Eff the North.
Woke up this morning, stared at the to-do list, attempted to make excuses to crawl back into bed, but ultimately faced reality. After my twelfth cup of coffee (better to drink it all than risk having to clean the pot-- that's bachelor logic), I took another shot of courage and headed for the door.
Snow. And 40-some degrees. What. The. Hell. It's November. This is New York. We're supposed to get two weeks of this crap in January, watch the debacle of people trying to drive in the crap, and then get ready for the mid-50's and warm February sunshine.
Not a good sign.
Now, it wasn't a lot of snow, you understand. Perhaps a quarter inch, and it melted well before noon. But it was still enough to make me wish I owned a body shop.
Snow is one of those great indicators of driving ability around here. One is slightly more than half tempted to get out a notepad and start scribbling license plate numbers so it's possible to avoid the idiots under normal conditions.
The first casualty was a Honda Civic on summer tires that just couldn't make a hill. The pack of SUV's behind it expressed no pity and proceeded to turn it into an imported speed bump.
Next up, some bluehair in an BWM X5 who thinks all wheel drive means she can take a snow-covered corner at 80 on all-season tires. Fortunately the guardrails along the road disillusioned her, and hopefully the airbag managed to knock some sense in as well.
Moving right along, was the Porsche Cayenne Turbo pilot who actually could do 80 around a snow covered corner, thanks to the beefy BFG studded tires which tossed a pretty little spark shower every time he got on the go juice. You had to know this guy was planning and biding his time for the first snow of the season so he could wreak havoc. I found it amusing as hell. The soccer mom in the minivan which was receiving the majority of chewed up asphalt, probably not so much.
Finally, the winner of the gold star award for mental retardation, the young Toyota 4Runner-driving asian girl who thought that my crawling up an ice-covered hill in a four-wheel-drive SUV was somehow an indication that she could attempt a similar feat at 50 miles per hour in two wheel drive.
Worked well enough until she actually tried to stop, and the rest, as they say, was history.
Today more or less proved one of my initial points about suburbia: You people can not drive.
I believe I've discovered the cause, too, and it is one of the most vile contraptions ever to grow on the face of the American automotive industry so much like a Microsoft-esque plague: The Automatic Transmission.
Currently, about 70% of the US automotive market is handicapped by these perverse devices, which ultimately have one major effect on drivers: Making them suck at it. See someone gabbing away on a cell phone? Wouldn't be doing that if they had to change gears. Following some nimrod riding their brakes down the interstate, forever flashing their lights every time they hit a bump in the road? Slushbox driver. Stuck behind some idiot at a green light who appears to be waiting for a specific shade, because they're busy screwing with their hair, doing their makeup, or reading a damn book? You can bet their bottom dollar they shelled out the extra grand at the dealer. See some out of control nutjob barreling down a hill after losing their brakes? Bet they wish they had compression braking.
See, much as with the mass media and network television, automatic transmissions make you stupid. They make you lazy. They make you contemplate things other than driving while behind the wheel because you aren't required to concentrate. This, as exemplified above, is bad.
So, the next time you go car shopping, pick up a stick. Please, think of the guardrails.
posted by Mr. Lion
@
20:53 hours | comments
(14)