into a competition.

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Trump: It’s A Gas, Gas, Gas

The Trump Iran War is now in week four. Trump thought it could take “four to five weeks” but admitted it might go longer.

He is also talking about winding the war down while sending in ground troops.

As they used to sing on a children’s television program, “One of these things is not like the other.”

It ought to get very interesting. My wife and I put $30 worth of gas in our ‘compact’ Mazda CX-5 SUV yesterday: 7.44 gallons at $4.569 per gallon. This was at Costco, which has the lowest prices around here. We laughed till we cried, remembering how we used to almost fill our tank each week for the price of one gallon now.

A Dodge RAM 1500 and a Ford F150 pickup trucks were filling up. Those trucks have big tanks, take a lot of fuel, and get poor gas mileage. Know who drive pickup trucks? Trump supporters.

Know who likes Trump’s Iran War? Trump supporters.

Of course, Trump voters have a history of voting against the truth. They voted against Harris because Trump said Harris would take them to war. Trump said he wouldn’t start any wars.

They voted against Harris because Trump promised to lower food prices on day one. He didn’t.

They voted against Harris because they live in rural areas. Rural areas are the hardest hit by Trump’s policies in his second term.

They voted for Trump because he said he would come for the immigrants. They never thought he meant them.

They voted for Trump because he would release the Epstein files on day one. He didn’t.

Trump also said that Presidents Biden and Obama ‘made up’ the Epstein files. Neither were POTUS when the files were created.

Trump also promised to lower oil and gas prices, and then he attacked Iran.

Trump voters: they’re not deep thinkers.

Just like their leader, Donald J. Trump.

8

The Distance

This is a playing around piece. Over on Linda G. Hill’s blog via Laura’s WTFAIOA site, we’re all invited to write a non-edited stream of consciousness thing prompted by ‘distance’. So here we are. It was fun.

The distance doesn’t start or end, it’s just there with a space between us as we flash down the road, close and far apart as ever, going again to a place we were before hoping it’s the same place even while we seek something different. We travel the same distance when we talk about her mother and my mom and people we’ve known and what was done when. The drive ends as it began with a sense of wonder what’s going on and an expectation that somehow, this changes things. Sometimes it does but mostly, we are here again, pacing the distance, measuring it for curtains, prowling it at night.

3

A Car Dream

My wife and I were our current age and traveling in her 2003 Gray Focus. I was driving.

We stopped somewhere to eat. It looked like a good choice but after we began looking around more, it turned out to be a mess. Tables were set up as if they were in a fine dining room but it was outdoors, on uneven fields of uncut grass. Many other people were just like us, trying to figure out WTH was going on.

My wife was very hungry and said, “Screw this, I’m just getting some food.” Then she stalked through the grass, where the food was in silver serving bowls among  the clumps of grass. Finding some food, she took it to a table.

I was trying to tell her, “Wait, I don’t think that’s what we’re supposed to do.”

A harried young male waiter hustled to her, asking for her order. She replied, “I’m eating this.”

The waiter turned to me and asked, “What are you ordering?”

I was bewildered. “I don’t know what’s available. Where’s the menu?”

But as I looked around, I saw another family doing as my wife did. Noticing scrambled eggs in a bowl on the ground and a red plate, I picked them up and said, “I’m having this.”

The waiter looked both dejected and smug. Writing something on a pad, he left.

Eating some of our food but not happen with it, my wife and I returned to her car. It was cold outside by then, so I started the car to warm us up. I noticed ice inside the car and told her, “Look how cold it got.” Then I opened windows to let the ice out and continued running the engine to warm the car and clear the windows.

The dream ended on a view of us in her little gray car, waiting for the windows to clear.  

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Lights, Action! DIY

More DIY, replacing a light. The light being replaced is the dining room ‘chandelier’. Offering six bulbs, it’s not too heavy but large and unwieldy, and was attached to a sloping ‘cathedral’ ceiling.

This is the third light being replaced in an updating move — foyer, breakfast bar, now dining room. The old dining room light just didn’t match the new style.

About a year was spent trying to find a light that met the new style. Finally found online and ordered last week, it was delivered earlier this week. As all the lights in that area are on the same circuit, the work needed to be done during the day. But other than the height, weight, and size, it was a piece of cake. The lighting industry has done a fantastic job of creating universal mounts and standard processes and connections.

Fun to get these done. Satisfying to walk around at the walls and ceilings I’ve painted, the lights which I installed, and so on, along with the appliances I fixed, like the microwave and dishwasher. These touches all make it feel like ‘my home’.

Yesterday, I noticed my wife’s Ford Focus has a burnt-out headlight. On to the next project.

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A Little Yellow Car

I was prescribed post-surgery meds and went to the drug store to pick them up.

