research trip
today was quite a productive day.
i showed up at the phoenix landing at 9 or so, and didn’t leave until 1330. i was on my third pint of guinness by noon, in time for the third football match of the day. to be fair, i did discuss some work matters for some of that time.
after that, i went to the new england auto show at the convention center. as both my readers may already know, my car is nearly eight years old and showing its age in myriad ways that do little to inspire confidence in continued safe and economical transport (at least without considerable repair expenditure). so i’m looking at purchasing a new vehicle.
which is exciting and difficult, and considerably more so for those who make recommendations to me, particularly considering the numerous stupid and quasi-arbitrary limitations i’ve imposed on the process.
such as:
no gm products. my parents bought a chevy s-10 blazer in 1984, which my dad loved, but we all hated. suz will talk at length about how i can’t possibly know her pain, since i never had to share a seatbelt with steve. but we all loathed the black vinyl seats in the new orleans summers. at any rate, this vehicle abruptly died on the big pine hill in plymouth in 1988, forcing my family to scrimp and pinch to buy the most bare-bones plymouth voyager available, which of course, drove 222000 stalwart miles from then until april 2000.
no toyotas. their commercials have been relentlessly annoying for as long as i can remember, and i do not intend to reward them with my business.
no fords. i’ve rented many. they’ve all been awful in various ways. if there’s a way to put a lever, button, or switch in the wrong place, they’ve found it.
there are some other lesser edicts of similar nature, but in short, my list of candidates is short. today i learned that the interior of the saturn astra (for which i was prepared to make an exception to the no-gm rule, as it was designed in europe) is spartan and nasty-looking. i learned that honda still doesn’t make cars that fit people of my height (pity, because while it seemed nice otherwise, the fit, well, doesn’t). i learned that i’d be tempted to spend more on the new volvo c30, or on the vw rabbit or gti, because i fit well in them. and i learned that even though small cars are getting more popular, there still really aren’t many of them in the grand scheme of things. oh, and i want an aston martin.
