How to finally make that left turn.

A TikTok demonstration of excellent lateral thinking and deft execution:

"How about a map-a-loopy? Get a real paper road map. Pick some place to start and another place to end, and..."

"... take the most tertiary, wayward, roundabout farm roads, or tiniest neighborhood street to get there. You will be pretty surprised to spend a memorable hour or two admiring unknown, undiscovered corners, big trees, obscure roads, streets, byways and dirt lanes."

Writes Rabble in the comments at the NYT article, "Land Snorkeling? Townsizing? A User’s Guide to the Latest Travel Lingo. Here are eight terms, some brand-new, others recently resurfaced, that match today’s travel trends."

As you will suspect from Rabble's comment and even without it, the 8 terms the NYT has found are pretty dumb. "Townsizing" is going to a town instead of a big city. "Land snorkeling" is walking about looking at various things. I approve of these practices, and if a cute word encourages anybody, fine.

"Before, it was too much, there was honking of horns without reason. Now, it’s better for everybody."

Said Syed Ali, 49, who works at a halal food cart in midtown Manhattan, quoted in "Honking Complaints Plunge 69% Inside Congestion Pricing Zone/In the first two months of the Manhattan vehicle tolls that Trump wants to nix, gripes over blasting horns sunk when compared to 2024" (The City).

"The EV charging station tale marks what amounts to a 'Wizard of Oz' moment for progressives."

"They want to prevent abuse and use government to serve the greater good. But as its snail-like rollout demonstrates, government today is more like the man behind the curtain than the great and powerful Oz. Progressives need to figure out how they will address the overcorrections of the past several decades and, in so doing, make government work again."

Yeah, progressives: Figure it out!

I'm reading "Why the government built only 58 EV charging stations in three years/The EV fiasco should be a jolt to progressives’ senses" (WaPo)(free-access link). The article is by Marc J. Dunkelman, author of "Why Nothing Works: Who Killed Progress — and How to Bring It Back."

"Back when Lyndon B. Johnson was president and the latest dance craze was the Frug, Washington high society was transfixed by..."

"... Barbara Howar, a sparkling socialite from North Carolina who helped the first lady do her hair, mingled with a visiting Princess Margaret and Lord Snowdon and turned her Georgetown home into a center of Swinging Sixties entertainment.... Defiantly unorthodox, she wore pajamas to an embassy gala, drove an orange motorcycle through a Georgetown park and had a barbed wit that brought her a reputation as the enfant terrible of the capital’s social scene. Reflecting on the private life of Henry Kissinger, one of many diplomats and politicians who frequented her parties over the years, she quipped, 'Henry’s idea of sex is to slow the car down to 30 miles an hour when he drops you off at the door.'..."

From "Barbara Howar, whose hit memoir dished on D.C. society, dies at 89/Initially known as a Georgetown hostess, she became a best-selling author with her candid 1973 memoir, 'Laughing All the Way.' She later interviewed celebrities for 'Entertainment Tonight'" (WaPo)(free access link).

Howar launched her writing career with a 1968 Ladies’ Home Journal story called "Why LBJ Dropped Me." Looking (unsuccessfully) for a copy of "Why LBJ Dropped Me," I stumbled into this cool photograph, "Singer Bobby Darin sits with his girlfriend, Barbara Howar." I love her shoe. Grommets — so 60s! Ah, well, the 60s are long gone, and here I am, a creature of the 60s, entertained by obituaries, saying goodbye to everyone who was tormented by LBJ and danced the frug.

You don't see the phrase "enfant terrible" so much anymore. The OED says it's "A child who embarrasses his or her elders by untimely remarks; transferred a person who compromises his or her associates or his or her party by unorthodox or ill-considered speech or behaviour; loosely, one who acts unconventionally." We used to celebrate the enfants terribles. Didn't we? Do we still? Answer without saying "Trump" or you are too boring to wear pajamas to an embassy gala and drive an orange motorcycle through a Georgetown park.

