That’s us, too. It’s the worst when she wants to be dropped off at, say, the front door of the restaurant so I can go park the car wherever I can find a space. She even starts looking around the car, as if she’s trying to find additional tasks to kill surplus time. Meanwhile traffic is backing up behind me.
Married over 33 years, and I love her.
But not for this specifically.
I think of this issue as part of the way technology makes our brains different, almost always in a less compassionate, less aware, more tense direction. It isn’t other people who are making you impatient. It is the car itself, or more specifically, the engine, the speed, the road, everything that is built around a car which has as its sole meaning the idea of moving people from one place to another place at the fastest possible speed congruent with having a reasonable expectation of not dying enroute.
Imagine if everyone was moving at the normal pace of an animal like a donkey or horse – or a human being. Time itself would be shaped differently. You could stop for a few minutes and examine something at your feet. Stand and ponder a sign. Say “lovely day!” to someone sitting on a porch. But once you are encased in a wheeled metal box which doesn’t want to waste one second, the optimal speed of which precludes doing anything at all except guiding it, then you chafe at the slightest impediment to your progress. You have become your car.
I’m sure some need mileage info for work, or taxes to deduct. I don’t care about it at all. I’m in the vehicle I need and I get what I get.
Leaving home, I always start my car to let it warm up. It was 5 degrees Fahrenheit yesterday. Damn right I’m going to warm it up.
Otherwise, I’m get in and go. I would not like to live where you cannot pump your own gas, the pump jockeys can be slow. I’ll do it myself, thank you very much.
Same with getting out, unless I’m responding to a text I got while on the road.
And I thought this thread was about different ways to climb in and out of the car.
…speaking of which, when I got a full size pickup last year I was mystified as to how people get in and out comfortably–it is quite tall, so the standard “swing a leg in and plop down” method for cars doesn’t work. I’m a tall guy, bit it still was uncomfortable. I finally realized the problem was that GMC and Chevrolet trucks don’t come with a grab handle on the driver’s side from the factory. Apparently, folks just grab the steering wheel to pull themselves in.
I did some research and found that there is an OEM grab handle available for about 50 bucks–I installed one of those and never looked back. I hop on the running board, hang on to the grab handle, and swing myself on in.
Both my wife and I are “get in and go” kinds of folks. We resonate well. She is in just as much a hurry as I am. Some years back when she drove my VW GTI occasionally, I asked her “say, have you ever tried it in Sport mode?” to which she looked at me funny and said “Why wouldn’t I?”
The gas log used by @puzzlegal reminds me of my parents. They both had little spiral-bound notebooks, like cops use, and diligently wrote their miles and gallons back in the Seventies. I couldn’t understand why anyone would do this, but it is interesting knowing they weren’t the only ones. I believe my mom carried on this tradition until the day she died.
With regards to dilly dallying at the gas station, as long as there is a person in the car actively moving about, I think I can tolerate a minute or so. The cardinal sin is to go inside the little store and do some shopping while your car blocks the pumps.
I’m happy to live in New Jersey, where our gas is pumped for us, so folks do tend to move along.
Ha. I’m 6’3" 220lbs. I own a 4Runner and a Dodge Truck that I only use for plowing my drive way. It can be a trick to get into the truck with the snow and steep drive. The truck has a grab handle on the ‘A’ pillar between the front window and the drivers window.
Well, it had one. I pulled it off getting in.
I just don’t seem to have enough foresight for this. By the time I realize it, it’s too late to make any appreciable different in the short time (it takes about 20 min for our hyrbid to begin to feel warm after idle starting it). I find it quicker just to jump in, be cold for about 10 minutes and then the heat starts to be felt. (A car driving warms up faster than a car idling, at least in my experience and from what I’ve read.) That said, if I just set an alarm at 7 to remind me to start the car for my 7:20-7:30 departure, I may do it, but cold doesn’t bug me.
Yeah, I hear you. I’ve never had a problem forgetting to start it. Living at elevation does that. And, every where I go means high way miles. I hate driving in a coat, so if I don’t warm it, it means I need to pull over somewhere safe to take off my coat.
When vehicles first come out they have all of the bells and whistles on them. As the initial reviews of a new model wanes they start cost reducing what they can out of the vehicle. I’m sure that their marketing research found that the majority of drivers just grab the wheel to enter the vehicle and that the grab handle is an extra, unnecessary item that wouldn’t affect sales if removed. So it makes sense that they already have a OEM grab handle for sale and available, just now they get to make $48 dollars on a $2 part from people that want/need one.
Did they even modify the plastic trim where the grab handle went? Sounds like they didn’t since that would have added cost to the removal and made it more difficult for you to add one later.
