So Fresh And So Clean (Clean)

...aaahhh.

I took my PE exam yesterday and Friday, and I'm feeling nice and relaxed now that it's all behind me. I can look forward my weekends now being filled with skiing and hiking and all the fun things that do not involve sitting in a room studying all day. It's going to be good.

I celebrated today with one of my favorite Sunday-afternoon activities, washing my car. I'm the sort of person who is zealously protective of my car, and hates the thought of anyone else touching it -- be they valet, gas-station attendant, or car wash towel-guy. The end result is that every so often, I'll roll down to the self-serve car wash, get lil' Oki all clean with my foaming brush skills, and then spend the next hour or so waxing her to a perfect shine. I'm not someone who normally takes cleanliness so anally -- my approach to vacuuming stretches the definition of "clean" to it's limit -- but when it comes to my car, it has to be perfect. I'll buff in that wax until my arms fall off, and then I'll pace around the car, making sure that it shines from every angle. The goal is a car-shaped hunk of obsidian glass, and when I can achieve that it feels wonderful.

Then I'll drive home to my apartment, where furniture is dusty, carpets are shedding, and sinks are full of dirty dishes. But my car shines.

*A Diversion*

I was perusing the boards at Fark earlier today, and apparently Carboyte UK has committed yet another crime against automotive good taste with their SmartCar limo. I can't develop the same righteous rage against this as I could for their stretch Ferrari, but it did get me thinking: what's the point of having a SmartCar?

Here's how I see it: the SmartCar is very small, which gives it the advantage of being easy to park in congested urban locations. But unless you're Dr. Who, you're not going to manage to have more space inside than the total size of your car, and so the SmartCar can only seat two (somewhat cramped) people with limited luggage space. If you really cared about parking in tiny spaces that much, you could fit the same two people and their small bags on a motorcycle or moped. But a motorcycle isn't all that safe in a collision, whereas the SmartCar is. Well...relatively, at least. Mercedes has crammed in every bit of safety equipment they can, but it's hard to beat basic physics: larger cars have larger crumple zones, and can better dissipate the energy of a collision before it slams your body around inside the car. The SmartCar gets good gas mileage because of it's small size, but in order to give it enough power to get out of its own way, the engine requires premium fuel. It also has to push around the weight of all that safety equipment, so the mileage drops to roughly what you'd get in a Honda Civic. Except that the SmartCar is more expensive. And has poorer performance. And can't fit as much stuff inside. And looks pretty silly.

So in the end, you have a car that was designed to park in small spaces, and then was filled with a whole suite of safety and performance equipment to compensate for it's awkwardly small, boxy shape. So I guess the SmartCar is the car for you if you don't like looking for a parking space, but you want something safer than a motorcycle that won't get you wet if it rains, and you don't want to pay extra for a parking space, but you will pay more for the car and for the gas to get there, and you want good fuel economy, but you'll lug around so much safety equipment that you have no storage space, and most importantly you don't want to have to use public transit FOR ANY REASON WHATSOEVER.

Would it kill people to park their car on the outskirts of a city and use the bus/subway system, and you know, maybe...walk sometimes?

Oh well.

Time for some dinner.

"I can score you some coke and some Grade One grass, but I can't get a gallon of gas"

-The Kinks