Here I go again, taking too long between posts. I seem to have fallen out of the groove that I was in for awhile there. I need to be careful, or I'll run the risk of just letting this site slip into oblivion, like 99.99% of the rest of the blogs in the universe. I'm sure there would be a riot if I let that happen.
Well, several things have happened since my last post. Most of them seem to revolve around my car, for better or worse. Perhaps the most interesting of which was the Mazda Zoom Zoom Live event that I attended with some buddies. I must say, it was quite different than I expected - but it was a hell of a good time. I figured there would be a professional driving class, an opportunity to test drive some of their cars, and some racing courses that you would have to pay to try. Oh no - the racing was the primary focus of the whole event. There were 4 different racing courses, each of which you could do multiple times, and they were all free. Some were better than others, but here is the general run-down of the setup:
Points were given in the first 3 events, and you won stuff if you got enough points. I took top points on the Jinba Ittai Experience (and I didn't see anyone else who did), but I didn't score on any of the others, so it's a toss-up. My buddy Daniel probably had the more enviable finish, as he scored on all 3 courses, which equaled out to my one top score. I really wanted to beat the target time on the Performance Challenge, but I really never came close. Despite my flair for the dramatic on the highway, I had never done any racing or autocross before, so it was all a new experience for me. But it sure was fun.
Now, if only the rest of the car-related stuff that has happened recently was that enjoyable...
Fun With Potholes
In what seems to be becoming a weekly habit for me, I ruined yet another tire. This is like the third one in 2 months. And it's always the front passenger tire! This one was the most brutal of all - I was coming south on Spring Street towards GT campus, in moderate traffic, so I could only see so much of the road in front of me. I was moving at about 45, and I changed lanes to pass somebody. I'm in the middle of the lane change, and then WHAM, I say hello to the biggest damn crater ever found on pavement. I swear that a meteor had to have crashed right there in downtown Atlanta. It was at least a foot deep. No covering, no cones, nothing. Needless to say, I hit this thing full-on, and it felt and sounded like I tore off the front of my car. I knew the tire was done.
Sure enough, it started bubbling up the next day. I made another appointment to bring the car in and have the tire replaced. But there's a twist this time. When I got the tire a mere 3 weeks before, they told me that they were now doing free Road Hazard coverage on all their tires. Bingo. So the tire was covered. But I got hit by the Car Dealer Rule:
When you bring your car in to the dealer, they will find something else wrong with the car that will cost at least $500
As a result of hitting the pothole, I bent both of my passenger-side wheels. Not good. They are expensive wheels. It ended up costing me $600 to replace them. I'm holding out hope that I can sell the old ones somewhere and recuperate some of the cost. But needless to say, that was a nice kick in the gut. And of course, when I went back to the scene of the crime to get some pictures of the city's negligence, it was all nice and covered up with a metal plate and marked with cones. Screw me.
The Most Useless Class Ever
So I took a defensive driving course this past week. Talk about worthless. Essentially, it was a 6-hour driver's education course, which serves me no purpose, because if there's one thing in life that I know how to do, it's drive.
I think it's interesting that they put such faith in courses like this. I'm sure it's great for a teenager learning to drive for the first time. But at this point, my habits and tendencies are set in stone. I drive how I drive, and no course is going to change that. In fact, the most important thing I learned from the course is that, by law, slower drivers in the left lane on the highway must move right and yield to faster traffic, even if they are already doing the speed limit. The irony here is that knowing that will only serve to make me a more aggressive driver, because now I feel even more justified about "encouraging" slow drivers to get out of my lane.
The other interesting thing I noticed were the discussions that my classmates had about speeding. As expected, the instructor attempted to persuade us not to speed, stating that it was not worth the consequences, and that the most you ever gain from speeding is a few minutes of extra time anyways. Everybody seemed to agree with that assessment. Except for one major problem - when I speed, I don't do it to save time. Never have. I speed because I enjoy speeding! My mind and body enjoy to be moving quickly. My car definitely enjoys the speed - it is designed to be driven hard. I don't get stressed at high speeds - I actually relax. So when people tell me to slow down because it's not worth saving five minutes... they just don't get it.
Parting Shots
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