re: door dingers

[lee@wheelman.com (Lee M. Levitt)]

"P-O Selander (EUS)" <EUSPOS@am1.ericsson.se> writes:

>I feel for you. Know exactly what you mean. The only solution (short of
>educating the entire public) is to park way off, close to a plantation, wall
>or whatever so as little as possible of car is "exposed". Since people
>generally are lazy, parking way off to one side normally leaves you alone.
>Unfortunately not that easy to practice in big and congested cities (in
>Dallas it worked great, in Seattle another story...). I've tried a few times
>to nicely "lecture" the vandals but I don't think it works in the long run.
>The US mega consumption culture is in many way a "buy and trash" culture so
>why should people care more for their cars than they care for anything
>else...? Sad state of mind.
>

Or you can do as I did...after way too many years of being neurotic about
this, I sold my 9 year old showroom condition turbo wagon and bought a real
sport utility vehicle. Took it into the woods and scraped the sh&t out of
it.  4WD aficionados fondly refer to this as "desert pinstriping", after
the effect that an encounter with a cactus will have on your paint. My
truck is nicely scraped now, left, right and top. Do I worry about door
bangers? Sure, a bit. But not nearly as much as I used to :)

Trust me, life is much simpler when you don't have to worry about those
zipperheads in the parking lot...and I have a lot more time to do things
other than detail the car every weekend. I still inspect the Audi
periodically for dings and dents...but I've learned to live with them too.
My wife drives the Audi and she couldn't care less.

Interestingly, we are in Florida for the week, and in meeting some friends,
she said "yes we rented a silver Audi." I had to correct her..."that's a
*Camry* honey." I think it was a Freudian slip :)

BTW, I was offered a $15 upgrade to a new Saab 9-5 by Budget. I countered
with $5, since the upgrade wasn't worth that much to me...but they
declined. They also offered me a Jag for $140/day. Um, no.

Lee