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Old Person Rant

I had a neighbor's kid cat sit for me. She and her parents were good with my zoo.
This kid had to go back across the fence and get her mother as she had never seen a Swing-a-Way manual can opener before.
 
JohnnytheK said:
I want to know when people stopped riding bicycles with the flow of traffic. Last night I saw a woman cross 2 lanes of traffic popped in front of me and almost got t-boned by the car next to me.
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When did people ever ride their bicycles, tricycles and rickshaws with the flow of traffic?
 
Stinky Stinky said:
Hmmm hrrmmm herp the derp derp... this thread has given me some great ideas!

1-old-people-in-wheel-chairs-funny-pictures.jpg
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:D
 
My newest car has a continuously variable transmission. The car before it was a manual.

CVTs are sort of interesting. Obviously very smooth, but they also are nice going downhill because to some extent (at least on Subaru versions) they keep you from going too fast downhill without having to hit your brakes, at least if the hill isn't too steep.

They get a lot of bad press in the automotive press, but I think that's in part due to them not understanding that how fast you accelerate is dependent on what part of the RPM band you're in, and that the fastest acceleration probably isn't the highest RPM (pedal to the floor). In normal driving if I take the tach up to about 2000 RPM I accelerate faster than most people from a stop light, and if I go up to 3000 RPM I'm a lot faster than just about anyone, all while the car seems very relaxed.
 
Goodspike said:
My newest car has a continuously variable transmission. The car before it was a manual.

CVTs are sort of interesting.
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Might be interesting to post about/discuss them on the Automotive Talk board.

Obviously very smooth, but they also are nice going downhill because to some extent (at least on Subaru versions) they keep you from going too fast downhill without having to hit your brakes, at least if the hill isn't too steep.
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That's what 2nd gear [or 3rd, depending on variables] is for! ;)

They get a lot of bad press in the automotive press, but I think that's in part due to them not understanding that how fast you accelerate is dependent on what part of the RPM band you're in, and that the fastest acceleration probably isn't the highest RPM (pedal to the floor). In normal driving if I take the tach up to about 2000 RPM I accelerate faster than most people from a stop light, and if I go up to 3000 RPM I'm a lot faster than just about anyone, all while the car seems very relaxed.
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Interesting. Thanks for the info. :)
 
(as a North Korean missile hurtles toward the USS Ronald Reagan)
Sam Fisher: Wait, you're telling me I have to win one for the gipper?
Grim: Dude, what does that even mean?
Sam: Nevermind. You're right, Grim. I'm old.
 
MoodyBlues said:
That's what 2nd gear [or 3rd, depending on variables] is for! ;)
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Yes, but this is automatic--just let your foot off the gas. Probably saves brake pads at the cost of some fuel economy.

On my Subaru though it also has "paddles" on the steering wheel to switch "gears" manually (in steps). Instead of D you put the transmission lever at M and can shift to predefined gear ratios as if the car didn't have a CVT. I bring it up though because if you're in D and going down too steep of a hill for the CVT to slow the car enough, you can just hit the downshift paddle and it will temporarily downshift and slow the car further.
 
zuben el genub said:
Too hard to forget which pedal is which. The left foot uses the clutch.
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I was in a traffic jam once in a rented automatic (I've only ever owned manuals). My right foot was getting tired of flipping back and forth from brake to gas. I thought I'd use my left foot to spell my right. That lasted all of one stop: I threw everything in the car, wife included, forward as I instinctively jammed my left foot on the pedal as hard as I could.

To this day I hate Hoover Dam, even though there's a bypass bridge now (we were driving from Phoenix to Las Vegas).
 
Goodspike said:
Okay, I'm over 50 and I have a question. At what point did they quit teaching people to walk on a roadway facing traffic and to not park in front of someone's mailbox. People born after 1984 don't seem to know either of those two things, but I'd like to pin down a specific date! ;) :D
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Hey, I'm 24 (turn 25 soon)_ and I ask the same damn questions.
 
Goodspike said:
My newest car has a continuously variable transmission. The car before it was a manual.

CVTs are sort of interesting. Obviously very smooth, but they also are nice going downhill because to some extent (at least on Subaru versions) they keep you from going too fast downhill without having to hit your brakes, at least if the hill isn't too steep.