Walking through the drugstore parking lot to buy them, I saw a small yellow car. Circling closer, I confirmed, 1964 Dodge Valiant, just like my stepfather drove. Might have been a different year but it was the same model and color.

I remembered him bringing it home although I don’t recall what he drove before that. I rarely rode in it. This was ‘his car’, something to commute to work and go off to bet. George was a gambler and went to the horse races five or six days a week, trying for a big score. He won big twice. Once was a $25,000 Daily Double payout, providing the down payment on a newly built brick ranch in Penn Hills.

Later, he won enough to buy a new 1976 Chevy Camaro. Like his Valiant, this was pale yellow, three-speed on the column and a black and white checked interior. Sis hated that car.

All of us disliked driving with George. Tending to drive about five miles an hour below the speed limit, he also liked to get into the faster lanes but not go faster. This terrified us as other drivers pulled up, slowed down and then sped past with blaring horns. Mom would often snap, “My God, get out of this lane.” George wouldn’t budge, though, sailing on without regard to others’ opinions.

The yellow Dodge in the drugstore parking lot had tiny tires and petite chrome bumpers, appearing small and fragile among the huge SUVs and a couple of ‘compact’ Toyotas and Hondas. All the modern vehicles were white, black, gray, or silver. Nowhere was another yellow car.

Seeing it still brought a smile as I walked on, reflecting, what a different world. And yet, back in the 1960s, that Valiant would have shown up as so much different than the preceding decades.

Who knows what our 2026 cars will look like compared to the cars of 2086.

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Remembering Dad Again

I was in the coffee house, deep into writing, when a casual coffee shop acquaintance stopped and said hello. Now a choir direction, he’d spent most of his life as a master mechanic. Cars somehow became the topic.

I mentioned that I was a sporting car kind of person. Car ownership was about BMWs, a Porsche, Mazda RX-7, along with a Camaro and a Firebird.

His response pivoted me to remembering Dad’s cars. Dad mostly drove Corvettes, Mustangs, and Thunderbirds. Aging, he also began driving a pickup, and then a Cadillac. Both were so unlike him.

That’s just like me. Those car choices were ‘needs must’ decisions, exactly why I now drive a compact SUV.

After finishing the conversation, though, I realized that this was the first time since Dad died on the last day of 2025 that I remembered him without grief. Instead, there was fondness and a reflective smile.

Dad was an interesting guy.

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Cars, Changes, and Control: A Dream

I drove into a Trader Joe’s parking lot to park and shop. I was driving my old white BMW 2002, a car I haven’t owned since I left Germany in 1991. It made ‘dream sense’ because I was about the age I was when I owned the car.

The parking lot’s left side was completely empty, bewildering me — why wasn’t anyone parked there? A large sign, facing the wrong way, explained not to park on the left side. Oh.

I moved my car. An older couple, dressed in fancy clothes, was there. I told them as I walked away from my car, “It would help if the sign faced the entrance, you know? Is something going on here today?”

They didn’t answer me but I heard the man saw as I walked away, “He’ll find out.” The woman tittered.

The store was busy inside. I decided to put down my cloth shopping bags for a moment and put them on a chair back by the older couple. Inside, shopping, I decided that I would buy a few things and picked up a frozen dessert that attracted my eye. As I thought about buying a few more things, I remembered that I’d left my shopping bags on that chair and rushed back to get them.

The bags were gone. I searched all over, but they were definitely gone. Morose, I returned inside to buy the frozen dessert.

Going back, my car was parked elsewhere but I knew where. It was also not my white BMW, but my wife’s gray Ford Focus. I went to the car’s right side to get in. Then I stepped back out and looked again where it was parked. The car to the left was so close, that door — which should be the driver’s side door — couldn’t be opened. I thought, it’s a good thing that I don’t drive on that side. Yet, I knew, with some confused reflection, driving is done from the car’s left side, not the right.

I was driving at the point and discovered a passenger, a pregnant young woman reading a book. First, I noticed that the book had my name on the front, but, startled by her presence, I said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t notice you there.”

She replied, “I’m Gail. My daughter was with you when you were driving an SUV in a foreign land, a wild country. She wanted to visit you because she’s worried.”

Driving, I wondered and asked, “Is your daughter born yet?”

Gail answered, “No, but she’s due.”

I then turned left. The road ended and I was suddenly driving through a woods heavy with water puddles and thick, black mud. Gail said, “I want to get out here.”

“No,” I replied. “I don’t know what happened to the road but I’m turning around. I’ll take you back and let you out.”

I whipped the car around and was back on the road in a few seconds. Gail got out. I opened the hatchback to put a bicycle in because I knew it was mine. Then I wondered, why is my bike here?

Dream end.

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