I thought I had a lot of specific stuff to report, but I'm only coming up with a few things. Over the weekend Tim, Kat, Albert and I went to my friends Sam and Jenny's wedding. Some of you will recall that I left my camera at the last wedding I attended, so I don't have any pix, but the ceremony was lovely, the reception was great (and informative, as we all found out some amusing details about Sam's high school days), and the afterparty, soaked in 16 flavors of Rogue, was super.
I did some driving around to clear the head and grind the rust off the brakes, and wound up out in the suburbs for a cookout and (as it happened) to help give one Rocket J. Dog an entirely-unappreciated (by him) bath.
I took the long way home in the evening, and after a similarly frivolous top-down errand this evening, some things came into focus in new ways:
No night is too muggy for wind-in-the-hair motoring. No matter how hot the day is, by 9 or 10 PM, the weather (and traffic) is totally perfect for tooling around. Can't sleep because it's 81° in your apartment at 1AM? Go for a drive. Etc.
Convertibles make everyone think you want to talk to them. This is rarely the case, in my experience. There are exceptions, of course. The occasional "nice car" is harmless and welcome, and the brief exchange I had last night with the guy in the awe-inspiring '64 Galaxie 500 convertible was facilitated by having our respective roofs down. Convertibles are also great for spotting The Ladies, on account of there being no blindspots when the roof is down. (As The Robots have been known to say: "HEL-loooo!") But they also attract attention from clowns and weirdos, like those 2 lunkheads in a muffler-less 4-cylinder Ford pickup (sorry I didn't keep racing you guys, but I really don't have anything to prove to potheads in pickups, and running red lights isn't cool), or the club girls in a Maxima shouting "FATE! IT'S FATE! YOU KNOW YOU THINK WE'RE SEXY! IT'S FATE!" Um....yeah.
(By the same token, I realize that being cute probably attracts attention from clowns and weirdos too, but...)
There's also the matter of yelling at traffic, as I'm known to do. When the roof is down, other people hear you....
So, they're not really great cars for urban Shy Persons. (Urbane shy persons probably handle things better.) But, to cite one relevant example, those muggy middle of the night rides make it all ok.
Separately, if you're a law-student honky in a polo shirt, and you're flossin' a slammed G35 coupe with 20" polished rims, you really should ditch the HLS baseball cap.
Now, I know I'm a honky, and I myself am flossin' 17" polished rims (which look as blinged-out on my little car as those dubs did on that G35--it's all about the proportions).
But I'd never go to law school.