Me, too, but i usually just sit in a cold car until it warms up. That being said, i have any attached garage and the house leaks a lot of heat into it, so the inside of me car is rarely below freezing when i get into it.
If I’m going to be out and about in a car, i wear a light jacket, and set the car to stay cool enough that the jacket will be comfortable. If I’m traveling, and worry i might need a warm coat, i toss it into the back seat.
I totally forgot to mention the guy who lived across the street.
He had some kind of muscle car (Mustang, Charger, or something) that had a low throaty exhaust note.
He would get in the car, start it up, and let it idle for five or ten minutes. I never did figure out why he did this–he was either faffing about with his phone and seatbelt for the whole time, or he wanted his precious chariot to properly warm up before leaving.
It was quite annoying because that sub-bass exhaust sound cut through everything and I could hear it from the second it rumbled to life until he finally departed in a loud roar.
I resisted the urge to shout at him “Just get in and go!”. He has since moved, or gotten a different car.
I would expect the cost cutting in a Chevy, but GMC typically has more bells and whistles.
The entire factory A pillar is smooth plastic like any boring sedan. There is an airbag tucked in there, so it just snaps in place. Just pop it off with a trim tool. The replacement part is a whole new trim piece, with bolts and a solid handle in the middle. The threaded holes for the bolts are already there in the frame.
The replacement part is the mirror image of the grab handle you see on the passenger side of a Chevy or GMC.
I suspect they would have put it there if people wanted it. I have enough unnecessary frufru in my truck that it doesn’t seem like a cost cutting measure. It seems like customers just don’t want that grab handle. And if it were purely cost cutting, why would the passenger side come with one?
Are you me?
It’s cost cutting, trust me on that because a huge part of my job is just that, reduce anything you can out of the vehicle after launch that doesn’t affect sales. Every nickel counts, entire teams are devoted to discussing this topic at every car company.
The reason they kept it on the passenger side is because passengers don’t have a wheel to grab onto, so its actually needed and used. Not surprised that the sheetmetal still has holes for the grab handle, its very expensive to modify the sheetmetal on a stamping die that’s being used for production or making a whole new tool.
Ugh. When I was in high school, the guy across the street had a car like this. He would go out before dawn and rev the engine for what felt like half an hour, disturbing my desperately needed teenage morning sleep.
That was the worst, but I have since had neighbors like that. I don’t know why it’s legal to sell loud vehicles when they needn’t be loud.
My husband still does this (picked up the habit from his father). He will move out of the traffic lane to complete that record-keeping (plus entering it in his PDA) if the station is super-busy. I frequently help him with it to speed things up a little.
I’m pretty sure, based on observation, that they’re not usually sold like that. The morons modify them post-purchase (I comfort myself with the thought they’re obviously at least feeling somewhat deficient in masculinity and are over-compensating. Same for brodozers and boom cars).
Well, impound that sh**
I suspect that the law is applied at the officer’s discretion.
In my state it is illegal to have any window tint at all on the driver’s window, passenger’s window, or windshield. I still see dozens of totally blacked out cars in my town.
It’s illegal pretty much everywhere to obfuscate your license plate, but again I see plenty of cars with tinted plastic covers making it hard to read their plate, and skipping the mandatory front plate altogether.
And so it goes. So clearly the police choose their battles and the rest of us grumble
I guarantee that if I put tint on my windows, within the hour I’d be standing at the side of the road scraping it off with a credit card while a state trooper lectured me. That’s just the way things go.
I got a note from my eye doctors years ago to say I needed tinted windows due to cataracts, which is the only way its legal in Michigan. Been waiting 12 years to get pulled over. I suspect this is because I no longer hang out in the areas that they harass people in (like late night bars and inner city hangouts) that I spent my youth in. That and my cars are new, not the 5-10 year old party cars I used to have.
At some point I got old and cops stopped caring about what I was doing. 
My purchased used plow truck had a tinted back window. Plows trucks go in reverse as much as forward. I had my regular back up lights AND LED back up lights. I hated that window and could not see while going in reverse.
I removed that bullshit after the first season of plowing
My local public radio station is in the middle of their fall fund drive, so the phenomenon NPR calls a “driveway moment” is frequently being mentioned. And it reminded me that I have done that on a few occasions. For those unfamiliar with the expression, if I’m in the middle of listening to an interesting story on NPR when I arrive at my destination, I will sit in my car so I can finish listening to the story before I get out.
It’s not just leaving the car. It’s leaving the house, a theater, a restaurant, you name it. Especially leaving the house.
Me: You ready to go?
Her: Five minutes.
Me: Go sit in my chair and open a book or start a crossword puzzle because I know it’s going to be about 20.