Tag: cars

The week of new shit

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I didn’t want to hijack my swan song for my former Kia, but I don’t think I could’ve made it more obvious that I got a new car earlier this week.  A 2019 Mazda CX-5 is what my ride will be  hopefully for the next decade or so, and I’m really hoping that me having this car from the very start will exorcise and wash away the demons of the rotten chicken lemon I had years ago that also happened to be a Mazda. 

I’m confident in my capabilities as a car owner to take good care of this car, and considering it was purchased fully knowing that it will also be a kid taxi throughout the vast majority of its life, I am hoping to be as satisfied and sad when I unload it in hopefully a decade, as I was with my previous Kia.

During the car search, it really turned out to be a two-horse race between the Mazda CX-5 and the Hyundai Tucson.  Both cars fell into the specific criteria that I was looking for, but in the end, it turned into a game of price as well as perception.  And as good of a car that I think the Tucson would’ve made, the CX-5 just felt a little more high-end and aesthetically refined, and when the day was over, Hyundai had already rolled out their 2020 vehicles, whereas Mazda was still selling 2019s, so in this instance, the Korean car was actually a little more expensive than the Japanese maker.

Either way, I am excited to have a new car again, and it’s always a fun time whenever I hop into my vehicle that still has the new car smell, and ease my way on the roads, getting used to the feel and size of a larger vehicle, and the thoughts of all the future potential it’ll be used for in the years to come.

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A car manufacturer’s reputation is only as good as their product’s owners

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

After nearly ten full years, I’ve said goodbye to my Kia Forte.  It’s still a little bittersweet at the time I’m writing this, in spite of the excitement of having a new car after nearly ten years.  But with a sliver under 150,000 miles, degrading brakes, a baby on the way, and just the fact that I simply wanted a new, larger vehicle, I felt that the time was right for me to make a switch.

I wanted to capitalize on being in a position to where I had the luxury of time to do research, test drive multiple cars, and play a little bit of negotiation, as well as have the ability to sit on the bench and wait things out if things weren’t looking promising.  I wasn’t as fortunate the last time I was in the market for a car, but things still worked out well for me, seeing as how it was then in which I drove off in my Forte, and it served me extremely well over the last 9+ years.

But the point of this entire post was that I wanted to give an appropriate swan song for my former car, because throughout their entire existence, Kia has often been perceived as a below-average car manufacturer, but seeing as how I just traded in one that had nearly 150,000 miles on it, never had any mechanical problems, and where I did pretty much no maintenance other than oil changes and new tires whenever they were needed, I can confidently vouch for the quality of Kia cars, and can proudly say that I owned one for the better part of a decade.

When I was in the market last, I was in a pretty bad situation.  I had a lemon of a Mazda that I still owed money on, but I was fed up to hell repairing it and willing to punt on the rest of the financing just to be free of it and have a car that was just plain reliable.  I wasn’t working full-time and was still in my life of freelance, so I couldn’t afford to get something that I’d risk being unable to pay the financing on it, so I had to accept the fact that I probably wouldn’t be getting a dream car or anything of the such this time around, and that I just needed something that could be relied upon.

The Ford Fiesta was actually my top pick going into my search back then, but I told myself to drive anything and everything that was in my limited budget, and put aside all previous stereotypes and perceptions, and think of the greater good of getting a reliable car.  I took a weekend day to go to a part of town that had a large number of dealerships, and I went on a spree test driving cars.  Toyota Corolla, Honda Civic, Hyundai Elantra, Chevy Cobalt, whatever was a compact car that I could make the numbers work.

Eventually, I found a Ford dealership that had a Fiesta that was also a stick shift, and I looked forward to getting in and taking it for a whirl.  But from the moment I sat down, my expectations were immediately souring.  The seats felt small and cheap, and the interior was cheap-looking, plasticky, and everything I touched from the console to the door handle felt shoddy and sub-par.  When I took the car off the lot, I shift from feel and sound, and I realized that I was revving to like 5,500 rpm before shifting, because the car just had no power and needed that much juice in order to get moving.  There was a lot of body roll, and the brakes felt soft and uninspired, and frankly I was ready to get the fuck off the lot when I was done with this.

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I shouldn’t have left the house

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Ever have one of those days where something feels amiss?  Like there’s a sinking feeling in your stomach or in your mind that something is off?  I can recall a few here and there in my life, and without much question, they’ve often times things have gone bad in some way shape or form.  But the important thing is to identify when days like this are transpiring, and knowing when to be extra careful with the little things, that might seem like auto-pilot in other times, like driving around.

