Tag: cars

I Want to Ask

I know it’s silly. I shouldn’t care about these things. But –

I can’t stop myself. I must ask.

I’m driving home. A car is in front of me. We pass the speed limit sign: 40 MPH. The driver ahead of me, now going about thirty-five, slows down to around twenty-seven. We then follow the road around a curve and up a hill where we encounter a new speed limit sign: 25 MPH.

The driver speeds up to thirty-five.

So I want to ask the driver, what’s in your head? Do you know you’re doing this? Are your actions of doing the reverse directed part of a secret organization Or do you have something mis-wired?

I almost followed the driver, a white male who looked about fifty, when he turned into the store parking lot to ask him, but I was already running late.

Have others encountered this in their areas? Does anyone know why this happens?

Help me. Please.

6

The Curmudgeon’s Stream

My age is showing. As opinions and expectations calcify with age, I complain and whine about the changes, irritated with myself for doing it but unable to stem the tide. Writing about them might help ameliorate their frequency.

  • Why the hell do smoke alarm batteries chirp and squeal at night to tell us we need to replace the battery? We need a smart detector that does not awake us at dark AM to tell us the batteries need replaced. I’m fortunate that I had a new one on hand and could immediately hunt down the offending detector and mollify the device.
  • Reminder: stop by the store and buy a nine volt battery to have on hand. Just in case.
  • Does anyone curb their wheels any longer? My information guesstimate puts the percentage of those curbing their wheels at less than ten percent. The observation and math process is simple, basically the product of scanning a line of ten cars and noting that none or one is curbed. Most have pulled over to one side and are rarely within two feet of the curb. It’s like they just pulled to one side, stopped, and left, and are not ‘parked’. That really annoys the curmudgeon.
  • Sling TV irks the curmudgeon. I pay the most for it, twenty dollars a month. It’s by far the most expensive of my streaming subscriptions. Yet, its controls and layouts smack me as the worse, and it’s the one most likely to freeze and fail to stream. When I press the button to do something on Sling, I count to ten while waiting for it to respond. That doesn’t happen with Fandango, Netflix, Hulu or Amazon, and didn’t happen with HBO or Showtime. The second worse behind Sling is Acorn, but its reaction time is half of Sling’s. Sling easily wins the ‘worst of’ award.
  • BBC America on Sling is really strange. It’s all about Star Trek. Seriously.
  • Snow has found us again in southern Oregon. A winter storm warning has been issued. It’s a fly on my nose kind of problem for me. I worry about the homeless and poor. Churches have formed an alliance to provide shelter on cold nights. Shelter is just a fraction of the problem. Food, hygiene, health, employment…sigh. Some I meet seem violently, defiantly insane. Others are struggling against poor decisions or fates’ whims. So many roam the streets, sit on benches and huddle beside buildings, and we keep asking, “What can we do? What can we do?”
  • Why can’t our cats get along? Meep and Boo both seem territorial and leery of each other, like the other is the instigator, and they’re only protecting themselves. Tucker is another matter, a cat bred by the stars to fight. He doesn’t posture; he stalks, ambushes and attacks. It’s exhausting dealing with separating and segregating them. The situation does not seem to be improving.
  • I’m pleased that our neighbors adopted Princess. A young gray and white cat, Princess began keeping on eye out for me. Whenever I left the house, she raced to me and begged for food. This, I was told, was because of her experiences as a kitten. I didn’t see her for most of the winter and wondered about her status. But when it warmed and dried, here she was again, alive and healthy, begging for food.
  • Our neighbors have now adopted Princess. They had a dog and cat when we moved in ten years ago. Each died. They replaced the cat, and when a car hit and killed him within six months, they swore, enough. And even though I’m a curmudgeon, I understand. Enduring the emotional loss is daunting. But I’m pleased that they decided Princess should move in with them, and that Princess’ original people agreed.
  • Princess certainly seemed happy. On the day I was told of her new arrangement, Princess was sitting in the neighbor’s yard a short distance from the neighbor. Princess didn’t race to me this day. After a few minutes, she wandered over for a visit but didn’t beg to eat. And when the neighbor retreated to her house, Princess headed in there with her. Seems like a good match, which pleases the curmudgeon.
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Ragged Dream

Leaving a business conference. Get in my car to drive away. My wife is with me and my car is a silver sports car. I start driving down the road when I notice someone not in their lane off my right rear quarter panel. Concerned they’ll hit me, I accelerate and move to the left. The road is rough and bumpy, with many cracks and potholes, but eventually, with some drama, I get clear of the other car, a large silver SUV.

