Anyhow, here’s my email, more or less in its entirety. I’ve also posted a picture of the grille I’m talking about lower down. >>>

Car musings…

Okay, choices of the dream car I’ll only get after at least another couple years of college, plus a well-paying job, are the new Mustang and the new Camaro.

First the pluses for the Ford Mustang. The Mustang has better visibility throughout, and I’m encouraged by the fact that Ford did not have to file for bankruptcy last years. However, I’ve never been a huge fan of Fords look-wise, I think they gelded their prize Mustang for many years, and it took them till the current model to finally get their balls back, style-wise. And they got it almost right. Not only that, but the new Mustangs in the mid-00’s reinvigorated the trend of retro-future in cars. I realize that the Dodge Charger started the trend. But to me, the Charger has always looked too much like the Chrysler 300M. The Challenger was a stronger move forward, but despite an AMAZING ass-end on the Challenger, the car is just too encumbersome all around, and the front still looks too squared off. No, for positives, the Mustang is slightly better. Plus, on the current models, I love the way they pulled out the hood, leaning the grille forward. It was good before (but too static). Now, with the current model, it’s much better. I wish they’d put as much thought into the ass end…

…which brings me to the ass end of the Mustang. Again, like the old front end, it’s is so static. It’s too flat. Even with the new sequential headlights (which seemed gimicky at first, and now I consider very cool), the ass just doesn’t have character. I love it when Mustangs pass me on the highway, but I hate to follow them. They’re too dull, except when they’re changing lanes. Then they get very awesome again, reverting to “meh” when they’re done with the turn-signal.

The Camaro, on the other hand, is just right. It’s got a great, mean look. It has more bang for the buck than the Mustang, engine- and accessories-wise. The standard chrome-lined taillights and the ass end are amazing.

Everything about the Camaro is just a little better than the Mustang…except for two things.

1: I wish that the side & rear windows had more visibility like the Mustang. The Camaro looks better, but I just hate that loss of visibility. I hope they have really good side mirrors.

2: This is the biggie: I absolutely hate the BUTT UGLY BLACK GRILLE! Man, of all they ways Chevy could have fallen short! The front end is the first thing you notice when you see a Camaro parked at the dealer. Why, in the world, didn’t they offer a chrome grille as an option? The chrome-lined taillights are standard for crying out loud! We’re already reduced to body-covered bumpers instead of the good-looking chrome bumpers of yesteryear. Why do we have to be reduced to plastic grille? I don’t care if it saves on weight. Get rid of the back seat for all I care. Just gimme a chrome grille!

Like this one: http://www.carid.com/product.php?productid=66138&cat=77164&page=1

This is a Chrome Grille Overlay, so it’s not technically replacing the pre-existing grille. It’s merely hiding that ugly piece of crap from sight. But it’s turning what was already a nice car in an amazing car…just so long as the grille holds up. I’m actually worried that the grille is too inexpensive. It’s less than $500, when I was expecting something like this to cost well over $1200. Maybe I’m overreacting. Probably am. Perhaps by the time I actually want to buy a Camaro, there will be more competitors in the marketplace and will make finding the right after-market parts supplier an easier process. Or, even better, maybe Chevy will actually offer a chrome grille. I don’t care if every other Camaro owner will have one. I just want one on my car.

I went to Chevy’s website and ‘built’ a car. Here are my specs:   http://www.chevrolet.com/tools/byo/byoCustomizeVehicle.do?year=2010&brand=camaro&title=&region=40&evar10=byo_path_buildbytrim&pvc=19981

Major items of note are that it’s not the cheapest model (because I wanted chrome rims instead of black metal ones), it’s a stick-shift, it’s a V6, it has a sound-system addition with Boston Acoustics speakers (it already had an iPod dock standard), and it’s got beige/tan interior.

Tan interior. I know. Why not just go with black? I’m still on the fence on that point. I’d like to have a little bit of brightness inside since I’ll be spending so much time in the car. Plus, the tan reminds me of Star Trek: The Next Generation. I’m sorry if I just lost my audience, but I’m a geek. Always have been. I love the bridge of the Enterprise NCC-1701D. I hate the bridge on every subsequent ship, due to utter drabness. Although I enjoy the bridge on the Neo-Enterprise of the recent Star Trek film, but those lens flares would give me a headache in about 10 seconds. Geek pride, y’all.

