An audiophile and petrolhead's musings: in the hi-fidelity, first class, traveling set - Page 65

Honestly I can say I'm glad I drive a car with air ride. And it's pretty pathetic when you *need* such a feature to make the roads passable.


Can't say I'd thought about it, or was aware it was this weekend. Do you need some special channel to watch it? Or is it on normal cable, like ESPN?

 

I haven't watched all this year, but I think Speed still has the exclusive for F1 right?

I don't know about the rest of the world, but in SoCal, nearly all of the train vs pedestrian incidents are transients executing a "suicide by train". And ALL of the car vs train incidents are "evolution in action". People are idiots - they drive around the guards or sit on the tracks while the bells & flashers are going off. They seem to think it's no different than sitting in an intersection causing gridlock. Helllloooo??? Tons of steel are coming at you at 50 MPH...

When something does happen (accident, mechanical issue, etc) it was horrible to be a train passenger. They won't let you off the train unless you are at a station. If the train doesn't move, you sit - for HOURS. I was on a train that had a mechanical issue 50 yards after leaving the station. They would NOT let us off the train. We had to wait for a couple of hours for another train to come and push us back to the station. Those are the days when it is MUCH better to be sitting alone in your car in traffic than riding the train!

 

Not to mention you won't have crazy's of "stink mofos'" sitting by you lol :P. Nothing beats starting off your morning seeing some hobos scrap on the bus.   Or when you have very inconsiderate people who won't move from their side seats for the handicapped or old folks. I've yelled at people before telling them to "move your ass from this seat, can't you read the giant stickers & signs, no respect at all!"

Edited by lee730 - 11/15/12 at 11:31am

The conductors on our trains were actually pretty good about rousting the bums. If you are on the Metrolink trains without a ticket, it's a fine of a couple of hundred dollars - and you *can't* buy a ticket on the train. If you are a noob or a regular that forgot your pass, you'll just get a warning and at worst they'll ask you to get off the train at the next station. But if they want to be a hard@ss (and many conductors would!) they would call the Sheriff's dept and the officers would meet the train at the next station. The conductor will either deliver you to the cops, or the cops will come onboard and haul your @ss off. The conductors didn't take cr@p from anyone. We had a group of teenagers that commuted to a private artsy-fartsy school in downtown LA. They were fairly annoying - but in general harmless. One day the conductor was checking tickets and two of the teens didn't have tickets. The conductor asked for some ID and the teens started giving the conductor some sh!t about them being minors and he had no right to ask them for ID. The conductor just calmly looked at the teens and said: "Gather your belongings and follow me." The teens freaked out and started screaming they were minors, his dad was a lawyer, blah, blah, blah. The conductor just calmly said: "You can either get off the train at the next station and call your parents to pick you up, or we will wait for the Sheriff to arrive and you can call your parents from the Sheriff's office." The whole train applauded as the conductor escorted the little brats off the train!

My experience with the train or bus has been an experimentally confirmed hypothesis.

 

People always tend to take the first bus/train that comes by, no matter how crowded it is.  They'll be packed like sardines.  Don't care there's another one coming in 2 minutes, and it'll run empty. Who has the time?

lol - that reminds me of another train riding story! The people who are regulars riding the train every day always sit in the same cars, and usually (when possible) in the same seats. Our train had started getting very crowded, and the Metrolink people finally decided to put an extra car on the back. On the first day, that last car was empty! Everyone just went to their normal, crowded cars. It wasn't until the next day that small groups started migrating to the new car. Change is hard...

1.5 million

Just watched a couple of videos of Group B and Group C racing....almost brought tears to my eyes. Such raw power beasts tamed by men. I don't think modern racing has that presence and charm.