Cars are pretty fun.

May 27, 2004

Last night was surprisingly a lot of fun. As I mentioned briefly, I was going with my sister a tequila tasting party at our friendly neighborhood McMenamins, but since I don’t particularly care for nor do I have a lot of good experiences with that particular liquor, I wasn’t sure whether I’d enjoy myself or not. The end result, however, was a blast. The whole thing was hosted by a guy who works for a large northwest distributor of alcohol, and it was basically a “try something you probably wouldn’t otherwise taste so we can sell more of it in the future” kind of thing. Well, I was impressed. It cost me $30 to get in, but that $30 let me try some EXCELLENT tequila that was actually a pleasure to drink as well as a lot of food.

He also went over the production method for tequila, none of which I knew, but it was fairly interesting to learn. I was more impressed with being able to drink (not shoot) straight tequila or tequila mixed with lime or cranberry juice and enjoy the taste. Spending $40 on a bottle of tequila is something I may do once or twice, but I sure haven’t been made a tequila drinker from last night. I don’t really drink all that much hard liquor to start with, despite my collection and the lies my college friends may tell you. I have a bottle of cognac I’ve been working on since my 21st birthday, plus my Scotch that I’ve had more of in the last couple of years than almost four years of the cognac. Having a nice bottle of tequila would be a good addition, but it sure wouldn’t be used to make margaritas. $40 alcohol is not supposed to be mixed…. I’ve used my cognac once or twice in cooking just to add a little flavor, and I felt guilty about doing even that in small amounts. But heck, that’s the only way I’m going to get rid of it since it’s so hard to drink straight. Maybe I just need better cognac. I was able to drink straight tequila last night, but I can’t drink straight cognac? Eh, not a big deal, I guess.

I found a website the other day devoted entirely to my car, and the forums that they run have been very helpful in finding out what other drivers of the ZX2 have to say about it. To be honest, I don’t ever remember hearing about the ZX2 before Tuesday, maybe once in a commercial, but Ford didn’t really advertise their sport coupes. But nonetheless, I’m able to read about the problems that other people have had with their ZX2’s, the kinds of things they’ve done to them to get more power and speed, that sort of thing. I found that my head scratcher of not being able to unlock the passenger side door while I’m inside the car without physically opening the door is in fact standard, and it has the entire community collectively confused. That’s right, since I don’t have power locks, you have to use the button to manually lock/unlock the doors. Too bad when the doors are locked the button goes in all the day to the door, and you can’t pull it back up. The only thing you can do is to open the door and it unlocks. So strange. I also need to find out if my built-in alarm is going to go off automatically every time I open the door without disabling it, but since the indicator light switches back on whether I actually enable it or not, I’ll have to run a test in such a way that I don’t piss off everyone around me. Again.

It’s also been good to get an idea of some of the things that I’d like to add to my car. I don’t plan on making my car something you might see in The Fast and the Furious, in fact, I don’t even plan on taking it in to get a performance muffler, or wider tires, or nicer rims, or lowered, or neon lights, or any of that crap, or a spoiler )heck, I’ve already got the winglet on the back), but there are some inexpensive things you can add (or in the case of two of them, remove) under the hood that can increase your power and gas mileage without doing anything to the warranty. The power thing isn’t an issue since I don’t plan on showing off at any point in time, but heck, the average report is at least a 10% increase in gas mileage with the three things I know I’m going to do. Having my own car sure is nice. My Dad was teasing me the other day about how little I know about cars, and yes, he’s right, I don’t know a whole lot. I know how to check the oil, and now that I have a different car, I’ll need to look under the hood and find where I add oil when I need to. If I need to. I’m still in Mustang mode where adding three quarts of oil in two weeks is commonplace. But reading about the fun that all these other guys have had working on their cars (plus it’s one of those societal guy things that I feel left out on like how I don’t like football), and it’s something I’d like to learn about. I know the very basics of how a combustion engine works, and while I know I’ll never learn all the parts of a car, it’s something that interests me. Big powerful moving object with lots of lights and levers and thousands of moving parts. What’s not to like?

Sadly, though, modifying a car costs money. Good thing the three I mentioned are easy, safe, legal, don’t mess with your warranty, and relatively cheap. One of them involves replacing a stock part with a $40 part, but it’s something that will never have to be replaced again, so that saves you money down the road. Money, though, is only the third reason why I don’t want to mess with my car too much behind the classic reasons of “I don’t need to” and “I think it’s stupid because I don’t feel my car represents my image as a man.” It always cracks me up when I see these tricked out cars (collectively known as “ricers”) where the person has obviously dropped at least $2000-3000 on car modifications as well as another grand or two on stereo equipment and the dude is still driving a Hyundai or something. I mean really, you just spent the entire resale value of your car! I had a friend who spent at least $2000 on doing that to his Hyundai hatchback, and he thought for some reason that he could race and beat the Mustang. Even a stock 1966 Mustang has more power than any tricked out Hyundai hatchback, and don’t get me started if my Dad were a gearhead and had been working on the car for the last 38 years. I have a Ford Escort, and while it’s a nice-looking car, I’m not dropping $600 on a carbon fibre hood that STILL needs painting. Or $400 on a new exhaust system to give my car that characteristic “waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhh” sound that we all hate so much. Or $500 on a new engine intake system. Heck, one of the two things I’m removing from my engine is actually more beneficial to leave off the engine in the first place because while it’s designed to muffle engine noises, it also impedes the air intake into the system. Take off the device, the engine gets more air, runs cooler, uses less fuel. But gains a bit of sound. Heck, I could drive a semi and it would still be quieter than the Mustang.

So yeah, I’m enjoying myself. I’m going over to my Dad’s for dinner tonight and so I can show off my new car, so maybe I’ll stop by G.I. Joe’s before I go home to see if they have the part I need. Worth a shot. Lunch over, back to work….

Posted in Beer, Geekery, General