The sun got eclipsed in the middle of the day yesterday, but it also rose and set. Did you see that?

We did. From the front seat of the F-150, in Covington, Indiana, at 7:27 a.m. Eastern Time:

From the back door of the camper in Farmer City, Illinois, at 7:29 p.m. Central Time:

There is the rare peak event but also the beauty of the everyday.

As I'm writing this, searching for the right way to frame the profundity that feels just out of reach, Meade suddenly bellows, comically, "Well, what's next on our bucket list?"

I ask his permission to quote him, and he says yes and "You know I said that ironically."

"Yes, I wrote 'comically.' Don't worry. I won't let them think you said that seriously."

We're anti-bucket-list people, but we put a lot effort into doing a bucket-list thing. It was the last chance for the experience of a lifetime, and we drove 6-and-a-half hours each way to grab it. The sunrise and the sunset were captured spontaneously. And I'm only seeing that bird just now, symbolizing all those things that we see and don't really see.

ADDED: I had a few typos in the original draft of this post. Talk about seen and unseen. Corrected. And now I'm seeing the ghostly, spontaneous bird in the sunset clouds.

"The detour took Easler and her family onto a gravel road that eventually disappeared into a bumpy dirt trail."

"They quickly realized something was wrong as they looked at the line of cars in front of them. 'They’re all going directly into the desert,' Easler recalled. The Google Maps route created a day-long ordeal.... SFGate reported on the incident after Easler posted a TikTok video that garnered more than a million views.... Even as the route got bumpier as it proceeded off-road... they trusted that the large number of cars accompanying them meant they were still on the right track, Easler said. 'Nobody was turning around. So we figured that it led somewhere,' Easler said...."

From "Google apologizes after map led drivers down dirt path into the desert" (WaPo).

So did they "quickly realize[] something was wrong" or did they keep "trust[ing] that the large number of cars... meant they were still on the right track"? The article doesn't bother to make sense, even as it shows a vivid example of humans proceeding blindly into the unknown.

Here's the TikTok that garnered:

"A Washington Post analysis of federal data found that vehicles guided by Autopilot have been involved in more than 700 crashes, at least 19 of them fatal..."

"... since its introduction in 2014, including the Banner crash. In Banner’s case, the technology failed repeatedly, his family’s lawyers argue, from when it didn’t brake to when it didn’t issue a warning about the semi-truck in the car’s path."

From "The final 11 seconds of a fatal Tesla Autopilot crash A reconstruction of the wreck shows how human error and emerging technology can collide with deadly results" (WaPo).

The article quotes former National Transportation Safety Board administrator Steven Cliff: "Tesla has decided to take these much greater risks with the technology because they have this sense that it’s like, 'Well, you can figure it out. You can determine for yourself what’s safe' — without recognizing that other road users don’t have that same choice.... If you’re a pedestrian, [if] you’re another vehicle on the road.... do you know that you’re unwittingly an object of an experiment that’s happening?"

"I needed to come back to the city. A lot of it for me has to do with not having to drive."

"Because not driving when you live in the suburbs, or being a quasi driver — I have a lot of anxiety about it, and when I’m in the city I can go anywhere I want. I feel free. I feel like an actual grown-up. [What is it about driving?] Ugh! There’s the car itself: tires falling off, a blow out, a car exploding. One time I was driving and the front hood started rattling and the whole drive I pictured the hood of the car flying up and then my crashing and not only killing myself but killing tons of people. I hate it! I hate changing lanes. I hate merging. I hate trucks. Everything about it is hateful. Also, you’re going so [expletive] fast! A slight miscalculation and it’s disaster."

Said Roz Chast, quote in "Roz Chast Knows You’ll Always Regret Leaving the City for the Suburbs" (NYT).

That's an interview with David Marchese, published a few weeks ago, noticed today because it was linked at the bottom of the new David Marchese interview with Arnold Schwarzenegger, blogged in the previous post. 

