My Old School Dad who is wound like a Titleist 90 compression tour ball with a compound cover goes to another level when piloting his car. He flat out goes into a rage it is amazing. He just loses it.
Okay, some observations: he is much more prone to rage when driving an American made automobile like the Pontiac Grand AM (yes the one from the Dad's back is out post). His newest car a four or eight year old Audi A4 (the choice of 14 year old figure skaters, hootchies and budget conscientious Italian men) does seem to relax him a bit. Here is my theory on the car manufacturer to rage ratio.
The Pontiac Grand AM most likely has either a chemical that leaches from the real imitation naugahyde seats, dash and console or schmegma from the faux velour seats that rattles his brain's rationalization center. The result in effect opens up the NC17 portion of his subconscious and converts its contents to language before transmitting it out of his mouth as traffic events happen. Sort of an audible subconscious brain screen-saver that reacts to impulses with verbal expulses. In fact now that I recall his seats and carpet I am certain they meet the military specs for HEPA filters for both retention and wear qualities. I digress.
The A4. All I can say is my Dad is not the target demographic for that car. Edmunds.com describes Audi A4 owners as keen drivers. Now I looked up "keen" in The America Heritage Dictionary on one of the Internets and keen means: "Having or marked by intellectual quickness and acuity." Ahem, no way I am going into a debate on the inaccuracy of this as it applies to my Dad as it may be hereditary. Moving on.
My Dad also likes to read information and obtain important data to verify his investments about his possessions. Given the bug in his brain's relational SW code (which everyone has to some extent) my Dad often mismatches his data and his assets. For instance once he told me a start-up he was working on had an antennae technology that retained five times its weight in metal.
So it was with great pride on my last ride (he's not dead I just won't get in the car with him anymore) that my Dad explained the history of the parts of the car, the car and the overall driving experience.
"Well guy, the manual transmission was invented by Manual Transmi for Pope Porsche III in the 3rd century. The design was ingenious for the times and it is fair to say only a Polish/German engineer could do it. Da Vinci missed this one by a, huh huh, kilometer. To accomplish his inventive mechanism Manual daisy chained four serfs who had variable foot speed in an "H" pattern. His goal, and son goals are the key to getting somewhere in life, was to better haul the plague ridden corpses of his fellow countrymen and women to the pyre piles on the town side of the moat. He used a cat-o-nine tails as rudimentary gear shift lever."
It was here I saw one of those really hot Boulder, CO chicks running and my mind drifted
He further explained that, "The "feel" of the car or cart (here he chuckled at his cleverness) was evident from an engineering standpoint when you shifted at the optimal moment to make sure you maintained the RPM band of best performance."
Personally I think their early stuff like Murmur was their best but I really wasn't paying attention.
So we set out on what I knew would be a 15 minute drive to downtown Boulder for dinner all the while knowing my Dad's driving rage was as close as explosive diarrhea following a Mexican holiday where copious amounts of Mexican food were ingested followed by tequila cocktails and consuming Viagra like popcorn.
The left turn out of his cloned housing hood where the taupe siding screamed off of every domicile like avocado did on early 70s appliances was without incident. He then approached the swanky Boulder Country Club or BCC as it is known. It was here another septuagenarian pulled out in front of him just enough to slow my Dad from his speed of 20 MPH to about 15 MPH. Like mental Montezuma's revenge there emerged a leak in the dam.
"C'mon! Son of Bitch. C'mon! What the hell is this guy doing! Damn It!"
"He's doing twenty Dad." I said as I mentally went to my happy place.
When we got to the Stop sign before getting on a real road my Dad pulled up close to the offending car's bumper. It seemed he thought the phenomenon of magnetism would force the other car into traffic as he crept closer. Now at 70-some years old his vision was not so great so there was about 20 yards between us and the car in front. In fact as my Dad inched forward in several micro-lurches he had a look of real tailgater satisfaction as I watched a mental movie of NASA driving the Shuttle between our car and the offending vehicle.
A right turn and my Dad was in his element, he shifted with only his palm on the shift knob as if grabbing the shifter was akin to a surgeon using a axe instead of a scalpel. He made a point to splay his fingers out to show it was all in the wrist. He watched the RPM gauge to shift at 3500 RPM about ½ of the redline. The explanation for this was he did not want to wear out the gear box or engine. Prior to making a right about a mile later he signaled somewhere in the middle about a half mile out. When he arrived at the corner he was going into the corner to fast (for him) and the series on convulsions he went through to depress the clutch, downshift, turn, release the clutch (tossing our heads like bobble-head dolls) pound on the gas and swear (no need to write more of those down), execute the turn were disturbing. Like the death to dead-life awakening of any person in the HP Lovecraft inspired movie Re-Animator. After the turn, and I am not making this up, he reached for the turn signal to make sure it was off. He smiled with pride as the car pulled away.
Enter my brother here. He took the same turn at about 25 MPH in my Dad's A4. A 90 degree right in a an A4 is not anything to be concerned about, again I digress.
When we reached the Boulder to Longmont road affectionately called The Diagonal due to the direction the road takes on a map, it got interesting.
He merged at the speed limit a major mistake as most of the Subaru Forresters, Legaci, and Imprezas (the Colorado state cars) went ten to twenty miles an hour over the speed limit.
He swore like, well, like old school Dad swears. One car who was passing him was a son of a bitch who was boxing my Dad in. Another car had to swerve toward Denver as my Dad changed lanes as the other car was almost right next to us. The car honked and vitriol flowed like wine. My Dad made a gesture with his hand that can best be interpreted in 2008 as a talk to the hand gesture. This was followed by the realization he was in the wrong lane to get off the Diagonal and had to get back over. Now that he controlled traffic in the fast lane the right lane was passing him like the aforementioned Mexican food. So he signals to get over, swears, jerks his head like muppet, swears and then checks his mirrors as if not seeing a car means the coast is clear and changes lanes back. More honking, gesturing and swearing.
Parking was interesting as my Dad parallel parks like Steven Segal acts, poorly. I got out of the car and noticed my hands were cold. So I unclenched them and said, "Where we going?"
Dad says. "Right here."
Of course the restaurant was a block over and the restaurant, and according to my Dad must have changed its name (and menu).
Memo to Auto manufacturers: For our parent's sake keep the safety improvements coming.
Word.
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