I love 84!

I had some friends into exotic cars and we'd take 84 over to the coast now and again, mostly because we had a shit-ton of money and a shit-ton of spare time to kill -- the Dot-Com fucking rocked!

There's a bend in the road just outside La Honda on the coastal side that's a 15mph hairpin with a tree at the apex. It's a lovely goddamn thing, especially when you forget it's there. So here we all come, lane-trading and exercising general assholery in cars that cost what a nice single-family home does.

Oh FUCK, the turn!!

My friend in the 911 does this beautiful trail-brake and swings through the curve. Elise follows suit, complete with smoking tires. Next up is Countach. He BARELY holds it together, but gets through without any real drama.

Now it's my turn.

Did I mention I was driving a '97 Camaro Z-28? Yeah, Camaros of that year are good at exactly one thing: driving very fast in very straight lines. Corners? Yeah, not so much. I realize I'm in trouble and I'm coming into the turn WAY too fast. I grab the shifter and get ready. My plan is that I'm going to slam it into first, let the rev limiter do its thing to save the engine, pull the e-brake and swing the tail, then punch it and swing the ass-end around and launch out of the curve with smoking Z-rated tires and all!

And HERE WE GO -- grab the shifter, yank it all the way down and...

That's when California emissions standards fucked me.

You see, when you buy a Camaro Z-28 in California, you don't actually get first gear. You get what's called a California First, which is actually SECOND gear, because if you were actually able to use FIRST gear, the goddamn car would belch enough emissions to make a farting Brontosaurus blush. And second gear ain't exactly gonna work for my little plan.

tl;dr is that I hit the no-lock brakes hard enough to get my speed down and was able to bring the ass around with the little e-brake trick. I wasn't out of the woods because I over-corrected on the way out and spun. The same God that I spite and don't believe in actually saved my ass and I didn't end up going off the road. Apparently, he loves fools and Z-28 Camaros.

I honestly had more fun in that car than the law allows: sometimes literally, like when I got clocked at 110 coming onto the straight at King City. Good times, man, good times.

ChaosEngine said:

What annoys me is that this ad is absolutely a blame game.

The guy who pulls out is implicitly portrayed as the victim. He's dressed in "normal" clothes, has his kid with him, and the first words out of his mouth are "mate, I'm sorry". Everything about this ad is designed to illicit sympathy for him.

Look at this guy. Hard working kiwi bloke, cares about his kid (who's even in the right booster seat).

and he's murdered by an arrogant business man who's portrayed as unwilling to prevent the accident.

Finally what's the message of the ad? Not "be careful when pulling out onto a main road", but "slow down".

btw, you can edit your posts if you make a mistake.

chingalera said:

My personal 5-yr-plan for expatriation began yesterday. If I have to live in any country, I have 3 criteria:

Must be an active volcano within 20 miles and surrounded by ocean
Must be able to dive for shellfish and angle for salt-water fishes from the shore
Tourism economy with the only Americans there visitors or fellow expatriates with the bulk of tourists coming from Europe and other.

I'm shooting for the south-eastern Windward isles, where I can with an EU passport, travel freely to Cuba. Not to mention Jamaica and South America.

It's not so much the fucked government, they're fucked everywhere. It's all about quality of life-Good, fresh, UNTAINTED food, great music, and NO FUCKING AMERICANS!

I used to love my country before the machine started breeding idiots, now all that's left here are ineffectual robots who talk a lot, saying nothing and doing less. As far as I'm concerned, y'all can have this motherfucker....Oh, and I'm gonna join the Freemasons when I get there as well, 'cause Freemasonry KICKS ASS!