Tag Archives: car

How MythBusters Saved Our Marriage

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Sarah and I rarely argue.  It’s one of the many awesome things about our relationship.  When we do argue however, it usually involves something like moving furniture, assembling furniture, and/or the laws of physics/gravity/thermodynamics.

I don’t even remember the origins of this particular argument, but somehow or another I began talking about the greatness of Knight Rider.  Don’t get  me wrong, I’m not saying that Knight Rider is the be-all-end-all of 80′s action television, (that honor belongs to the A-Team,) but who can deny the beauty of a black Pontiac Trans Am with a nifty red light bobbing back and forth on the front end?!

At any rate, we began discussing whether or not it was physically possible to drive a car up onto a semi-trailer while in motion on the freeway.  While I won’t divulge the specific nature of the arguments for or against, let’s just say I was adamant in my belief that it was  possible, that KITT roaring up onto the trailer was not just some 80′s television special effect.  Sarah doubted my belief (along with my taste in action television).

We argued the physics of it to no avail and for many months could not speak of it without the underlying tension rearing its ugly head. What were we to do short of actually locating a semi-truck and persuading its swarthy driver to let us send our modest sedan careening toward it at high speeds?  The debate remained unsettled.

I remained a believer, Sarah the apostate.

Last night I located this clip provided by the miracle men of MythBusters:

Thank you MythBusters.  You saved my marriage.

- zack -

On Being Easy

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I can’t believe I even thought about getting a car that wasn’t a Jetta.

I have loved Jettas for as long as I have been aware of cars.  Perhaps it’s the average, middle-class white girl in me.  Or perhaps I really have a taste for sophisticated German engineering.  Or maybe it’s just that the Drivers Wanted commercials brainwashed me (and the rest of my generation).  I don’t know why, but I do know that it’s true.  I appreciate the whole spectrum of them, from the ’80s to the 2000s.

When Zack and I found out on Thursday that my car had been deemed “a total loss,” he nearly immediately asked me what kind of car I wanted to replace it with.  ”Do you want another Jetta? Another diesel?” he asked while I was still at school.  Zack is a prize-winning internet searcher; I could see him in my mind’s eye, fingers impatiently tapping on the keyboard as he waited for me to list out some demands.  I hemmed and hawed around, not able to give him any specific parameters.  I said that I wanted another something small, something from a company that wasn’t circling around the proverbial drain, waiting to go under.  I wasn’t absolutely needing another Jetta, I said.  I would think about it some more, though.

Friday night, Zack showed me that he knew better than that.  I found him in the office, 3,000 tabs open on the firefox browser, all of them with Jettas for sale in the DFW that he thought I might be interested in.  I totally fought it at first.  I didn’t want to be pigeon-holed like that.  I mean, sure I like Jettas, but do I want to be The Jetta Girl?  We found a few that we both really liked, including one that was The Jetta. It is Everything I Loved About My Jetta + Everything I Ever Wanted In A Jetta That Mine Didn’t Have (except an iPod jack, which sadly I still don’t have).  I decided I’d call on them the next morning, and went to bed.

That morning I still wasn’t convinced that I needed another Jetta.  I spent the better part of an hour surfing around, looking at some 2-door Accords before I finally called to confirm that The Jetta was still hanging around.  I went to the dealership, went for a test drive, and man.  As soon as I felt the rumble of that diesel engine beneath my hands, I knew that I was sold again.  I said to the car salesman, “God I am so happy that my husband knows me better than I know myself,” as I eased on the gas and let out the clutch.  The car salesman just smiled, cause us VW people?  We’re such easy sells.