All the dead raccoons
I saw more dead racoons than I have ever seen live racoons, pictures of racoons, gifs of racoons, racoons featured on book or magazine covers (including Ranger Rick), films or TV shows with raccoon characters, raccoon stickers, references to raccoons in literature and other media, or viral videos of raccoons, combined.
Dozens
and dozens
of dead raccoons.
Maybe pushing three figures.
There were maybe also like three possums and something that looked like someone’s dog.
This exists:
I’ve changed my mind about self-driving cars
I haven’t owned a car since 2012, and that car was oldish. I also don’t consume any media or even interact with many humans, so I am out of touch with the world in a way that is possibly unimaginable to normal people. What I’m about to discuss is undoubtedly common stuff that’s been standard issue for ages now. Please enjoy my childlike wonder as I interact with the future.
I was a veryvery late adopter of cruise control, something I probably only discovered as a result of twiddling with shit out of boredom on a long drive. When I twiddled with the cruise control on the rental car on this trip, it made some sort of noise about radar something, which I did not want since I had no clue what it meant, but it didn’t seem turn-off-able and reading the text screen between the speedometer and odometer while doing 70 was a struggle without my reading glasses, so I stopped twiddling and let it do its thing.
As we approached another car going slower than we were, I got ready to do the driving again like I did last time I used cruise control—braking, reaccelerating, changing lanes, etc. But I never got the chance.
Apparently the radar DOES ALL THE THINKING FOR YOU (wrt braking and accelerating but not steering). It maintains the appropriate distance. It brakes. It accelerates. You tell it what speed you’d like to maintain and it does the thing. If you’ve set it for 80 and you approach someone doing 65, it stays at the appropriate distance behind that car at 65 unless you take it into another lane, where it will accelerate back up to 80 if conditions allow. If the person doing 65 speeds up, you speed up. If they exit, you speed up to 80 again (if conditions allow).
Look, ma, no feet.
Here’s what I would never have anticipated: I had zero (0) stress, irritation, angst, aggression, sense of urgency, or any other negative thoughts or feelings when we met traffic or reduced speed areas or some other reason to slow down. Taking me out of the braking/speed-maintaining equation took all my attachment to speed away. I would sometimes have to remind myself to compare the speed limit with our speed and the conditions and be like Hey, maybe change lanes and get in front of the slow person because we’re in a terrible rush and a difference of 15 mph adds up over 40 hours.
It also maintained the approriate safe distance. I did not have to count or think or pay attention to that. I also did not accidentally or accidentally-on-purpose or passive-aggressively or aggressively creep closer and closer to a slow person to perhaps suggest to them that they might consider moving one or more lanes to the right because they were not currently overtaking anyone and therefore did not need to be occupying a left-er lane and thus preventing their fasters from making progress as efficiently as they would like and that their antisocial behaviour was not appreciated. Nor was I tempted to while the radar-cruise-control thing was doing the thinking/accelerating/braking.*
I can’t say this in a way that conveys the strength of my feelings about this: THIS IS SO MUCH SAFER ON SO MANY LEVELS.
I love driving. I love the engaged feeling of driving manual transmission cars. I hate automatic transmissions guessing wrong about what they should be doing because they can’t see or anticipate or know what the car is carrying or towing or any of many other things that might go into deciding what gear to be in. I go out of my way to buy manual transmission cars (they are rare in the US and sales people have been agressive with me in the past to try to steer me away from them). I like the control. I don’t like having things think for me—not Word, not WordPress (ironically, their orthography is autocorrecting even though I have all autocorrection/replacement/spelling shit turned off—I did not capitalize that P), not my phone or computer or tablet or doctor or anything. It enrages me. It very, very enrages me. I would have bet my life that I would hate anything like this. I’m glad I did not.
My cat is a prince among men
He was mellow in the car. He walked nicely at rest areas and outside fast food places just off the highway. He behaved well at hotels. (He loves hotels, as it happens—my concern nowadays is that he will love them a little too hard, since he expresses his love—for people, for objects, for life—with all of his pointy parts in full jazz hands mode, and sharp pointy enthusiastic blissed-out hugs can leave holes sometimes.) He handled all 4 long driving days well, but on the most longest one—which had, incidentally, lacked a comfort break for him—he was quite good about having a 10-minute in-car break where he could walk around outside the kennel thing, and he responded appropriately when directed to the litter box at that time.
I like cereal
As I may have mentioned above, I love driving. I love driving long distances with my offspring. We had a long way to go, and a short time to get there, so we didn’t get to pootle and see cool shit like Iowa’s largest frying pan or Mount Fucking Rushmore, which is a srs bummer. So I want to find or make a way to do this more but better.
*(I tell you whut, though — maintaining the appropriate distance sure as hell does stress out aggressive drivers behind you.)
psychopamplemousse 