Uncle Biek

Right. I think that after I finish this post I’ll probably have enough material to publish a small book on the things I don’t like about the other people using the same public roads I do. Maybe I’ll need to reserve a ISBN number, just in case …

As it happens I’ve been emailing to a good friend in The States about how sad our winters are nowadays. We hardly ever see any real snow around here anymore. So when it’s finally there it’s looking like that cozy looking white blanket for no more than fifteen minutes or so before melting to a grey mush and causing all kinds of problems.

You can imagine my surprise when I woke up this morning to see that very same white blanket covering the whole of my town. (Not actually my town of course, just the town I live in. I’ve got enough problems of my own so I don’t need the burden of owning a whole town myself ;-)

Because I could go and get my IFO back from the repair service I didn’t need to get up that early. They open at eight so my alarm clock started making weird noises at around seven, which was more than early enough.

But this meant that loads of people had messed up that white blanket before I saw it so I couldn’t take that ‘Happy Xmas, whish you were here’ kind of photo out of my window. Better luck next time I guess.

What I could do was dig out the replacement IFO because that thing was snowed in like you wouldn’t believe. I think that it had a good two and a half inches of snow on it which for our standards is about half the stock for the entire winter ;-) And then, right after I cleaned the IFO and started it’s engine, the misery started good.

What is it with people, their cars and slowing down like crazy as soon as anything other than rays of sunlight fall from the sky. I mean come on, it’s (usually) only water in whatever form and most people I encounter on my way to work (as in the ones before me of course) have major problems driving normally when they don’t have dry asphalt under their tires.

Even when it’s ‘just’ raining people tend to slow down for reasons I can’t understand. And I’m not minding people actually keeping to the speed limits because to each his own and just because I seem to be in a permanent state of hurrying it doesn’t mean that other people need to move over and let me through. Would be nice if they did, but that’s a different story.

However what does get me pretty irritated is people driving seventy three kilometers an hour where there the speed limit is eighty. Or forty six where it’s fifty. Things like that.

Why do just these extra couple of kilometers an hour mean so much to these people that makes them impossible to maintain normal speed? Do their cars become highly unstable or uncontrollable? Are they afraid they can’t brake in time anymore? What is it? For the love of me I can’t figure out what could possibly the reason for not keeping to the speed limit.

You know why there are so many road accidents when it’s raining a bit more than usually or, like today, when it has just snowed a bit and the roads are wet? It’s because people slow down, that’s why. People must realize that when they slow down other people behind them need to slow down more. The one behind that one even more, and so on.

I believe that we’ve now come to a time where during rush hour the roads are too crowded to have room for all this slowing down. When one part of the drivers just doesn’t care it’s raining and wants to keep on driving like they normally do and another part wants to play it extra safe and slow down a bit the result is a mess. Not necessarily accidents but there will be at least a longer traffic jam and yes, in worst case scenario, accidents will happen.

Even though in my humble opinion Identity, starring John Cusack among others, is a pretty good movie, the topic and this post is (again) all about cars :-)

While I was driving to work this morning in that ‘new and improved’ IFO I now have temporarily, while the repair service is getting the flowers from the hood of mine, I couldn’t help realizing that more and more cars are looking alike these days.

In the past when you saw two huge rectangular light units with two little in the top corners ones besides them you knew that you were being chased around (sure, sure *grin*) by a Volvo two-forty model car. Just about each and every car had it’s own distinctive look and ’smile’ if you will.

When I look in the mirror now I more often see two small round lights that could have come from the new VW Golf, or Mazda series, or Toyota, or … etc. And it’s not just the lights of course, cars themselves are loosing their identity’s on a number of points.

Of course I understand that this has (a lot) to do with safety and efficiency issues and stuff but I think it’s sad that all manufacturers seem to have the same ‘make new car wizard’ running on their expensive design computers and that way are loosing their unique face a bit.

And I think that’s a shame really. I remember that during holidays I sat in the back seat of the car, keeping note of all cars and models passing by. I could do that for hours on end. When my little niece Eva is old enough to play such a game all she’ll be able to do is note their colors …

You know, somehow that just doesn’t sound like that much fun.

It’s a good thing I talked about the IFO when I was visiting my mom last night because there might have been a slight chance of me forgetting all about bringing it for repairs this morning.

At some point during our conversation the IFO’s repair date came up, the twenty second, at which point my mom said ‘oh, that’s tomorrow’ leaving me pretty surprised to say the least.

Yeah thinking it over I’m pretty sure that the only thing that could have made me remember would have been the reminder in my pocket PC but that’s by no means a guarantee that things actually do work out.

So this morning I was nicely on time at the repair service and in return I got a same model IFO only in the newest model available. Nice car, very nice even. The handling is quite a lot better than my own IFO and that one isn’t behaving like some lorry at all. So I was happy to find out that this one is steering even sharper than my usual one when I put it through it’s paces a bit.

Note to myself: do not try this stuff with your own IFO when it’s finished ;-)

I wouldn’t have mind if the weekend had started a couple of days earlier this week but I’m glad it did just now anyway of course. This was a long week and all I’m going to do right now is relax.

One thing that that I want to do is the finish the GPRT ADVAN Viper GTS-R Bas and I need for our own Thursday competition evenings so that’s high on the priority list this weekend. Besides this I think that I’m not going to be doing much else. Just the normal average weekend stuff :-)

‘If Michael Schumacher had groove-less slicks like these under his Ferrari the past season that Spaniard wouldn’t have had a chance’. That’s what the mechanic at the garage told me when I brought the IFO over for tire replacement this morning.

And though a bit cynical, he is right of course, I’ve been pushing this forward a bit too long. When the IFO was there for the routine servicing it had about thirty eight thousand kilometers on the counter and then the mechanic told me the front tires were still okay, but needed to be changed within about six to seven thousand kilometers.

When I finally brought the IFO in it said fifty four thousand or so kilometers so one could say that it was about bl*** time I got the new tires on. And fair is fair, the IFO does drive nicer now. It’s no longer pulling a bit to the right anymore and the little wobbly thing it does when passing a hundred and fifty (which I of course never, ever, do ;-) is gone too.

And my acceleration when exiting corners has improved quite a lot, specially with these wet and today even a little frosty circumstances. The tires now hug the road like they used to so I can drive it the way I like to again.