Anyone who suggests a Fiat 500 as a city car has never driven one. They’re absolutely a horror to drive in traffic. Massive blind spots that will make you afraid to change lanes.

Yes.

I could see it working in some super-dense European city areas, maybe. Not so much in the US.

Yeah, that’s a good point. I should note the other reason you don’t see skimmers much in the US is a lot of our fires happen in desert areas, where there aren’t many large bodies of water to skim from. Water drops here are more commonly done with helicopters. CALFIRE does lease a few Super Scooopers most years and you…

It’s a demonstration of a dolly-towing system for the Honda Goldwing. The idea is actually clever — the Goldwing can lane-split through traffic (with the dolly folded) to get to a disabled car, then pull it out of the way, in less time than it would take a tow truck to get to it. The dolly has brakes and the maximum…

I thought about that, but by the time he hit the steel decked portion it was already too late. May have contributed to him dumping it, though.

Arco did this for a while, I think, except the cash acceptor was in a separate stand instead of at each pump.

If I want to fully refill the tank on my van, I have to start a second credit card transaction. I understand they can’t do anything about the price, but the fact that they won’t raise their authorized amount really irritates me.

I remember when I saw that for the first time. It seemed like an accident waiting to happen.

I remember that happening once in Saginaw, although it wasn’t free, it was like $0.50/gallon. This was when the going price was about three times that. There was nearly a riot and the police had to be called out to clear traffic.

This reminds me of how I used to get irked at people who would block the station’s only diesel pump and then go inside.

It briefly flirted with $6 here on the central coast, but it’s fallen back to $5.47 last I looked. Of course, there’s always that one station that charges a buck more than everyone else, yet somehow doesn’t go out of business.

A friend who lived in South Carolina had some stories about people evacuating for hurricanes. He said he once saw someone try to fill a styrofoam cooler up with gasoline. I did not see this, but I’m willing to believe someone would try it. He said the stream of gas didn’t even slow down when it hit the bottom of the…

In the U.P. I used to routinely see snowmobiles pull up to the pumps at gas stations. For that area it wasn’t weird, but it occurred to me that it would look pretty peculiar to someone from further south.

Hobby Lobby was just the camel’s nose under the tent in terms of using religious rights to justify discrimination. I don’t know if CFA will take it to the next step but someone of their ilk will. In my view any money I spend there risks being used to fund the next attack on my rights.

My hot take on the Spruce Goose is it would have been a reasonably successful, although maybe not practical, design if turboprops had existed. So many ambitious airplane designs from that era ended up massively underpowered. The engine tech at the time just wasn’t up to it.

In the US, where firefighting is mostly done by loading retardant at ground bases instead of by scooping, these kinds of big warbirds have mostly been replaced by VLATs based on jet airliners. There are a number of advantages — the airliners can get to the scene faster, more pilots are certified to fly them, repair…

Given how sympathetic the federal courts are trending WRT religious rights, it might be a hill they’re willing to try to conquer. Look at Hobby Lobby.

I’ve had mildly alarming experiences towing trailers with *cars*, towing them with something even lighter seems like asking for trouble.