The aircraft were built for a now defunct Russian airline, but they never took delivery. To the best of my knowledge these aircraft have remained in the US since they were built.

They may have been ordered by a Russian airline but they never took delivery and the aircraft have been in the US since they were built.

Actually, the flight deck of SAM 28000 and 29000 (VC-25) are still mostly the analog gauges and three-person flight crew of the 747-200 on which they’re based, with some of the primary instruments replaced by glass instruments, with the installation of TCAS being an important item that couldn’t be done on a mechanical…

I’ll bring the flaming arrows...

You’re not wrong about any of this. I moved to STL for work from SoCal about 7 years ago and it has certainly been a learning experience to say the least. Living in the city is certainly better than being out in the white flight suburbs, and at least we have Illinois close by if we need to escape the bumblefuckery…

There are a handful out there, but people with the 6MT, like me, don't want to give them up. I know that I'm keeping this one forever. I have only seen one other one out on the road.

I rode around in mom’s Vanagon in a bean bag chair...

And that’s why I'm glad that my car has a happy face 

He has other people do the peeing for him, or so I've heard...

Thanks. I’m doing pretty good, all things considered. It was caught in time and surgery was successful. I’m just going through chemo right now and it seems worse than the disease it’s treating - some days are better than others, but for the most part I'm fine. For the most part I slept through yesterday, so I should…

We’re not doing too bad right now. Despite firing one dispatcher and losing another one to cancer we’ve been doing OK; we’re limiting the number of trips and hired more dispatchers and brought in some temps to do customer service calls which frees up the rest of us. Thanks to my own battle with cancer I haven’t been…

I work in public transportation as a dispatcher for the paratransit division. We’re a 24/7 operation, so during staff shortages it’s sometimes required.

In my defense my commute is only 2.3 miles and the vast majority of it is through residential neighborhoods so the speeds were quite low. I just needed a day or two until the weekend when I could get it fixed. I was working a lot of mandatory OT and couldn’t take care of it during working hours.

Those are awesome.

I guess it’s all perception. My minivan does 0-60 in the low 8 second range, yet I don’t think of it as slow. It’s faster than my Dinan- equipped BMW E34. I grew up in the ‘70s and ‘80s, so my perception of slow differs greatly from someone 20 years younger than me.

I would expect acceleration from an electric motor to be good, but I haven’t seen published performance figures that show faster 0-60 times than the 10 second range.

My folks have solar panels on their roof. When dad’s W210 was disintegrating he decided to go PHEV. He looked at the Prius but it was ugly and the performance was terrible for this day and age. He ended up with a 2018 Volt and just plugs in at home. He could probably go full electric as he doesn’t drive that much, but…

1st Gear Have you looked at the performance figures of the average Prius? Now I’m not one of those that believes that a family car needs to have the performance of a Porsche Turbo from a decade or two back, nor is my father, but mid-10 seconds 0-60 is ridiculous in this day and age. He ended up getting a Volt instead,…

I just put a link in my reply to take you straight to the vid.

There’s a whole video on YT where they go through the process of rebuilding the van. It’s a great watch.