Where do you refuse to take your vehicle?
Enthusiasts by definition are people who are “ardently attached to a cause, object, or pursuit” as per Merriam-Webster. But the dictionary goes even further in its descriptive example for the word, as the authors chose a sports-car enthusiast to prove their point. Be it sporty cars, trucky-trucks, recreational vehicles, or something in between, we love our rides. And we know that we shouldn’t take them everywhere they can go.
A non-enthusiast would beg to differ, but we know the truth: Where do you refuse to take your vehicle? Here’s my contribution: car washes!
Well, I will take something to a coin-op car wash and use the sprayer to clean under the hood or to remove caked dirt from an off-road adventure. But any other time? I generally have flashbacks to this video I took of a Porsche getting millions of micro-abrasions from the dry wash it received at a trade show.
The brushes in a car-wash machine can scratch paint, causing a haze in direct sunlight. Places that reuse their water aren’t ideal, either, especially if you live where roads are salted in the winter. Touchless car washes? They can use harsher chemicals and higher-pressure water, either of which may be bad news for an older vehicle with aged paint and weatherstripping. If nothing else, touchless places will strip off a protective coat of wax you may have applied previously.
My solution? Waterless car washes.
Their name is a bit misleading—you need a bucket (or two) of water—but doing a car wash in your garage without a garden hose is quite appealing. A waterless wash is much more work than paying a machine, but mobile detailing services are always readily available if you do a “near-me” Google search.
I’ve gone too far down this particular wormhole. The question remains: Where do you refuse to take your vehicle?
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Gravel roads. Non-negotiable.
Car shows or cars and coffee type settings.
I avoid the following: drive-through car washes, busy parking lots, Quick change oil lube shops, car shows on gravel.
Mikes car 🚘 washes in Ohio are the best no negatives there!
Valet Parking. I don’t want to pay a stranger to screw up my car. I will tip them to stay away or I will park and walk to the event.
Valet LOL. I like walking, back of the lot.
Anywhere with my wife in the car. I’m supposed to enjoy the ride.
…out after dark. You see, I live in the land of giants…giant whitetail deer that is. Imagine hitting a 200lb deer in a cobra roadster or any classic car at 65mph. Umm…no.
The “stealership”, woops meant dealership
Downtown Edmonton. Someone walked on my old Corvette.
A n y w h e r e other than before 8 am weekends, or Stupor Bowl Sunday, when most the nation planted before their TVs.
When alleged car guys whine about the traffic, i ask how many kids do they have, and if they’re vegan. The dopey look underscores no grasp of the dire need to curb overpopulation, which every poll of scientists shows agreeing our biggest by far problem, their words, “bigger than climate,” or that UN and other vetted studies show animals raised for meat and dairy produce more greenhouse gas than all the world’s cars, trucks, buses, trains, planes, ships combined.
Dismiss this as “politics,” pass the buck with us/them palaver, but make no mistake. Until educated, articulate gear heads push Congress to revise our antiquated, agrarian tax code from when more babies meant more hands to work the family farm, half of all children not surviving beyond age four, tax incentives (not mandates) to have “one or none” or adopt,
and we join the world’s leading Formula One driver, Lewis Hamilton, in a plant-based, vegan diet, expect cars to remain the scapegoat for the round up the usual suspects brigade.
Because Hagerty’s an insurance company, might add that ’til people wean themselves from animal and dairy, health insurance public or private will never be affordable.
We can thank the consumer-driven media’s blackout on population due to companies whose business model so weak it requires more customers and cheap labor, overlooking every nation with declining birthrate enjoys higher per capita GDP.
Let the whining and yeah buts begin. But please don’t suggest we move to Broken Wheel, SD or Hobnail, KS because some of us recall driving without military planning vintage cars M-F in greater NYC, the SF Bay Area, and other metropolitan realms even in the ’60s, and ’70s.
Relax man! Kick back and have a burger.
Parking lots for establishments that serve alcohol 🥃 people lose the ability to drive.