By Charlie Houston

There’s a lot going on in the county, most of it bad, so I’m taking a break from my usual topics. I’ll ramble a bit and start with automobiles.

Convertibles

If your hair is turning gray, don’t buy a convertible. People will note your hair and say, “Look at that old guy, trying to sport around and look younger.”

Over the years, I’ve owned five convertibles but gave up my last one in 2002. 

Horsepower

In most cases, prodigious horsepower is illogical but intoxicating. There’s a certain, guttural thrill when you press the accelerator of a powerful car, especially when you’re passing somebody in an Escalade. 

It simply feels good to know that you command great power. But how can you really use it?

On public roads, mega horsepower can quickly get you into mega trouble with the police. (That happened to me about ten years ago.) Great power also can bring grave consequences. Some years ago, some idiot parents thought a new McLaren would make a perfect eighteenth birthday present for their idiot son. 

The staff at the McLaren dealership in Sterling were cautious. They sold the kid a five- or six-hundred-horsepower rocket but insisted on giving the boy a two-hour lesson on how to drive the car safely. Heading home, the young lout totaled the car. 

Great amounts of horsepower are fun on a racetrack, and usually safe if the driver has been trained appropriately. Oddly, though, on trackdays Miata drivers are given more respect than yabbos in Corvettes. (Miata drivers focus on their driving skills, which encompass much more than horsepower.)

Fast Cars as Bragging Rights

Imagine this scene. Four forty-ish men in bespoke suits are sitting around a restaurant table on K Street. Perhaps they are lawyers or lobbyists and make more money than they deserve. One tosses his BMW key fob onto the table and smirks. The man to his right trumps him with a Mercedes key, saying, “AMG model, 805 horsepower.” A third man tosses a Porsche fob on top of those two. “Turbo S convertible, zero-to-sixty in 2.4 seconds.” The last man wins when he tosses his McLaren key fob onto the pile: “750S, top speed of 206 mph.”

I’d be happy with any of those cars and would take the McLaren and the Porsche to the track. Otherwise, the car would be hidden in our garage, not driven around to show off as these imaginary men would do.

Proper Driving

I’ve complained before about passive-aggressive drivers who park themselves in the fast lane, drive at exactly the speed limit, and thereby purposefully force a train of cars to stack up behind them. It’s rude. It’s unsafe.

Oddly, I think assertive driving can be fine and fun if the driver is competent and polite. Being decisive is also important. On-ramps make this clear. You need to exit the ramp close to the pace of oncoming traffic. That’s safe. I see too many drivers slow down to, say, forty miles per hour on the ramp. That creates a major problem for them: How do they then merge into fast-moving traffic when they’re much slower?

It’s easy to tell if the driver ahead of you is—or is not—competent: He or she rides their brakes forever at every hill, every curve. It shows that they are tentative and unsure. Failing to use turn signals at every turn or lane change greatly increases their chance of being rear-ended.

If—when—some other driver barges in front of you or does something bad, do not make eye contact or flip him off. Distract yourself by thinking of a puppy or ice cream.

Men’s Facial Hair

If your hair is blonde, gray, or silver, don’t try to grow a beard, and perhaps not even a mustache.

During most of my life, beards were rarely seen; mustaches were a little bit less unusual. In most instances, they were both neatly trimmed. Not so today. It’s common to see unshaven necks, which look ridiculous. 

I see the merit in not shaving daily, but please, please at least shave your neck. 

It’s not unusual to see someone with a mountain-man beard, where the goal is to grow it as long as possible. That worked for Rip Van Winkle, but it won’t work for you.

Russia Started It

“It” being the rotten state of college football today. 

Hark back to the Olympic Games of the late twentieth century. Russia and its allies were also correctly accused of paying their athletes. 

While we fought that payment practice, we eventually gave up at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics when the US featured the “Dream Team” of NBA stars. So much for amateur sports at that level. At least college football remained pure. Except it wasn’t. Many star players drove around in fancy cars their families could not afford. For instance, Georgia’s quarterback Carson Beck drove around in a Lamborghini, presumably thanks to a wealthy alumnus.

Nowadays, collegians can freely transfer from one school to another and whore themselves out to whatever school pays them the most. Broadcast announcers now speak of players this way: “Running back Jones, now starting for LSU, a transfer from UCLA and before that, Pittsburgh.” 

Perhaps the announcers could dig a little and change the introduction to “Running back Jones, now starting for LSU after receiving four million dollars …”

Charlie Houston and his wife live on a small, historic horse farm below Waterford. He once hit 165 mph at the Summit Point Racetrack. He didn’t crash.