Ascending the stairs with his basketball, never to be seen again...

The Johnstown Flood dam was also a private dam at a hunting lodge.

The outstanding book “Packing for Mars” by Mary Roach describes a lot of these experiments, many done by the Soviets, and the results are...not good (but still often hilarious). Turns out the hardest part of going to Mars is not the space stuff, it’s the human inability to tolerate others in a tiny cube/sphere for…

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I think an increase in telecommuting will have an inverse effect on people moving to cities. They will no longer need to live in crowded, expensive sometimes-hell-holes, close to high paying jobs, but can instead live in small towns and the country for 1/3 the cost of equivalent housing. And have a yard and a pool and…

Oh, I don’t know, maybe on the grounds of FREEDOM!, you commie.

Seriously. I always slide my wheels under the car when it’s on stands or the hydro jack, even if I’m not under it (and if I’m fully under it hopefully it’s on the ramps). Better to smash those $300 wheels than the suspension, brakes, or my skull.

Concur. I decided to “commit” to them years ago for all my rental car needs, which is mostly work travel, to build up loyalty points. I fly a lot to CLT and it’s always been seamless there. Rented at LAX for personal travel last year and yeah, it took a bit, but an extra 10 minutes is no big deal. My last 2 rentals…

Since you asked, it would be 191 mile/hr X 24hr/day X 14day/fortnight X 8 furlong/mile = 513,408 furlongs/fortnight.

It would seem so, but Tom identifies at least two situations where maybe they could sell below invoice and still make money - dealer incentives for certain models and monthly sales goal bonuses. I think this is a large part of car buying frustration, it’s hard to tell if you got a good deal because prices are all over…

Yeah, my local VW, where I bought the car, is a bunch of tightwads for sure. My GTI had a slight wander when I got it, so 2 weeks in I had them check the alignment. All 4 corners were on the bare edge of acceptance, and one corner was out of tolerance by like 0.01 degree and was red on the report. They were like, it’s…

I hope you do take a look. Our 2012 TDI wagon was flawless through 6 years and 143,000 miles until they bought it back. My 2016 GTI has been bulletproof through 66,000 miles and probably 20 autocross and track days. VW interiors are very, very nice. And their infotainment is seamless, CarPlay works so well. My wife’s…

Liquor stores are closed in PA.  I had to pop down to MD for a day work trip, and used the chance to restock my whiskey supplies.  Most I’ve driven in 8 weeks.

Right, makes a point to say it will pass smog...but here in PA it would not pass inspection without a speedometer so it’s still useless as-is. That, and the missing rear, just scream red flags.

Classic scene.

If I hold my electric drill tight, so it won’t rotate, I can feel that as I need to resist it turning. The drill is at zero RPM, yet I can still feel it.

Pilot here. Currency requires a certain number of landings every 90 days. One could easily drive to their hangar, pull their plane out, and fly around with never having encountered another person. Even if he needed it fueled he could easily have kept his distance, or done it himself.

Thank you for this series of stories David, excellent! I’m a civil engineer who always loved cars, but ended up focusing on aviation. I too got into UVA, but attended Lehigh, and then VT for grad school. Spent a lot of time at Cornell though as my best friend went there.

My aunt has been doing Great Dane rescues for years. People get them and cannot handle them, so there are a lot of orphans out there sadly. They only live 6 to 9 years, so she has been through of lot of them in 20 years. At any given time she has 3 or 4 in the house and they all get along, like tiny horses bounding…