Driving "tips"

As I've mentioned before, James Lileks is one of my favorite bloggers. He also writes a daily column called The Quirk for the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. I've found that since his quota was upped from a couple days a week to seven, he sometimes strains for material. But today's was a gem and a half, on the topic of driving. I just drove four and a half hours to Alleghany County, Virginia, so his observations are ringing especially true for me. I'm going to reprint it here because I want everyone to have a laugh, and if I just put a link, well, no one would click it.

Today's How-to Quirk Tip: driving home after a weekend trip. Traffic heading into the cities on Sunday now goes 85 miles per hour, with 2 inches between each car. I prefer 3 inches, for that extra buffer of safety. I don't mind going through my windshield, but it would seem rude to go through someone else's, as well. Want to join in the fun? It's simple.

Rule one: Stab the brakes every so often, just for the fun of backing up cars for 30 miles behind you. See, you brake, they brake. A guy in Monticello hits the brakes, and the North Dakota Highway Patrol answers a 42-car pile-up call three hours later.

Rule two: Pass whenever possible. The only reason the truck ahead of you is doing 84 instead of 86 can only be mulish indifference to your desire to go 87, so wheel around and pass him in the right lane. You'll soon see he's riding the bumper of a tiny car going 83. It's all the fault of some other car up ahead, who's only doing 82 while passing a car doing 81! Idiots! C'mon! We're adding 830 seconds to our cumulative travel time!

Uh-oh. The tiny car suddenly accelerates to 84, and all the cars behind you are speeding past in the left lane. You spent 15 minutes passing those cars! Wasted! Now you have to start all over again, and don't think they're not laughing: Who's 438 seconds closer to home now, pal?

Rule three: Take the side roads, and repeat the same behavior. Because speeding, tailgating and frantic passing is much more amusing on a two-laner. Passing a car while heading into oncoming traffic at 92 mph: thrill-wise, it's as close as you'll get to storming the beaches of Normandy.

Rule four: Toss the keys to your spouse. Magic words: Your turn.

Sprinkles

Sorry it's been a week since my last substantive post. I wish I could say that I'm so busy I haven't had time to give the blog a second thought, but the truth is, I think about it every day and just haven't been able to come up with something compelling to write about. I was reading my favorite, James Lileks, yesterday, and he was talking about sprinkles.

If I die next week, put sprinkles on my coffin; it’ll soften the blow. Sprinkles make anything better. They’re tasteless, waxy, nothing but pointless sugar, but they’re SPRINKLES! I look for sprinkles in my own daily life, actually. That leather gear-shift knob option at the dealership: sprinkles. A new icon set to replace system defaults: sprinkles.

So I was thinking, what are some of my sprinkles? Well, I love electronics, for one. I got myself a new toy from Amazon: the Garmin StreetPilot i5. It's one of those handy GPS navigators for the car. With all this impending travel, I figured it would come in pretty handy. I researched the options, and you can spend over $1000 on these things. My main requirement was that maps for the entire U.S. come preloaded. I didn't want to mess with USB cords and CD's--and running the risk of being somewhere I haven't loaded the maps for. (Total coincidence: I just read about David Pogue's recent nightmarish experience with an ill-equipped device.)

When it comes to electronics I usually spring for all the bells and whistles, because, well, they're my sprinkles. But I read lots of reviews and there were so many problems with the fancier units locking up and not functioning. The i5, on the other hand, got solid reviews, and I liked its small size and the fact that you can run it on batteries (no unwieldy cords to grapple with). It also happened to be one of the least expensive units--especially considering it has preloaded maps. Both buy.com and Amazon had it for the same price. I decided to go with Amazon, which turned out well, because when I selected two-day shipping I was offered it for free (the shipping!) if I signed up for a three-month trial of Amazon Prime (a program that gives you free two-day shipping on all orders for $79/year). I figured I would just cancel after the three months, and in the meantime enjoy free fast shipping.

So far I've used the i5 around town and am pretty happy with it. It took a while to acquire the satellites the first time, and it still can take up to a minute, but once it's locked in there haven't been problems losing the reception. I haven't driven anywhere unfamiliar yet, but I've had it on to see what it can do. It wants to put me on the most obvious main routes, and sometimes I know quicker and easier back ways. But if I were unfamiliar with the area, sticking to the main streets would probably be better anyway. I can tell that the maps are a little out of date (I would guess about a year old) because one of the newer shopping centers here does not exist in its database. But I simply input a nearby intersection and it got me there fine. The screen is plenty bright, the volume is plenty loud, and I even got to choose a British accent for the voice directions! The only issue has been figuring out where to put it. It comes with a windshield-mount suction cup, which works great en route, but when left sitting in a hot car for a few hours, it falls off. Not to mention that if it's stuck to the windshield, the little gadget is in full view of any envious passers-by who might see fit to break my window and treat themselves to a "sprinkle" of their own.

Let's see, what else is a sprinkle? Mmm, the new KFC bowl. I tried it for lunch today, even though I was a little wary of the gravy-cheese combo (they looked at me funny when I asked to put those on the side, and said, "It's the bowl," as if it's some sacred combination not to be toyed with, so I buckled). It was dee-lish! I looked on their website to check out the nutrition info, but I guess it's too new of an item to be listed there. I'm sure it's sky-high in terms of fat, calories, cholesterol, and carbs. But at least the portion wasn't outlandishly large. In fact, it seemed kind of small, but afterwards I was quite full.

