The Simca.

The Simca was my first car. I bought it in the summer between my junior and senior years in high school. It cost $250.

(That isn't the actual car.)

It is hard to describe the pleasure that car gave me. Inside, it smelled like an old car, even better than a girl smells. ... ... ... Well, no, but you get the idea.

NY is kind of picky about driving... or was. Every driver needed a license, and every car needed both plates and insurance. They became really annoyed when those things didn't happen. I had the car and I had a learner's permit, but I had no insurance and no plates. Insurance was the big sticking point, and I was saving almost everything from my summer job.

Every day I went out and drove the Simca forward and backward in the driveway. It was euphoric. I probably put 100 miles on it, going back and forth. One day I just couldn't stand it anymore, and I decided to drive the Simca around the block. It went uneventfully until I approached the last turn before getting back to the safety of my driveway. There was a stop sign at that intersection, and a police car with a policeman inside was parked right there. My body went cold, but there was nothing I could do. It was a short block, and he would surely notice if I made a U-turn. So I pulled up to the stop sign, knowing that my car without plates was as noticeable as Howdy Doody in the nude, and tried to play it a lot cooler than I felt. Somehow, he didn't notice me. Needless to say, perhaps, I didn't try that trick again.

School had started when I finally had enough money for insurance. I registered the car, got my plates, started driving to school. I was ecstatic. A BMOC. Not to mention that I didn't have to ride buses, which I hated, anymore. It was just so great.

Every plus has a minus, it seems. And my minus was having to drive Richard D. to and from school. He was in my class and he lived right behind me, so I had little choice. He was a fat kid whom I didn't like, but I was stuck.

The second week of using the Simca to commute to school, I was driving home with Richard next to me. I was on James Street in Syracuse, a 4-lane street with a 35 MPH speed limit. I was driving properly, when a car full of other kids from our class started driving to my left. They were laughing and giving me high fives. BMOC. I was gesturing back at them, when the guy in their passenger seat looked forward. His face immediately took on a terrified look, so I looked where I was going. A Niagara Mohawk power truck was stopped at a light right in front of me. I slammed on the brakes.

After the collision, the silence was profound. I could smell metal and exhaust. When I realized that I was okay, except for a broken nose, I looked at Richard. He had hit the windshield and it had split his forehead from one side to the other. I could see 3/4 of an inch of fat under his skin. But he was conscious.

Needless to say, perhaps, that was the end of the Simca. It was totaled. A policeman said if I'd been going 5 MPH faster, we both would have been decapitated.

It was a learning experience.

WIWMWILNY, Part 3.

The weather.

My overarching opinion when I left NY 40 years ago was that East Coast weather... well, sucks. I have not changed that opinion. I do, however, like the winters. Winter here is weather, not day-after-day sameness. There are challenges, and they appeal to me. I like snow, even though I don't like driving on it. I prefer cold weather to hot. And that's where the problem lies. NY summers are HOT and MUGGY. You can dress up and wander comfortably outside even when it's very cold, but there is nothing you can wear to protect you from the heat.

Blizzard of the century.

Overrated, IMO. The ice storm I already described apparently is the extent of it. We're now heading into mild weather.

I'm not complaining.

WIWMWILNY, Part 2.

My Prius.

First, my Prii (Twila now has the 2002 Prius and I have the 2004) are maybe the best cars I have ever owned. Their only competition are my rotary Mazdas, maybe my VW bugs, my Simca (more to come about that), my '54 Ford. My GTO and my Corvair weren't good cars, but they have emotional value. Anyway, the 2002 Prius is great fun to drive, and the 2004 has a lot of good features. So, it isn't technically correct to say that I won't mind leaving my Prius behind.

The problem with my Prius is that it is horrible, disgusting, foul, loathsome, abominable - take any word that you'd use to describe the Bush administration or Republicans in Congress and you have the idea - at driving on snow or ice. Maybe it's because the engine is small and doesn't put as much weight on the drive wheels. Whatever the reason, it sucks. So I decided to order a Subaru Outback, which has all-wheel drive. I ordered it from the factory, because that saves dealer accessory installation charges, which are a lot. It seems like the Outback is taking a long time to arrive from Japan, which is frustrating when I'm making multiple attempts to get up a minor hill in my Prius. But I'm in Zen mode.

