Dredging up a memory
September 25, 2026
This one came up for some reason while I was shooting the breeze with some of my Pokemon-player friends over the weekend, and I don't appear to have written about it at the time. So here we go: Something new from... *checks notes*... 2002 or so.
At the time I still had the Civic. It was a nice enough car. Manual transmission, red line at something like 6500 rpm, and it had a large engine... by motorcycle standards. Just shy of 1500 cc if I remember right.
One of my college friends lived in Little Washington -- Washington, PA, about where I-70 crosses I-79. I'd drive out that way every few weeks for poker night. Sure, I stunk at poker, but it was really just an excuse to hang out and have a few beers anyway.
To get from where I lived in Pittsburgh out to Washington, I'd find my way downtown and get on the Fort Pitt Bridge heading toward Mt. Washington. (Coming the other direction, this is the shot they use on Monday Night Football, where you exit the Ft. Pitt Tunnel and the Pittsburgh skyline opens up in front of you. Heading out of town you're on the bottom deck of the bridge, and you're just staring at the tunnel entrance anyway.) Once you're through the tunnel you make a right bend and head up the hill toward Greentree.
Now, with the tiny engine and the manual transmission, there was really only one good way to drive the Civic: By flooring it. And since this drive to poker night was on the expressway there was no reason not to do just that. So I'd pop out of the tunnel already in the left lane, make the curve, and head up the hill at about 70.
Those suburbs south and west of town were where a lot of doctors with UPMC, Allegheny and one or two more I'm probably forgetting, tended to live. So while I was zipping out to the boonies to drink beer and play cards in my little wind-up car, I'd be passing BMWs and Mercedes that were just tooling along up the hill.
I knew then that cars were status symbols but every time I'd blow past a car that cost so much for a supposedly-superior driving experience, with a motor that had more torque than a cordless drill, I couldn't help but think: Why would you pay that much for a car and not drive it? Sure, buy your expensive car to show off but at least use it for what it was meant to do. It always felt to me like buying a racehorse and then taking it for a leisurely walk every now and again.
I still feel the same nowadays, although now my car sounds like a golf cart when I spool it up instead of a weedwhacker with roid rage. And I drive a hatchback that nobody expects anything from.
So I guess the moral of the story is... if you're going to be boring on the road, drive a boring car? Sure, why not.
