I’d be antsy as could be even hitting 30 MPH in the car that bscar2 linked to in the video. What’s a shame is that it would be a pretty nice looking ride with a decent set of wheels/tires and putting the camber back into the hemisphere that has zero in it…
A kid used to run around here all the time in a heavily modded white Honda Accord and one evening I saw that car just inside the turn-in at K-Mart where a ball joint had given up. From the scrape mark it looked like someone had snagged a chain on it and dragged it into the parking lot just enough to clear the entrance. Suspension, tire, wheel, body kit; all ruined because suspension took a backseat to a big wing, coffee can exhaust tip, and a sack full of decals with Japanese script.
Tuesday’s winds clocked in at about 60mph plus gusts.
The wind blew over a simi on I-40…on top of an overpass…
The luck ?
The simi stayed up on the highway and did not tumble over the edge on to rt.66 below.
( on google maps look at I-40 exit 26 in New mexico )
He must have been in the left lane ( allowing merging from the on ramp OR pre compensating for the impending winds ) because if he’s been in the right lane it would have been over the railing.
I spent the late 90’s in Farmington NM (four corners area), and the local car culture was equal parts “ricer” and “low rider.”////I saw a beater Neon that had been “lowered” on the cheap by running 4X space-saver spares!
I can understand spacers and deep-dish wheels, even though my minds eye always sees a wheel crumpled up under the fender from a busted ball joint, but I simply cannot understand the car in the posted videos, especially the one in Shadow’s video. My mind cannot comprehend why anyone would do this to their car.
“My mind cannot comprehend why anyone would do this to their car.”
Neither can I, but–for that matter–I can’t comprehend why somebody would think that it is attractive to wear pants that are literally falling down and intentionally exposing their underwear. In both cases, these are style affectations that are embraced by certain age groups and/or certain ethnic or racial groups.
I scratch my head in puzzlement when I see these types of thing as I can’t comprehend how any of it could be considered…intelligent…or tasteful…or even attractive, but I suppose that you and I are not in the target audience for those folks. ;-))
I really admired our female vice-principal, who kept clothesline in her office. When she encountered somebody whose pants were falling off, he was escorted to her office where an appropriate length of clothesline was cut off and the student was directed to tie it tightly around his waist in order to secure his pants properly. Since she retired at about the same time that I did, I can’t even imagine what must be happening at that school nowadays.
Point well made, my friend.
I applaud your vice-principal. Sadly, in today’s world, she’s lucky the ACLU didn’t take the school to court.
I went to a small-city public high school. I was sent home once for not wearing a dress shirt. There were no jeans, sneakers, non-dress shirts, facial hair, or any of that allowed. I didn’t realize it until I grew older, but they weren’t teaching us how to dress, they were teaching us how to assimilate into the world at large. And they were maintaining order. I truly believe that this discipline was critical to learning to be a responsible adult and to maturing. I should point out that the military does exactly the same thing. They cannot mold you into a soldier until they first strip you of your civilian “baggage”. And it works.
^
The school district had adopted a dress code several years earlier that included the following no-nos:
Any article of clothing that is excessively soiled or that gives off an offensive odor
Any article of clothing that exposes an excessive amount of skin
Any article of clothing that displays obscene words or images of nudity
Any article of clothing that allows a student’s underwear to be visible
The policy had been vetted by the school board’s attorney and approved by the entire board.
Students were given copies of the dress code as part of their orientation, and it was occasionally reinforced over the PA system by the female VP.
(The principal and the male VP were too lazy to do much of anything in general, and too chicken-shxt to actually confront any real issues!)
The previous principal used to send home a letter each year stating, “This is not a beach resort, a garage, a nightclub, or a sports arena. It is a school, and I expect students to be dressed appropriately for a school, rather than for the afore-mentioned locations.” The next principal could have simply re-issued the same letter, but failed to do so–unfortunately.
Sadly, I suspect the current generation of administrators was brought up in a world where it was considered wrong to accidently offend anyone. I fear for our competitive position in the world.
I agree with you.
All of the male administrators were the most virulent right-wing types that you could possible imagine, but they were all talk and no show–as the saying goes. The teachers constantly asked for more stringent discipline, but it fell on deaf ears.
Only my friend, the very conservative female VP, would confront students, but she was fighting a losing battle on her own. It actually got to the point where fist-fights–which had been a once or twice a month phenomenon–became a daily issue.
After I saw countless students and teachers being taken out on stretchers by EMS, I decided that it was time to retire before I wound up on one of those stretchers myself. And, apparently, my friend–the female VP–followed me out the door a year later. I don’t even want to think what it is like in that school nowadays without her.
@VDCdriver that is an anecdotal account of the sad state of affairs. Change is not in the cards at this point as far as I can see, I do not know the answer but know a problem when I hear your story.
How interesting. A letter sent home to the parents? Where were the letters sent, to the County Jail? An increasing number of our future citizens will have trouble finding their real or stand-in parents not to mention any real home. In fact in Minnesota now we have come up with a revised definition of “homeless” to deal with the increasing number of kids with no permanent domiciles, and out school system has revised its transportation policy to insure these kids have a ride to shool, regardless of where they happen to be at the time. How truly sad.
I say this a little tongue in cheek but in the old days we had poor farms and orphanages where at least some of these people could be reasonably cared for. True some were terrible places but some state run ones provided security, direction, food, safety, and a family.
@Bing–Believe it or not, the biggest problem was the parents–IMHO.
We, at the school, had a very good relationship with the local police, and they made us aware of which students had been arrested. It was actually a very small percentage who had been arrested (and there were rarely any surprises when we read the arrest reports) but it was good to know in total who we were dealing with on a daily basis.
However, during parent conferences, on an incredible number of occasions when I would attempt to talk about “sonny boy’s” arrest record–as well as his academic problems–the response that I would get from most parents was, “Oh–EVERY kid gets arrested!”. I would counter with the actual statistic that–at that point–less than 10% of our students had ever been arrested. Then, I would point out that–undoubtedly–100% of their son’s friends had been arrested, and therein lay the problem. However, these “enabler” parents didn’t want to hear that message.
The worst episode of all was when I hosted conferences for a parent with all 7 of her son’s teachers, and every teacher informed the mother of the reality that her son was failing, due to excessive absenteeism, as well as refusal to do any work. Mom’s response was, “He’s this close to being perfect!”, as she held her thumb and index finger apart by–perhaps–a couple of millimeters. Nothing that any of us said had any impact on this woman who just kept repeating her mantra about her son being “this close to perfect”. It was truly a bizarre–as well as unsettling–experience for me and for all of those teachers. For days, we just commiserated about the total waste of our time in trying to communicate with that “enabler” mother.
Well, fast forward a couple of months, and Mommy Dearest and Sonny Boy were arrested–together–in a crack house, apparently in the process of buying drugs. All at once, everything became apparent for me. And, before anyone jumps to conclusions, this was a middle-class, white, suburban family. And, our good-for-nothing principal had almost always managed to circumvent the attempts by this kid’s teachers to discipline him, thereby exacerbating the problem.
