No denial going on there...!
Driving to work the other day, I see a SUV in front of me displaying a personalized license plate saying:
I EETGAS
LOLOL! No denial going on there…!
Awhile back - when gasoline prices in SoCal were around $3.50 per gallon – I had just parked at the grocery store when the most ginormous SUV I’d ever seen, outside of a Hummer, parked right next to me. It sparkled and gleamed in the sunlight.
A woman got out, looked at my car – a 1973 VW Bug which was in desperate need of washing – sighed, glanced at her vehicle with a pained expression, looked back at me and said wistfully, “I bet you’re really happy you have that car.”
I replied, “Yes. I am.”
(And yes, I am truly eccentric to be driving a car that is older than many people I have worked with…! I said for many years to many people (who unkindly inquired "when are you going to get rid of that junker?"*) that I was working on an antique car. And, as of a couple of years ago, I achieved my goal.
* - The attitude of people in the 1980s toward my car was: "When are you going to get rid of that junker?"
* - The attitude in the 1990s was, "Ah, nostalgia! I used to have one of those!"
* - The attitude now is... I'm not entirely sure, exactly. But there are still plenty of these cars around. Here's a link to Bugstock, an event I attended for a couple of years.
http://www.hotrodhotline.com/feature/2003show/03bugvw/index.php
I EETGAS
LOLOL! No denial going on there…!
Awhile back - when gasoline prices in SoCal were around $3.50 per gallon – I had just parked at the grocery store when the most ginormous SUV I’d ever seen, outside of a Hummer, parked right next to me. It sparkled and gleamed in the sunlight.
A woman got out, looked at my car – a 1973 VW Bug which was in desperate need of washing – sighed, glanced at her vehicle with a pained expression, looked back at me and said wistfully, “I bet you’re really happy you have that car.”
I replied, “Yes. I am.”
(And yes, I am truly eccentric to be driving a car that is older than many people I have worked with…! I said for many years to many people (who unkindly inquired "when are you going to get rid of that junker?"*) that I was working on an antique car. And, as of a couple of years ago, I achieved my goal.
* - The attitude of people in the 1980s toward my car was: "When are you going to get rid of that junker?"
* - The attitude in the 1990s was, "Ah, nostalgia! I used to have one of those!"
* - The attitude now is... I'm not entirely sure, exactly. But there are still plenty of these cars around. Here's a link to Bugstock, an event I attended for a couple of years.
http://www.hotrodhotline.com/feature/2003show/03bugvw/index.php
Now, my brother and I *never* played Slug Bug as a kid, as we were always riding in one. (My dad bought a bright orange VW bug in 1957; I've pretty much spent my whole life in these cars.) Don't worry, though - my brother and I always found plenty of reasons to sock each other...!
$3.50 a gallon for gas?
When I were a lad, petrol was £3.41 a gallon.
No, you idiot, that's the price now!
$6.47 dollars?
No wonder my dad couldn't afford an SUV.
My dad couldn't even afford a VW Bug
Think yourself lucky, we couldn't even afford to eat bugs, we had to go and get our own caterpillars.
(Although it may seem odd, I'm actually glad our gas is so expensive. It's fuelled a drive towards fuel-efficient cars. I wish more Americans drove cars like yours. You're scoring a Brownie Point for your country there.)
Then again, with President Gore in Virtual America, gas is down to .19 a gallon and we're having to bail out the gas companies. He does this in that his insistence on making cars run on trash led to the problem. lol
(Explained at link): http://movies.crooksandliars.com/SNL-Al-Gore-5-14-06.wmv
ROTFL!!!!!! Stop, you're killing me! *snort*
>>>(Although it may seem odd, I'm actually glad our gas is so expensive. It's fuelled a drive towards fuel-efficient cars. I wish more Americans drove cars like yours. You're scoring a Brownie Point for your country there.)
I love my bug(s). I've had four of them over the year. Two of them were wrecked in accidents; otherwise, I would only have had two. And the first one, technically, wasn't mine. It belonged to my father, and he gave it to me while I was in college, with the understanding that I would give it to my brother when I got out of college. Which is exactly what happened.
Back when my dad gave me my first bug (he'd bought his first bug in 1957), I loved it because it was cute, and cool, and everyone had them at the college I attended.
It quickly occurred to me that I was spending much less for gasoline than other people were paying. I didn't see any reason whatsoever to spend that extra money - I had much better uses for it. And it just seemed wasteful to me. Why use that much gas if you don't need to?
As time went by, I had lots more reasons to be grateful for that car. Replacement parts are cheap, and the work is easily done. Since this is a "cult car", even all these years later, there are plenty of guys who view repairing these cars as not so much a job as a calling.
The only thing that might ever tempt me away from a bug is one of those hybrid cars. I hear that they can go from Los Angeles to Albuquerque on one tank of gas. Amazing!
>>>(Although it may seem odd, I'm actually glad our gas is so expensive. It's fuelled a drive towards fuel-efficient cars.
The first time I visited England, I was worried that the price of gasoline would break my budget. I had three weeks, and planned to see a lot of your country, and so I set aside a lot of money to pay for gas.
Surprisingly enough, I probably would have paid the same amount of money - or even more - if I'd taken a three week trip touring in the US. And that's with taking the lower US gas prices in consideration.
I'd known, intellectually, that England is smaller than California, but what I hadn't realized is how very close together your communities are, and that, because of your rich history, there are so many things to see and do within a relatively small area.
I had much the same experience the first time I visited the east coast of the US. That was as much a culture shock to me as actually visiting a different country. The population distribution "back east" seems to mirror that of England, and there's lots to see and do along the Atlantic coast, as well.
I grew up in the rural west; I'm used to there being 100 - 200 - or more - miles between major population centers. And that's lots of miles of empty desert, for the most part. Visiting places where this isn't the case is a real revelation.
That said, Larry and I still tool around in a highly efficient light truck while Ben just entered the realms of SUV ownership (long story) and looks at our little truck and sighs heavily.
LOL! Little blue bugs certainly are my trademark.
>>>That said, Larry and I still tool around in a highly efficient light truck while Ben just entered the realms of SUV ownership (long story) and looks at our little truck and sighs heavily.
Whatchya gonna do? I still can't quite figure out the point of having such a heavy vehicle for suburban use. I used to ride around in four-wheel-drive vehicles (on unimproved roads) in Arizona, but having something like that to drive the kids to school or go to the grocery store seems to me to be like using the proverbial cannon to shoot a gnat.
I do know one woman who definitely *needed* a large vehicle. Very sad story; her sister passed away and she suddenly had custody of three young children, in addition to her own three kids. So she went out and got a large capacity SUV.
But for most instances of kids & stuff, what's wrong with the boring old station wagon? (I guess it's the "boring" part that's wrong with that equation.)