Any more sprinkles? Have you seen the new progress bars over on the right? And my new Relocating to NC graphic? Those are definitely sprinkles! How about getting change and finding state quarters or the new nickels--ridiculously thrilling sprinkles! Oh, and guilty pleasure TV, that's a big sprinkle--shows like Gameshow Marathon. I watched it last night since American Idol and Lost are over. It's a fun concept. Their first game was Price is Right, and it's a hoot to see celebrities trying to figure out how much things cost. Of course, they also had rather odd items up for bid, things that no one would know the price of, like a ceiling-suspended "bubble chair." And in the Showcase Showdown, there was a vintage Mustang. Something like that is really not fair to put up for bids, because who knows what kind of condition it's in?

One touch that I liked was that the games and set were exactly like the real Price is Right, down to the old-school digital readouts of bids, and the giant wheel. Of course, the celebrities don't get to keep what they win; lucky home viewers win all the stuff. (You can enter via text message, or online.) The winning celeb each night advances into the final round (Family Feud with the celebrities' own friends and family!), and the winner of that will win $100,000 for their charity of choice. The next episode is tonight, and they're playing Let's Make a Deal. From the previews, it looks like it's the same celebrities, which is odd. They showed a whole bunch more in the audience, who were never called up... Some of the other games they'll be playing are Card Sharks and Press Your Luck. I loved those shows as a child!! (I told you I was a couch potato in my youth.)

At the same time on ABC are the finals of the National Spelling Bee. That could be interesting too. I came across this blog, written in real-time by an on-location observer. Did you ever see Spellbound? Good movie!

So what are your "sprinkles"?

Still no coche

I still don't have my car back! It was supposed to be done last week, but with the holidays cutting the work week short, they didn't have time to finish it before their four-day weekend. Finally they called on Tuesday and said I could pick her up at 4:00. I was in and out in less than five minutes...I should have known it could never be that easy! I never realized how attached I am to my car, but I drove off with a huge grin on my face. I was so happy to be driving her again! I stopped to get gas because I had dropped her off empty, and while at the station I decided to inspect the repair work. I reached back to the rear door that had been replaced, but couldn't get it unlocked no matter how hard I tried. Nor could I open the door from the inside. And of course, since it wouldn't unlock, I couldn't open it from the outside either. So I took it back to the shop and they were puzzled. They claimed it had worked fine when they tested it a couple hours previously. But they agreed it was not right now. They gave me the rental back (it was sitting where I had parked it mere minutes prior) and are now trying to fix the problem. I talked to the guy yesterday and he said they're trying to get another door panel and hopefully it will come in today. I really want my car back before the weekend. I do not want to ring in 2006 without her!

***

The other day I saw Flightplan with Jodie Foster at the dollar theater. It is a great movie! It's billed as a thriller, but there's no gore or anything. It's more psychological with some action scenes. I definitely recommend it.

Then last night I re-watched National Treasure, with Nicholas Cage. That is a first-rate movie! It's like James Bond meets Indiana Jones meets Da Vinci Code! I'm an American history geek as it is, so this film is right up my alley. Plus, now that I've been to Philadelphia, the scenes shot there were more exciting. Add it to your Netflix queue if you haven't seen it yet...you won't be sorry!

***

I learned a couple new board games recently. Bohnanza is from Germany. Basically you have a lot of bean cards and you have to plant and harvest them strategically so you can sell them for gold coins. It was hard to get the hang of at first, but when we did, it was fun! The other game is called Carcassonne...it's named after a region in France I think. In that game, there are a bunch of tiles with grassland, mountains, water, and cities, and you have to lay them out like dominoes and also claim the largest amounts of land, water, etc., to get points. I lost both games but wouldn't mind playing them again to get better.

***

I had a funny dream last night. Yesterday I discovered that a fellow blogger linked to my blog. I was so honored! So last night, I dreamt that James Lileks, my current hero, was also a regular reader, and that he also linked to my blog in his Bleat. Right, as if! But I was thrilled in the dream, as you can imagine!

The glories of 8 a.m. and rental cars

Up early again, to take my car to the body shop. She's finally getting fixed! No better way to start the day than with some online humor courtesy of my favorite columnist, James Lileks. (Sorry, Dave Barry--you take a sabbatical, you get replaced.) His 12 Catastrophes of Christmas are high-frickin-larious! Maybe someday I'll be able to write half as well as he. From today's Bleat:

It is stupid cold outside. Five when I got up, Five at noon, Five at sunset. I think it’s Two now. Yesterday I drove to Target...and there was no place to park except the outer realms of the lot; the wind was blowing me-by-north-me, and seemed intent on keeping me from the warm red womb of Mother Target. I pressed on. Once inside I...got a cart for shopping. They’d just brought in a herd from the pens outside, and the handles of the cart were too cold to touch. I used my coat sleeves. I looked around and saw everyone else in the area pushing carts with coat sleeves. One of those things you just accept, I guess; I suppose in Arizona the cart handles burn your flesh off. It’s all a trade-off.

Later. I was late to the body shop. There was a ton of ice on my car, and it was not joking this time.

So I couldn't use the squeegee backwards, like I'd done before. I had to come back upstairs and get a spatula. Pathetic. I seriously need an ice scraper. When I finally got to the body shop, the lady from Enterprise was waiting to pick me up. She was driving a Dodge Magnum, one of those fierce looking not-quite-a-station-wagon-not-quite-a-minivan-not-quite-an-SUV cars. Huge inside. Power everything. She said it was the car I would be getting. I thought to myself, "Geez, this is only $25.99 a day?!" Turns out she was mistaken, of course. I got a Kia Rio.


Tiny, tiny, tiny, but at least it's not a Geo Metro! At least it has a CD player. Besides, it will be easier to park and will get better mileage than the Magnum. Luckily my insurance pays for a rental while my car is being repaired, but I'm paying for the additional insurance. I could never bring myself to call Allstate and tell them that I'd managed to wreck the rental I was driving while my regular car was being repaired from the last wreck. I love irony, but not that much.