Jackalope Pursuivant

How Smart?

I come from a Smart family. Smart Car, that is. There are only a handful on American roads, but one belongs to my sister-in-law, and another to my mother. Indeed, Mom officially got the first Smart delivered in Arizona, and named it Alistair. When the Mrs. and I were in Phoenix for a wedding last weekend, my parents were out of town, but everyone else in the family encouraged us to take it out for a spin. So we parked the pickup and became Smart drivers for a day.

My impressions: It's been said before but it really is surprisingly roomy in the driver's seat. Mrs. Phoenix had a problem with passenger-side legroom, until we found out that the seat was moved way forward. Even after shifting it back, the seat release handle jabbed her in the back of the calf, which was reportedly uncomfortable.

Since the needle was flirting with E, our first stop was the gas station. Even though it requires Premium, the price to fill the tank was refreshing after driving a pickup truck the length of California. Alistair is a convertible, and it was very nice rolling down to the restaurant with the top open and windows down in the warmth of a spring Arizona night.

Less nice is the transmission. The Smart has a pronounced jerk when upshifting. It's a shockingly-long hesitation. Once you get used to it, it still surprises you every time with just how long you have no power. It's even worse when it goes from 1st to 2nd while cornering, like after a stop sign; you get halfway around the corner and just hang there for a second. My brother advised that it's best to ease off the gas just before it shifts, and I admit it works fairly well, but I think it's basically psychological. By making the loss of power less sudden, and less involuntary, it seems less drastic. But it's no substitute for smooth shifting. I'd prefer a manual.

However, Alistair had plenty of zoom. We drove from Arrowhead all the way down to Mesa, freeway all the way, and actually found ourselves in the fast lane more than we expected. It keeps up great. Of course it parks great.

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety says, and I'm sure Smart would agree, that the car is very safe in a crash. And that's good, because it feels like a crash magnet. It's not that I felt small in traffic. It's that people around us drove stupid, because they couldn't help staring. (and slowing down If you get a Smart car, everyone will talk to you. At stoplights. In parking lots. Pretty much any time you have the window open. Based on our limited sample, 80% asked what the mileage is, the others ask if we like it. In both cases, we had no clue and couldn't answer.

Final opinion: Cute car. Adorable. Comfortable. Economic. But not for me.

What I want to see on HGTV

I'm a lukewarm fan of HGTV's house shopping/remodeling show, Hidden Potential. They take home shoppers, priced out of their desired areas or just unable to find something that suits them, and show them three houses that are priced well below their budget. They're usually major fixer-uppers but, with the services of an architect, and a staff of flunky architects back at the home office, they show the buyers what the home might look like with a major remodel while remaining in-budget. It's a great exercise in looking at a house for its location, bones, and price--not its ugly paint, carpet, or kitchen cabinetry.

My complaint is that they never show the end result. We never get any assurance that the people actually buy the house they choose, and they never show the end result of the proposed remodel. I want to know just how plausible the architects ideas are, and whether the work ever actually gets done in budget.

This is my handwriting

In National Review's Media Blog yesterday, Greg Pollowitz mocked the LA Times for consulting a handwriting expert to assess handwriting samples from Senators McCain and Obama.

I hate to think what a handwriting expert would think of my chickenscratch. "'When you cover a stroke, it means you are hiding something,' Rubin said." When I cover a stroke, it means I write the same way they taught us in grade school. My handwriting does not reflect my personality even remotely; it reflects the fact that I learned to type before I could write.

Update

In Phoenix over the weekend, I came in for abuse from a variety of friends and family members for my failure to post recently. I vowed to improve, but not until next week, when I'll finally be free of the Western Way of War, Victor Davis Hanson, and Seminar 2 of the Masters in Military History program at Norwich University. I have nineteen more pages to write before I am free. Afterwards, my assessment of the seminar and the program so far. Plus, my firsthand review of the Smart fortwo Passion Cabriolet.

In the meantime, I'll probably have a handful of short posts.