Car Show!

(written by Chris)

Soren has been fascinated by cars for longer than he has been able to articulate that fascination. He had a lengthy phase of pointing out that a car or truck was passing by, then asking what each car he saw was, and then learning the logos of all the car companies and naming all the cars he saw (and he can identify the make of virtually all late model cars by sight). Today, I was able to provide him an all-access pass to more cars than he could imagine by taking him to the New England 2010 Auto Show, at the RI convention center. Kids' Day meant he was free with my admission, and no one could complain I was there following the orders of a three-year old.

As we approached the ticket booth, Soren spotted the banner with the roughly 20 participating automakers on it. "Hey, there's a lot of logos here," he shouts, and begins naming them, "Honda. Toyota. GMC! Lincoln...." I merely shrug to the ticket taker.

In the course of a little under three hours (we had to dash over to the Westin to score some apple juice at the two hour mark), we evaluated (i.e., sat in) a wide spectrum of vehicles, ranging in price from roughly $18,000 to roughly $75,000:

3 GMCs
6 Chevrolets
2 Buicks
8 Toyotas
4 Fords
4 Lincolns
4 accessible Toyotas
3 Mazdas
6 Subarus
3 Audis
4 Acuras

I briefly ogled a couple Lamborghinis and a couple Rolls Royces, but Soren had no interest because he could not sit in them. "Come onnnn, Daddy...."

Visiting a car show with Soren is different from visiting as car buyer in several key ways:

Price does not matter. Soren doesn't really yet understand money or status or quality distinctions. Therefore, he was absolutely as enthusiastic about the most basic Chevy Cobalt and Ford Focus as he was about the much more expensive cars we sat in. Importantly, he is indifferent to size (when you're 39 inches tall, being an expensive sports car is the biggest threat to adequate leg room and view), so the cars vary less to him than they would to someone who is, for example, not three.

The back seat does matter; the front seat does not. In fact, I was only permitted to sit in the front seat of three cars, and of those, two did not have back seats (one was a Corvette, so...). Otherwise, our experience of each car emphasized the back seat: we would approach a vehicle that was deemed worth our time--primarily by being next to the vehicle out of which we just climbed; I opened the passenger side door for Soren, who climbed in (and climbed is often the best descriptor); I would be instructed to close his door and come around the other side; I would enter through the driver's side rear door, and close it; I would be instructed to lock it; after a brief pause, we'd note something about the upholstery; we would decide to move on.

It's always his turn. When looking at popular cars at car shows, I've often had to wait to get into the driver's seat. People aren't generally looking at the back seats, but when they are, they're standing and peering in in a way that allows room for an eager three-year old to slip in front and climb in. Soren was entirely polite about it, complete with "Excuse me," but he'd slip right up to the front to scramble into the back seats.

Basic car features are interesting. During the car show, Soren learned about the different designs of door locks, levers (including the all electronic system on the Corvette) and regular seatbelts. Once he learned about a feature, it had to be examined on subsequent vehicles. We had to try the seatbelts in most of the latter half of cars we tried, but fortunately he grew to understand they all work in the same way (and are uncomfortable).

Salespeople go the other way. These car shows are, after all, sales tools. A couple of times, as I rounded the back of a car to get in the driver's side, I was intercepted by salespeople who wanted to tell me about the car I was circling. (Despite my bicentimillenial Jetta, I'm not in the market.) When Soren pops around the corner, or shouts that I need to get in the car, I just don't get bothered anymore.

Child locks suck. At more than one point, my tour of back seats left me in the embarrassing position of needing either to climb out the far side (to Soren's protests) or to beg fellow patrons to let me out because some previous attendee had triggered the child lock on the door I entered.

Overall, I will say that I'm impressed with the ground that American car companies have made on foreign automakers over the last few years: touch and feel quality was definitely comparable within price point in the cars I saw today. Of course, that's just the perspective of a back seat driver.

RIP 110 Film

Remember that first camera? The slab of a thing that took 110 film and flash cubes, or maybe one of those weird disc cameras, or the Kodak Polaroid-clone which you only had for ten months before Kodak got sued and had to take it off the market? It was so cool to get to take photos of anything you wanted, and you probably didn't even notice the aggrieved looks on your parents' faces every time they had to shell out for another roll of film or another set of crappy prints.

Well, now Soren has his very first camera. A slab of a thing with an LED flash and 50-cent software. It's fabulous.

Digital photography is a wonderful thing, my friends. Not only does Soren get to take a billion pictures of anything he wants, the only thing I have to shell out for is another set of AAA batteries every once in a while. He even has his very own Flickr account, so he can share his weird pictures with the three other people in the world who would like to see them. I am proud to be one of those three people.

Need for Speed

I just wanted to state for the record that I love sledding, and I am so glad that Soren finally likes sledding. It snowed all day today, and we went out to the hill down the street and spent about an hour going up and down and dodging all the kids who choose for some reason to climb back up the middle of the hill where everyone else is trying to sled instead of going off to the side. It was sweeeet!

Also sweet was the sledding Chris and I got to enjoy at the Proctors' house in New Hampshire. They have a perfectly good sledding hill right in the backyard, with a nice steep part at the beginning and a long slope that can lead you right to the back door on your last run if you happen to be as talented as I am. Sure, it feels a little disrespectful to stand in front of the old cemetery at the top of the hill and yell "FIRE IN THE HOOOOOLE" as you charge onto your sled, but no actual hauntings have been reported yet. There's even a bonus feature where you get to shoot between a couple trees at the fastest point, but without the actual risk that you will run into a tree trunk and get a bruise on your leg that somehow seems to exceed the size of your leg. Which may have happened at some point on a different, perhaps ill-advised, trail on the property which was roughly hewn from a former logging road in 2004. I've tried a few times to share a photo of the bruise in question, but iPhoto crashes every time I try to export the picture. I guess iPhoto has better judgement about these things than I do.

A bunch of the New Hampshire crowd, including Chris and me, coincidentally got LED headlamps for Christmas, and we discovered that there can be no higher purpose for headlamps than sledding in the dark. It'll be a few years until the kids are ready for that kind of thing, but I'm really looking forward to it!