Roz Chast has a new book: "I Must Be Dreaming."

Things that happened in Nebraska that got reported in The Guardian.

 

Link.

"Gasoline cars are among the last remnants in our daily lives of the pistoning industrial age — machines powered not by quietly streaming electrons..."

"... but by noisy, fiery explosion, by sequential gears and timing belts, by the primal growl of thermal expansion. America’s overreliance on cars has been ruinous, but... let’s remember, too, how the gas-powered car helped realize a quintessentially American idea of liberty: the freedom to roam just about anywhere you please. Yes, I’m romanticizing the automobile.... But as critical as I’ve been of cars, I can’t deny loving driving and loving it in a primal way — loving the thrum of a revving engine, loving slaloming in and out of turns on a windy country road, loving simply going very far, very fast, conveyed by fire. And here’s another confession: I’ve never felt anything approaching this sort of exhilaration in an electric car...."

Writes Farhad Manjoo in "Gas-Powered Cars Are an Environmental Catastrophe. I’ll Miss Them Anyway" (NYT).

Driving through fire.

After reading their comments section, the NYT editors must wish they'd put scare quotes around "just."

I've read "$388 in Sushi. Just a $20 Tip: The Brutal Math of Uber Eats and DoorDash/Delivery drivers were hailed as pandemic heroes. But they say the rise of contactless delivery has made customers less inclined to tip generously and gig work is becoming an even harder way to make a living" (NYT).

The article tells a tale of struggle from the point of view of drivers who pass up low-cost meals and wait for the expensive kind. Virtually every commenter makes the same point.

"Graphic videos show a police SUV ramming a crowd and running over at least one person in Tacoma, Washington, on Saturday."

"In videos from the scene, the police SUV revs its engine while a group of people surrounds it in the street. The SUV briefly backs up and then charges forward as people in the crowd scream. One person can be seen on the ground as the front and rear wheels of the vehicle roll over them."

BuzzFeed News reports (with video if you choose to see it).

"Five years ago, the New York State Thruway Authority conducted a survey of more than 2,600 drivers to take measure of the customer experience at the service areas..."

"... lining the 570 miles of road that make up one of the largest toll highways in the country, stretching from the edge of the Bronx up past Buffalo. Whether participants were traveling for work or for pleasure, they had needs that apparently were going unfulfilled. Among those who identified as occasional users of the Thruway, more than half said they would like food halls with 'local artisan' offerings. Some commuters wanted Blue Apron meal kits. The resulting report listed as chief takeaways that leisure travelers complained about unappealing interiors and the lack of 'Instagrammable moments.'"

From "Must We Gentrify the Rest Stop? McDonald’s is gone, and the Manhattanization of the New York State Thruway has begun. Prepare to Instagram your pit stop" by Ginia Bellafante (NYT).

"Where I'm from, Thanksgiving is just another long weekend, not some return-to-ancestral-home urge on a par with salmon swimming upstream at the cost of their lives."

"I'm a Canadian living in the US.... In a perfect world, I'd see my extended family at Christmas, but for the last few years I've tried to schedule 'Christmas adjacent' visits. My mom and extended family already have lots of distractions over the holidays and the quality of my time with them is better if I come before or after. The main reason for that scheduling, however, are the frustrations described in this article. And let's not even start in on the Southwest debacle. Commenters point out that good rail service would often be a great option -- but it will never, ever happen here. The author, as a New Yorker, is understandably not a car owner. But most Americans who can afford to fly also own cars. I am increasingly open to replacing plane trips with car rides. What with crowded airports, angry TSA agents, 28" seat pitch, etc, almost any air travel amounts to a wasted day, so if I can drive it -- even if it takes an entire day -- that's now my choice."

Writes Mark Gardiner, of Lawrence KS, in the comments section to the NYT article "The Airlines Know They Are Scamming Us." The article is written by Elizabeth Spiers.

