Weekly Roundup: Ladies' Night Edition
"Why are all these women riding around here?" John asked. "Just because they call it Ladies' Night and then women come out for some reason?"
"It's more than that, John," I replied, as another trio of Millennial girls in yoga pants wobbled past us on rented Trek dirt-jumper bikes. "It's only fourteen dollars to ride tonight if you're a girl. Normally it's thirty bucks on Saturday nights."
"Why would anybody ever do anything just to save fourteen dollars?" He was legitimately puzzled.
"Let's hope that's never a problem you have," I laughed. It made me think about a couple of weekends in the winter of 1987 where I didn't have the eight bucks I would have needed to go race --- or my bike needed parts that I couldn't quite afford in order to be ready. They say that sort of thing builds character but I don't recall feeling characterful sitting in the house while my friends were racing. There was no character-building involved in sitting in the school cafeteria on Monday morning listening to the other kids brag about running both races on a weekend. Sixteen dollars!
For our Saturday trip to Ladies' Night, I built a new-school Haro Master reissue more or less from scratch. Just to amuse myself, and because I can afford it, and because I have enough character to last a lifetime when it comes to self-denial stuff like that. Fuck character. Let's stack the living room with bikes. Let's buy a 6.2-liter truck with ventilated seats and use it just to drive to the indoor MTB park. Let's have handmade English shoes and Brioni suits and let's put the dinner tab for eighteen people on the Platinum Amex. And let's hope that my son always remains slightly mystified as to why you'd change anything in your life to save fourteen dollars.
(Oh, and let's hope he grows up to run down the yoga-pants college girls just like he does in the video.)
This week Road&Track debuted the 2018 Performance Car Of The Year piece. It was a staff piece with four bylines plus the anonymous "R&T Staff" byline for parts of it. Some of you will be able to detect faint traces of my writing in some of the heavily-edited text, the same way that a thousand-year-old gravestone might give up a few clues to someone with wax paper, a pencil, and a lot of patience.
For some unfiltered enjoyment, try my AMG GT R review and the PCOTY Deep Dive pieces that are Web-only.
TTAC is currently experiencing some tech-support drama but when it clears up you can read the following pieces:
-Ask Jack -Range Rover Evoque Rental Review -QOTD -Trackday Diaries
If anybody needs me, I'll be polishing my trio of Haro reissue bikes, waiting for the next Ladies' Night...