AAA. Worth every cent the first time you call for roadside assistance.

The fries are just fries. You know that, right? Potatoes, cut up, dropped into hot oil, add salt. They’re what fries are supposed to taste like, but too many of us are conditioned to prefer mashed potatoes formed into fry shapes and the taste of the added chemicals needed to hold them together in fry shapes. Yum.

One thing practically always missed is rust. This show is set in Indiana, and a ten-year-old car should be showing signs of rust around the fenders, the rear quarter panels, running boards, and so on. This would be especially true of cars owned by, “just regular folk.” After all, salt was and remains the anti-icing…

Too much money. Owned a Yugo because it’s what I could afford. I got lucky in that it was built mid-week by relatively sober Zastava workers. The worst thing about it was that it required a 4.5 liters of oil which is only sold in quarts, so there was always a partially-full can of oil hanging around. Unless someone…

Given that autopilot is crashing cars on open highways, we are a long, long way away from a semi backing itself into a loading dock. There’s a whole lot more to driving a truck than, “signing paperwork.”

Or, just drive north on I-5 into Oregon to be treated to the sight of caravans of big rigs crawling up the mountains at perhaps 30-40 mph. Dragging up to 80,000 pounds up an approximate 4 percent grade (what the Interstate system is mostly at) takes huge amounts of torque and it usually doesn’t happen at high speeds.…

Except that they are estimating only 250 miles of range. Less than half of what a diesel truck can currently accomplish with good conditions and within time-of-service regulations.

That, “half a car height,” exists because the trailers are loaded and unloaded at ... wait for it ... loading docks. These are at a mostly uniform height.

250 miles? As an average, sure. But, given that on any given day there are thousands of trucks carrying cargo coast-to-coast and all points in between, and that the only way this becomes truly cost-effective is that drivers can easily cover 500 or more miles a day, every day, a range that is only half of that makes…

Then, you’re no longer in San Diego, but El Cajon and beyond ...

The short answer is ageism. Nobody, “young,” wants to like anything the, “olds,” like. Sad, really. But, common enough in a world where opinions are formed as quickly as farts with far less research and knowledge. Somebody spouts off about something and instead of applying any relevant personal experience or…

A pickup, of course.

By volume, Starbucks sells more milk than coffee. They’re really a sweetened-dairy store that uses coffee as a flavoring.

You could always switch to decent coffee. Black. Made at home for about 30-40 cents a cup. Even if you pop for the fresh-roasted, really good stuff ... imagine the savings, the freedom ...

Funny how things get coupled in our brains. Coffee and cigarettes weren’t a thing for me until I walked into an AA meeting and I turned into that stereotype of the slightly shaky girl with a coffee in one hand and a cigarette in the other. I had no plan to quit smoking until I came down with the flu, could hardly…

A young woman, a student in an English class referred to something as, “gay.” I reminded her that any term putting down any person or group of persons was not permitted in my classes. She was puzzled. She repeated that she thought something was gay. I asked her what she meant by that. She said, “you know, gay,…

Great idea to include Tom McCahill’s review. He set a standard for auto writers that included very quirky criteria for a car’s desirability. My favorite? How many of his dogs could he fit in a car’s trunk? More dogs meant better car; he was positively in love with 60s-era Caddys and Mercurys based on trunk size.

Lotus Europa-Hemmings

Access covers. You’re welcome.