I've long preferred the car ride — even if takes all day — to dealing with airlines and airports and airplanes. As for trains, it's just absurd the fantasizing about trains going on in the comments over there. The top comment is: "Trains. High speed, comfortable, trains on non-cargo hauling tracks, like we have in Europe. Lace the USA with those instead of citizen-funded highways built to benefit the auto industry." 

That commenter is from Paris, France. To that person, I say:

 

Lace... indeed.

The best 6 TikToks for right now, I sincerely believe.

1. Find someone who matches your energy.

2. How to photograph a stranger.

3. What does the squirrel say?

4. A seagull and his meatballs.

5. We need a GPS voice for the sensitive souls.

6. The ginger Christmas countertenor.

"Tesla drivers interviewed by the Guardian say they have experienced anti-Tesla sentiment, but mostly from those who hate electric vehicles rather than Musk specifically."

"'Random rude drivers will swerve in my lane to yell at me, or turn on a heavy diesel exhaust that blows black smoke,' Paul Albertson, who lives in Beaverton, Oregon, told the Guardian. It never happens when he drives his two other cars, a vintage 1948 Chevy and a 2014 Traverse. The culprits are most often men driving 'larger pick-up trucks', he said. John Shevelew doesn’t notice too much road rage at home in York, Pennsylvania.... Things change when he drives through the south. 'I go to Texas a lot to see my daughter in Austin, and in Arkansas, Mississippi, those places, I run into, let’s say, less-than-friendly looks,' he said. 'You get someone in a big diesel pickup truck who likes to express their dissatisfaction with the idea of an electric car.' Laura Kennedy, who also lives in Pennsylvania, agrees. 'It’s almost always a guy in a pickup truck [who does something],' she said. 'I don’t think I’ve ever been flipped off in my life as much as I have in the past year or so.'"

From "'Rude drivers will swerve in my lane': are Tesla owners paying the price for Musk hate? US owners say they’ve been on the receiving end of road rage, but it may be more about EVs than the CEO himself" (The Guardian).

That seems unduly prejudiced against trucks. I'd like some non-anecdotal evidence.

"[A]s of Jan. 1, we Californians will be able to jaywalk to a film audition, jaywalk to buy pot, jaywalk to meet an angel investor for a start-up, jaywalk for hot baby yoga classes..."

"... jaywalk for the benefit of paparazzi alerted earlier about where and when the jaywalking will occur, and jaywalk to any of the countless California-centric pastimes that the rest of the country finds so amusing. Or we might jaywalk across the street just to get to the other side.... [A]n enterprising individual can shoplift goods worth up to $950 without worrying about being tagged with a felony. Parking in L.A. is always a pain; if you’re hotfooting it out of a Macy’s or Target with an armful of pilfered goods, your ability to jaywalk worry-free to your getaway car is a cultural advantage right up there with being able to make a right turn on a red light. On a more serious note, the Freedom to Walk Act is a social-justice victory. As the bill’s author, state Assemblyman Phil Ting (D-San Francisco) told CBS Bay Area news, jaywalking laws 'are arbitrarily enforced and tickets are disproportionately given to people of color and in low-income communities.'"

From "California greenlights jaywalking. It’s a step in the right direction" (WaPo).

Yeah, don't have a law you're not willing to enforce equally against everyone. We don't want chaos, but you've got to draw the line where you'd want it enforced against you and the people you personally favor. 

Biden — using his "car guy persona" — drives 118 mph.

Here's a screen grab of my search: 

 

Here's some funny deadpan from the NYT article:

The president has long used his affinity for cars to burnish his workaday origins and, more recently, to conjure an aura of vitality despite being the oldest president in American history. In the run-up to the midterm elections next month — with control of Congress and the future of his agenda at stake — Mr. Biden is hoping his gearhead reputation will appeal to some parts of the Republican base.

IN THE COMMENTS: Meade writes...

Joe Biden is unsafe at any age.

And here in person, Meade nudges me to show you a picture he took of a real-life Corvair (in Decorah, Iowa):