The Square
Yesterday afternoon, I hopped the train into Harvard square to hop a shuttle to the Acura dealership to pick up my car. The train ride was relatively uninteresting as far as both people and smells are concerned, which I suppose is a good thing.

Upon exiting the train station, as always, I walked up the Church Street steps only to find that I had gone up the wrong stairs. I do this every time. I walked down to the pit, where I should’ve come out, and got my bearings for a minute. Harvard square, which once was a place I couldn’t walk two feet without bumping into three people that I knew, was drowned in a sea of unfamiliar faces dressed in all too familiar uniforms.

The punks were still in the pit, exposing their tattoos and hiding their fears. The alternative folks still leaned cooly against walls with both haircuts and fashions chosen from the same flea market. Both camps, while in direct competition for cool, joined in sneering at the neatly dressed, beautiful children of the wealthy yakking on their cell phones as if everyone were an endless string of Nobodies

And there I stood, smack in the middle of it all, a ship without a port, and without a shuttle to the Acura dealer. I plunked myself down on a wall and called Acura for a shuttle. Unfortunately for me, there wasn’t one for an hour. Having nothing to do, and no longer having a single friend in any of the record stores in the area, I headed into a bookstore to stare at books that I would never buy.

In the course of a day an hour can pass me unnoticed, but in that bookstore, I looked at my watch about every 4 minutes as if by checking the time I was helping each individual minute to expire a little faster. After looking at every book in two stores twice, I gave up and headed to wait by the news stand for the shuttle.

People flowed around me like a slowly polluting river until I longed for a bank to scramble up onto. I didn’t find them as amusing or interesting as they found themselves, and I unwillingly started to understand some of the feelings in Sartre’s Nausea. Humanity lost it’s beauty, and I wanted simply to get my car and get the fuck away from all of them.

The Ride
The shuttle driver couldn’t speak English all that well, but not all that badly, either. He was in his twenties, shaved bald, and looked possibly Peruvian, but definitely South American. He provided some words in the conversation, and I filled in the blanks where he stumbled in a story which I really didn’t give half a shit about hearing.

Honestly, if someone wants to talk to me, I’ll listen and try to make the best of the worst conversations if the intentions of the speaker are good. It’s like tolerating bad conversations from good people. Plus, if someone feels better after, great. In a car, you really don’t have much choice without being an a-hole.

Although the guy never knew it, I just wanted to stare out the window.

The Dealer
By the time we got to the dealer, I wished the driver luck and went in to get my car. After paying $1200 to get my car, the ABS light was still on as I drover off. As this was the original reason that the car went in, I wouldn’t describe my condition at that moment as “happy.” I jammed my car into reverse and flew backwards across the parking spot depositing my car where I had just picked it up.

It seems that my service manager had misunderstood what I wanted done on my car and had gone home for the day. As we had talked several times over a few days and the guy has been pretty good about putting my car in working order over the last 8 years, I wasn’t about to make a stink. I just calmly tried to get another service manager to schedule a time for the ABS to be fixed. Even though they had had the car for four days, I figured that there was no real reason to get steamed.

In the five years since my warranty ran out, I have never been offered a loaner when my car has gone in to the dealer. Not once (I was without a car for the previous four days while they worked on it!) It must’ve been my lucky day, as the guy gave me a 2004 Acura TSX to tool around with until my car was ready. That was totally unexpected. I felt great. I felt like I caught a break. I felt like the river had cleaned up a little.

The Review
The TSX is a BMW 325 replacement without the cool look, nice interior, or status that goes along with it. I can’t really fault the car in any way, but if you’re into driving a BMW, and you have 28 large to throw at a car the TSX may interest you.

To me though, the car provided little excitement beyond the first 15 minutes of driving. It’s nice. It is. It has 200 ponies, and leather, and variable suspension, and that automatic/manual transmission thing, and some nice looking headlights, but I couldn’t get past the “sporty grampa” feel of the car. I don’t know. Maybe its me. I can’t really explain why I didn’t like it. The closest I can get is when you walk into a really nice house, but it does nothing for you at all. Everything is there for you to like, but it just doesn’t work for you.

One gripe I do have is that I hated that fucking manual/auto transmission crap. Hated it. There was too little power in auto, and too little control in manual. It actually made me angry. I can tolerate annoying humans for a fair amount of time, but pair me up with a technology that I don’t like, and I have a nutty.

Double plus it’s $28,000! Have you any idea the CIVIC I can build with 28 large? Do you?

I don’t know. Maybe I’m too hahd to please, dood. Time f’some sherbit and some bed.

Posted in Cars, Misc.