Oh, and by Tan Interior, it’s not all 100% tan. Note that they have a tan interior much like the BMW interiors now: where it’s still black in many portions. The dash is still mainly black. The door panels have tan inserts. So it’s not an all-or-nothing switch. But it’s still very tan.

Besides the tan accents, I wouldn’t want to add a spoiler, wing, or any additional lines, stripes, or designs to the look of the car. Keep it black and MEAN. I doubt I’d even get personalized plates, which are a staple in Virginia (#1 state for personalized plates in the nation). And I’d remove any dealer stickers at the very first opportunity. Sorry, I know it means less dollars for that dealer. But it’s gotta be that way. The most I would alter on the Camaro is tinted windows. That’s it.

And that’s it for my car rant for the time being. I have no closing statement other than: Have a nice day.

Oh, and here’s that picture:

To get there, since there’s limited parking in DC, we typically drive to Vienna, VA, park the car at a Metro station, and ride the train into DC. No sweat, normally takes about 45 minutes. However, this is the DC Metro, which has been rather clunky lately, like a mid-1980’s Mercedes Benz. First, there’s a message about track maintenance on the reader-board. The worry begins. Then, it takes 25 minutes for the first train to show up. Typically, trains show up every 8-12 minutes. When the train finally does show up, we get on, pass the 3rd station (out of about 12 to get to the Smithsonian museums), and we start to slow down…and stop. In the middle of two stations. The conductor/driver tells us nothing. After about 5 minutes we take off again, slow down, and stop. This happens 2 more times until we finally reach the 4th station. The doors open, people get off, people get on, and the doors close with the friendly computerized voice saying “Stand clear! Doors closing!”. The doors pause, then re-open. The voice repeats its message, the doors close…and re-open. This happens several times. After about 20 minutes, the driver finally tells us that we’re being evacuated from the train, everybody off. Peachy.

So, everybody exits the train. Then, without any warning or foretelling of what will happen next, the train leaves, with no one on-board except the driver. So, we’re left, in a semi-dark station, with no idea when the next train will arrive.

One does finally arrive about 10 minutes after that, and with the exception of one slow-to-stop occurrence, the train thankfully keeps going to the Smithsonian.

When we finally get there, I wanted to 1) see some real “Art”, and 2) see the Air & Space Museum. So, first we go to the Hirshhorn museum, a donut-shaped museum that sits between the castle and the A&S. We circle the donut, go inside, see a couple Picasso sculptures…but it just doesn’t really trip my trigger. I’m not looking for surrealistic art. I want fancy-schmancy old-timey art, like Impressionist, or ancient Egyptian, or…really old stuff. Although the relatively-newer stuff is interesting on some level, it just doesn’t create passion inside me. So, we didn’t spend much time here.

Next, we went to the National Air & Space Museum. We’ve already been to the Udvar-Hazy A&S Smithsonian in Dulles, VA, but this was special…this was where the Wright Flier lived, along with various rockets. We spent the brunt of our day here, ate an excellent Boston Market sandwich and McDonald’s caramel sundae (which, at twice the price of normal B.M. & McDux food elsewhere, is still a big bargain compared to other food choices on the Cap mall), and went on to take some pictures with Flat Stanley.

We took some snapshots of the Capitol Building, the White House, and the Washington Memorial…but by the time we got to all of that, my pedometer was already reading 6 miles. On top of semi-sleep-deprivation we’ve both been going through for a couple weeks, we were shot. Stanley missed out on the Lincoln Memorial, but we figured Stan got to see most of the big sites this go-around. It was time to go home.

The rest of the trip, thankfully, went without too much worry.

Sunday we made a trip to church, and Ikea for bookshelves. The only items of note are the fact that every baby that came within my earshot was screaming their lungs out, hitting that top register, and kind of intoning a vibrato like a Hawaiian guitar, only just-under-supersonic, and almost like a physical entity…like a power drill with a bent-up bit, flopping around as it drilled into my skull. It was rather horrible. But we finally acquired bookshelves, something we’ve been meaning to accomplish since moving into our home 18 months ago.

The rest of the week…well, Sarah had Jury Duty, but thankfully she only had to stay part of the day. Her number might still be pulled, but the heat is off for now. I had a weird little oppotunity that I gave up on about 4 months ago, which is rearing its head once again. It’s too complicated to really explain, maybe at some later date, or maybe it’ll be too boring to tell…yeah, I’ll go with that one.

Anyhow, just some strange things happening. Nothing can go 100% smoothly, but it still goes.

to see a couple exhibits on the ‘mall’ that I hadn’t seen yet.