Talking about driving on snow and ice reminds me of something. When I was a lad in Syracuse, NY, I frequently went to a nearby parking lot when it had snowed and the roads were slippery. I'd get up speed and then put my car into spins and slides and practice getting out of them. That taught me a lot about oversteer and understeer and how to control a car. It was fun, too, of course. I'd be all over that parking lot, spinning and sliding and yelling "YAHOO" out the window. A lot of times people who were trying to park to go shopping got annoyed with me, but they were unwise, because my increased driving skills made it much more likely that I wouldn't plow into them someday.

Guest Post 1: I was that guy.

Durf wrote about some of the things he wouldn't miss about being in New York. One was New York drivers, about which I have a confession to make.

In the last millennium, my wife worked on a project to build part of the telescope for a joint US/European X-ray astronomy satellite called XMM. One of the scientists on the project, Jean, was a woman who once dated Steve Young of 49'ers QB fame. I met her and her fiancé, Greg, in South America. (That's another story.) Their wedding was about a year later, but we weren't invited because they're Mormon, we're not, and we wouldn't be allowed in the tabernacle. We were invited to the reception, which was to take place two weeks after the wedding in Manhattan. The reception only included dessert. So, we told people we were spending the weekend in New York City in the winter for dessert. (The dessert was gelato flown in from France. It didn't seem exceptional to me, but I only had a small taste, and my palate is untrained.)

Which finally brings me to the point of the story. On our way back out of the city, I decided that I should pretend to be a New Yorker for a few minutes, so I blasted my horn several times for no good reason at 11:30pm. It wasn't all that fun. Now I regret that I'm on Durf's 90% list.

-cad

Dissendat.

Ice storm! When I woke up at 02:30 it sounded like it was raining. Since an ice storm was forecast, I knew that wasn't good. Fortunately, the ice was still granular, so I was able to get out of my driveway in two tries. When I got out of work, though, the real ice storm had begun, and everything was covered with ice. I breathed a sigh of relief after getting up a steep, short hill outside the lab, then a plow backed in front of me when I was 20' from a longer, winding hill. I had to stop, and then I couldn't move an inch. I backed all the way down, got a start, and made it up. I got home okay, but everything is ice. Walking up the driveway was a challenge, as was getting up the stairs to the apartment. Ice storms aren't fun.

FM1 lost another day today. I'm guessing from what I saw on FM2 is that there are epoxy problems - it's too viscous.

Anonymous commented that the email address for submitting blogs is wrong. I think they were joking, but I'll try to make it easier. I didn't make the address clickable because I was worried about spiders trolling for email addresses to put on spam lists. I can trick them, though. CLICK HERE

WIWMWILNY, Part 1.

That means "What I won't miss when I leave New York".

Part 1 = drivers.

A couple of weeks ago I saw an article on CNN that said 90% of drivers think they're good drivers. That says something about people, IMO. I think 10% of drivers are good drivers. I base my claim on having driven over 2 million miles and having paid a lot of attention to drivers and driving, plus some other crap that I'll spare you.

NY drivers aren't bad, comparatively. I'd rather drive in NY than in CA, everything considered. CO drivers are more respectful of other drivers than in either of those states, however. Here is the scoop.

In NY, speeding is endemic. And not just a couple of MPH over the limit, but 20 MPH or more. Even then, I rarely see cars pulled over. Maybe it's the budget crisis.

NY drivers are aggressive, in the NY way. That is, they usually won't cut you off and flip you the bird. But when you're in NY, you don't exist as an individual. You're just another dot on the road. It's like in a store. A New Yorker thinks nothing of pushing his cart into the middle of an aisle, blocking everyone, and ignoring anyone trying to get by. It's the same on the road.

Another part of the aggression is that they want to get in front of you at all costs. They'll pass in a lane on the right, they'll cross a double line to pass you. It doesn't seem like they're in a hurry, but it's important to them to be in front of you.

As I mentioned in one of my first posts, if a NY driver thinks you're going too slow, he will zoom up to within 1 inch of your rear bumper and stay there awhile. I've learned that all you have to do is look in the rear view mirror to let them know you're aware of them, and then usually they'll back off. That's NY in a nutshell: you're anonymous until you make some kind of contact, and then they're really nice to you.

I'll probably add to this post a couple of times in the next month.