As I had previously threatened, I bought a new car, but I’m not excited about it. I traded in my Subaru WRX STI for a VW Golf R, and the loss of my old car overwhelms any excitement of a new car, probably because I’m a hoarder I can’t let go.
I attended the 2019 Detroit auto show (NAIAS) last January, but unlike other years, it was for work. I spent most of my time in the basement pretending to be interested in autonomous vehicle stuff. It’s a section called AutoMobili-D, and you may have seen it if you got lost looking for the bathrooms.1
Years ago my sister told me what a “rutter” was after she had read James Clavell’s Shōgun. A rutter was what the pilots and navigators used as guides as they sailed around the world. Countries such as Portugal guarded these rutters (roteiros) as national secrets to prevent others from finding their trade routes.
Inspired by these rutters (but not by the colonialism that accompanied them), I decided to keep a roteiro for my own journeys. I think in old-timey English this translates to “trip logbook.”
I’ve had many flimsy excuses over the years as to why I’ve had a writing hiatus on this blog. Typical ones include being lazy, tired, or stressed. My new excuse is dieting, which makes me lazy, tired, and stressed.
I was going to write about highfalutin stuff and things like machine learning and autonomous vehicles, but I got distracted by something more important: toys metal diecast models.
I’ve waxed on (but not off) before of my love of rubber. My preference is for sticky rubber, but rubber for the cold is good, too. And now I found out I like metal on my rubber.
That’s right—studded rubber for my driving pleasure.
A few years ago I posted about three of my cars hitting 148,300 miles at about the same time, something which took 15.3 years of random planning. That led me to look at my driving mileage at different points of my life. I’m doing that again here, but this time looking at my annual mileage. That just makes it easier to see the difference between being single and being married.
I wasn’t able to see an auto show in 2017, so I was looking forward to going to the Detroit Auto Show (North American International Auto Show) this year. Of course, life conspired against me, and I almost missed it this year. I was just able to go on the last day, thanks to my wife (she made me go).
My family was government cheese and peanut butter poor when I was growing up2. But our family of seven had a roof over our heads and a car for getting to work. And if something went wrong, we never called anyone to fix it. My dad would roll up his sleeves, grab what few tools he had, and tell me to go help him.2
There’s nothing like the smell of a burning red project at work as you leave it behind for vacation. Unfortunately, I’m one of those worrying conscientious types so to take my mind off my disaster, I tried to figure out which is the most relaxing way to travel across Germany for vacation.
This is actually a trick question because for me there is no relaxing way to travel across Germany.