They get a lot of bad press in the automotive press, but I think that's in part due to them not understanding that how fast you accelerate is dependent on what part of the RPM band you're in, and that the fastest acceleration probably isn't the highest RPM (pedal to the floor). In normal driving if I take the tach up to about 2000 RPM I accelerate faster than most people from a stop light, and if I go up to 3000 RPM I'm a lot faster than just about anyone, all while the car seems very relaxed.
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I don't have a CVT but I have a dual-clutch hooked up to a automatic w/ manual shifting diesel car :D
 
big_z said:
I was in a traffic jam once in a rented automatic (I've only ever owned manuals). My right foot was getting tired of flipping back and forth from brake to gas. I thought I'd use my left foot to spell my right. That lasted all of one stop: I threw everything in the car, wife included, forward as I instinctively jammed my left foot on the pedal as hard as I could.
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I know someone who did that driving a Corvette they were borrowing while accelerating onto the freeway. I was following them, and fortunately my car wasn't able to keep up or I might have hit them.
 
big_z said:
I was in a traffic jam once in a rented automatic (I've only ever owned manuals). My right foot was getting tired of flipping back and forth from brake to gas. I thought I'd use my left foot to spell my right. That lasted all of one stop: I threw everything in the car, wife included, forward as I instinctively jammed my left foot on the pedal as hard as I could.
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On the VERY RARE occasions when I've had to drive automatics, I consciously and continuously remind myself to keep my left foot planted on the footrest. But it's hard to do!

BTW, and for some reason this usually surprises people :), I learned how to drive on an automatic and drove automatics for the first few years of driving. Then I discovered what REAL driving is. :D
 
<non-rant>
MoodyBlues said:
BTW, and for some reason this usually surprises people :), I learned how to drive on an automatic and drove automatics for the first few years of driving. Then I discovered what REAL driving is. :D
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I taught my daughter to drive on the family automatic. (My wife could never get the hang of using a clutch.) The first car my daughter bought? Stick. (Well, she kinda cheated - driving a Honda Civic stick is like driving an automatic. You couldn't make that thing jerk on takeoff if you try.)

Her first long drive (about 4 hours), resulted in a return trip in a snowstorm. Not quite stop and go traffic - the "go" part wasn't there. When she got home I asked her how she liked driving a stick in that kind of traffic. She said it "gave her something to do". For her, driving an automatic is like, "the guy is bleeding to death, the ambulance driver passed out, the ambulance is auto, so she's going to have to drive it." Anything less serious and someone else can drive that toy - she drives cars.

Me? Learned on a 42 Chevy with a chipped tooth in 2nd. If you didn't hold the stick up there it fell down to neutral. Haven't driven stick in years, but I could probably get into one now and not spill the water from the glass on the dash.

But for years, driving 2 hours each way on "the world's longest parking lot", I-495 on Long Island, I preferred auto. You could wear a clutch from brand new to needs replacement in a week. And your left thigh would look like the trunk of a fairly large tree. (Did it in one car for a few months with a Hurst speed shifter with missing grommets. Yeah, that was me, leaning out of the door when the traffic started moving again, hitting the bottom of the shifter with a pipe.)

</non-rant>

Don't they teach kids homonyms these days? "I want to phones, because it's two hard texting and talking on the same one." Huh? Did you just say what I think you thought to mean? And spelling? Didn't that go out with button hooks? (G'wan! What's a button hook?) And a plural an apostrophe doesn't make.

Ever see a composition written in "texting"? The kids here seem to think that "texting" is an acceptable dialect of English.

I watch the new Sprint commercial on TV and realize that we don't even have a handbasket. And we're not going there, we're pushing ourselves there. When did education become "I deserve an A because all my friends got As"? And "you can't leave a child back because his/her little psyche will be damaged"?

"No child left behind" means that we have to make sure that they all learn, not that we give them all diplomas even if they haven't passed a single test in 12 years.

But when a man takes "diction" lessons to learn how to sound uneducated ...
 
Our kid learned on a stick. She was the only one in weeks taking a driving test with a stick. She had the 75 Opel Manta.

Truck has clutch cancel start. Good thing - broke my foot and could push the clutch down to shift point, but not to the floor to start it. Had to shave off part of the cast. We don't own any automatics.
 
zuben el genub said:
Our kid learned on a stick. She was the only one in weeks taking a driving test with a stick. She had the 75 Opel Manta.
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Our daughter pulled the "but ALL MY FRIENDS are learning on automatics!" thing when she was learning to drive. To which I said, "well, your father and I both drive stick shifts--and if *YOU* want to drive our cars, you'll have to learn how!"

There's a PS to that story: She lived in England for a year after graduating from college, and has traveled to many other foreign countries. She's now GRATEFUL that she can drive either kind of car. :D

Truck has clutch cancel start. Good thing - broke my foot and could push the clutch down to shift point, but not to the floor to start it. Had to shave off part of the cast.
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:thumb:

I'd have done the same when I broke my right ankle, but I couldn't have made the width small enough to work in my RAV4. :( And then...three months later...I broke my right wrist!

We don't own any automatics.
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Ditto. :)
 
The walking cast had to be shaved down anyway. It was far too wide for the floorboards on the 1500 Nomad.

Kid lives in England. The hardest thing for her was the emergency brake usage. She had her OTR license here - she drove buses for the college which also had a livery service.
She had no trouble with roundabouts over there - even 6 lane ones. The city here just changed the traffic flow on a lot of 2 lane ones since no one could figure out which lane to be in, especially when the exit was also 2 lane. You would be in the left lane in the circle, but wanted to go right after you exited. With a city full of rude drivers, no one would let you move over. So we had accidents.
 
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