We come upon a little truck stop. We’re to pause there to meet up with others. They’re already there, including several friends from my life. We purchase food and coffee. Some of my co-workers are there. We gather around a guy who’s explaining what we need to do to collect expenses and be reimbursed. A co-worker asks for an expense slip. I realize I need the same and request it. I’m also given some additional travel money. Pleased, I go off to join my friends.

I’m ready to hit the road; they’re not. I try to complete paperwork but realize a few things are missing so I can’t complete it. Then I worry about my car from something I see through the truck stop window. I go out and check on the car and find it’s fine. Back inside, I hang around a cashier counter, idling at racks of food, map and magazines, waiting for my friends. They come out. “Ready to go?” I ask.

“No, not yet, just a little while longer,” one female friend answers. “I want another cup of coffee.”

“Ten minutes?” I reply.

“No, twenty.”

I accept that but I’m not happy. Returning to the counter, I press a button on a small device and discover I’ve inadvertently purchased three lottery tickers. The smarmy, greasy, toothless cashier demands payment, and I fork over ten dollars. Inexplicably, I return to the device. I think I’m doing something else and hit the button to buy lottery tickets again. I’m so exasperated. The same cashier demands payment, and I do it. And then, I hit the same button one more time.

This time, I can’t find the money to pay him. I thought I had more money. The cashier crows, “Then I’m just going to have to take these lottery tickets back. No money, no tickets. That’s how it’s played.”

His attitude annoys me but I’m more annoyed that I don’t have the money I thought I did. And people around me now think I don’t have money, and that bothers me. Going through my wads of papers I’m holding, though, I uncovered a fifty dollar bill. “There,” I say, trying to show it to others. “I do have money.”

The end.

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Ford Wins LeMans

Ford won LeMans in 1966, and they won again today, June 19, 2016, fifty years later to the date.

When I was ten, this was important. The Ford GTs were the pinnacle of sports racing endurance cars, and one of the winning drivers, Bruce McLaren, was a racing driver I admired, so wow, Bruce McLaren, in a Ford GT, won LeMans. Groovy!

I don’t know where Dad was that year. Mom and Dad had divorced. I lived with Mom and my sisters in the Pittsburgh, Pa, area. Dad was in the Air Force, and I think he was outside of the United States. I think he may have been in Vietnam. My belief is fixed on Dad’s Ford Thunderbird. A turquoise hardtop convertible, that car was gorgeous. It was also sitting in my Uncle Pete’s garage in Penn Hills, Pa, alongside Uncle Pete’s white ’65 Mustang coupe.

Yeah, I was into cars.

Cars are what connect Dad and I to this day. When we speak, we chat about what we’re driving and what new car designs have, or are about to, come out. After the ’65 Thunderbird (or maybe ’66), he had a ’68 Thunderbird coupe, red, with a black landau top. He traded it in for a maroon ’74 Monte Carlo, but went back to the Ford Thunderbird, buying a white one in 1976.

Then he took on Corvettes, buying and driving three or four of them, having them as a second car while his primary vehicle was a pick up truck or SUV. There was one break in all of this when he bought a Cadillac. (Dad in a Cadillac is as strange as me in a Cadillac.) Memory isn’t as fixed about those cars. I was an adult by then, separated from him by life. But like him, I was in the US Air Force and enjoyed performance and sports cars. My first car I bought was a 1968 Camaro. Returning from the Philippines, I bought an orange Porsche 914 and drove it from West Virginia to Texas and back. It was left for a Pontiac Firebird, which I sold when we left for Okinawa. Returning from there, I bought a 1985 Mazda RX-7. The RX-7 was my Corvette, as I ended up owning three of them, trading in my black 1993 Mazda RX-7 R1 less than two years ago, after owning it for nineteen years.

When I call Dad later today, he’ll ask me if if I still have the RX-7 and then remember that I traded it in for a Mazda CX-5. He’ll mention his step-daughter’s Corvette, which he helped her buy. We’ll talk about the newly redesigned Miata, and I’ll ask him if he’s seen the new Fiat 124, based on the Miata. Besides the way I look, walk and talk, and the color of my eyes, hair and skin, and my build, there is no doubt I’m my father’s son.

We are car guys.

 

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