I got pulled over for speeding on a road not that far from my house, because I mostly just wasn’t paying any attention.  I took for granted the typical behavior in which I drove on this particular road, and didn’t really consider the speed limit, and when I saw the cop standing in the middle of the road with his hand outstretched, I thought “oh shit,” and immediately knew what was happening.

Honestly, I’m not upset with the police, after all they’re just doing their job, and I happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and I was the unlucky schlub who got caught.  I’m more upset with myself, because one, I should have identified how the day was going, because I had been in a funky mood the entire day prior, and two, I frankly didn’t even need to leave the house in the first place.  I went out, because I was bored, and I was on my way to go play some Pokémon Go because I thought it might cheer me up.

Yeah, I got a ticket for speeding while on my way to go play Pokémon Go.  It’s embarrassing to admit it, and it’s like the worst possible reason to ever get a ticket.  I wasn’t late for an important meeting, I wasn’t late to meet up for dinner or anything, nah, I just went out on a whim to try and go catch some Pikachus, and I got punished for my negligent driving while being out when I totally didn’t have to.

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Dannyspeak: Overpopulated Days

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Like most people out there, we tend to have our own personal vernaculars.  Phrases that we use, mostly in private, but sometimes out in the wild, which occasionally requires explanation.  Most of the time, people scrunch their eyebrows and are dubious about the use of particular phrases, but occasionally others adopt such things, and introduce it into their own vernacular.

I don’t know why, but I’ve often felt the compulsion to write about my use of the general term “overpopulation;” it’s sat in my drafts file as a topic to write about on more than one occasion, but I’ve never actually taken the time to actually write about it.  Seeing as how my writing habits have become quite strained throughout the last few weeks and months, mostly due to work trying to suck the ever-living life out of me, I’m always trying to improve my motivation and capability to write, and no matter how bad things get, writing is the one hobby and outlet that I really do not want to let fall too far off the rails, and much like being able to run a mile at any drop of a hat, I always want to be able to write whenever I feel like it.

There are two places in which I most frequently decide that the world is too overpopulated: the parking lot at work, or at the gym. 

Being the creature of habit that I am, it shouldn’t be much of a surprise that I wish to park in the same parking spot every single day.  In order to accomplish that, I realize that I need to pick somewhere that isn’t necessarily rockstar parking, right next to the entrance of the office, but somewhere where I could (hopefully) reliably get the same spot on a regular basis.  That being said, my preferred spot is one floor up from the main entrance, but fairly close to the stairs, so I can traverse one flight of stairs and be at the aforementioned rockstar entrance.

For a while, it was pretty nice, getting the same spot on a daily basis.  I knew I could be five minutes earlier or five minutes later than the usual arrival time, and it would be there, and I took comfort in knowing that I basically had a consistent place to park.

But then, much to my dismay, I rolled into the parking lot one day, and there was a fucking pickup truck in my spot.  It pissed me off royally, and I hoped this was a one-off occurrence.  But then the truck was there the next day, and several other days in which I happened to be off by a few minutes.  Even after I rattled off a nice little streak of getting my spot back for several consecutive days, this fuckface would still take my exact spot whenever they managed to get there before I did.

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Those who do not use the Chick Fil-A app are subclass

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I don’t know how much clearer I can be than that headline. 

People who do not utilize the Chick Fil-A app are a class of people that are secondary or subordinate to those who do.  Fact.  Mic drop.  Walk off stage.

No matter what CFA does in the media, its political or religious stance or whatnot, it somehow manages to rise above all other non-food related topics, because simply, their food puts them on a class higher than that of every other fast food chain in the country.  Frankly, I challenge all people to find a CFA that doesn’t have a license to print money or really be able to recall at any point where a CFA closes down due to poor business and not renovation because their demand warrants it.

Go at the wrong time of day, and you will undoubtedly get stuck in some sort of line, be it inside the restaurant, or getting into a drive-thru line that literally wraps twice around the building.  In spite of the insane demand for CFA on a daily basis, I do give a lot of credit to the company for often times being proactive and always thinking on how to speed things up and keep customers happier, regardless of the fact that they really don’t have to, because people will go there for their food, regardless of if the perky teenagers that work the restaurants say “my pleasure” or not.

But just about every CFA in Atlanta has gone down at various points due to the need to renovate, or to add a second drive-thru lane, because they can all justify the needs for them.  They’ll stick employees outside with tablets and card readers in order to help expedite the service.  They’ll stash them in little pop-up tends before the pick-up windows in order to receive cash or give receipts just 20 seconds quicker than it would be at any other restaurant’s drive-thrus.

Most importantly though, they have pretty much the best app in the fast food industry, that’s easy to use, easy to register, and extremely efficient when it comes to saving time and effort.  Punch in your order and send it on, and then there’s zero need to spend time in line deciding on what to order, or to even pay for it, regardless of how many options the physical lines give you in order to save time.  The app saves even more time, and even more effort, and it basically makes it a no-brainer when it comes to deciding on which fast food joint to hit up.

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MLS is clearly the preferred white people sport

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Driving around Atlanta, there are often a lot of tells on peoples’ cars that indicate the race of the people driving them.  Some are pretty blatant, like how white people all love to have shit like stick figure family stickers, black people have big flashy rims or the content of Africa silhouetted in some way shape or form, or Hispanics having pictures of their trucks airbrushed onto their trucks, while being looked over upon by the Virgin Mary.

However, some tells are more subtle, but no less obvious to those who see them.  Like blackout license covers or (likely) illegal shades of tint or a box of Kleenex wrapped in an ornate satin box cover sitting in the back window.  But there’s no more obvious tell that a car belongs to a white person in Atlanta, than an Atlanta United sticker or emblem on it.  Because there’s nothing short of Ponce City Market and talking about gentrification and urbanism that white people in Atlanta like more than Atlanta United soccer.

And then it got me thinking beyond just Atlanta United, and about soccer in general, specifically MLS.  And how it really seems like MLS has become the de facto preferred spectator sport of choice for white people, even above the NFL, NBA and MLB.  The more cursory internet glancing I do, I’m seeing that in major cities like Toronto, Seattle, Portland and Philadelphia, if you take snapshots of the crowds, they’re unmistakably overwhelmingly white.  It doesn’t seem like a lot, but that’s really all the justification I need to make my snap judgments; I’ve been to enough cities to watch sports, and despite being in different states, they really aren’t that much different from one another.

Ultimately, I think white people loving MLS really boils down to two very obvious white people traits: racism and a lack of commitment.  A low-key third would be the fact that so many are hipsters, so naturally, they gravitate towards a lower-tier popularity sport, especially if it meant that there were fewer minority fans to have to mingle with.

But frankly, upon thinking about it, it kind of makes perfect sense why white people love MLS so much. Go to any NFL or NBA game, and it’s abundantly clear that black people love football and basketball.  And the average white person is often times afraid of the average black person, so it stands to believe that white people don’t like going to these sporting events, because it puts them in too close proximity with those that intimidate them.  When the home team does well and the black people get excited, it scares the white people.  But when the home team loses and the black people get butthurt, it scares the white people then too.  This isn’t to say that white people avoid these sporting events outright, but typically they tend to go when they have privileges like corporate box seats, or are in large enough numbers to where they manage to feel safe, but even still it’s not the same white safety as an MLS game would be.

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This is basically a boss of an overturned truck crash

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

It didn’t happen in Georgia, but this is still a nightmare scenario of an overturned truck crash that I feel is worth mentioning, just based on the sheer severity of just how badly it owned everyone involved.  But in North Carolina, a little north of Charlotte, a Harris Teeter truck overturned, and blocked both lanes of I-85 northbound, for numerous hours.  The wreck was so bad, and the cleanup so long, emergency crews had to deliver a portable toilet to the scene of the accident, so that drivers stranded for over five hours could relieve themselves.

Let’s be real here: it’s the part where a port-o-john had to be delivered to the area that really caps this whole thing, and I think this is a good example of a true video game boss of a truck accident, if there ever could be one.  If there’s one thing Atlanta has going on for them, is that their highways always tend to have like 4-6 lanes each way, so even if a truck falls flat, at the most can only really cover up three of them, and drivers can always find ways around.

I’ve driven across this stretch of I-85 numerous times too, so I’m quite familiar with the area.  Frankly, I’m surprised at how anyone can overturn on roads so straight, but further details show that the truck swerved to dodge a disabled vehicle, and considering this stretch of I-85 has been “under construction” as long as it’s taken Northern Virginia to complete the Capital Beltway, there haven’t been shoulders on this expanse in a decade, so if a car is incapacitated, it’s happening pretty much in the middle of traffic.

Honestly though, this is kind of one of my worst driving nightmares, topped only by if I were the one in the wreck.  Being stuck in a wreck so bad, that traffic is completely incapacitated, and not knowing definitively if it’s going to take ten minutes or ten hours to clear, so you’re in a situation where you’re leaving the engine running, burning up finite fuel, and if the urge to have to go to the bathroom starts to emerge, having literally no way to alleviate the situation.

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