Egregious idling
Meanwhile… Back on the Planet Ann Arbor…
I do not know what people did when they had to haaaannnnngggg around in hoosegows before wifi and smartphones and iPads and laptops became ubiquitous. Well, actually I do because my dad did a stintus horribilis at the Henry Ford Hoosegow in downtown Dee-troit before he died and I drove down there just about every goddamn day. My beauteous white MacBook 12″ G4 Powerbook could not find a wifi signal at all. Nothing. Nada. People with gunshot wounds getting dumped out of vans outside the ER? Yes. Wifi? Hmmm…
That was 2006. 2012? Our loverly little small-city hoosegow up here in Siberia has an open wifi signal. And believe you me, that thing saves my life. It is my communication line to the outside world. Friends and family. And news. And so, npJane and I were hanging around there this afternoon and The Commander was sleeping pretty dern peacefully and I checked my Twitter feed yet again aaannndd…
Bling! There was this tweet from annarbor.com:
The vehicle idling ordinance will be discussed at tonight’s #AnnArbor City Council work session. Your thoughts?
I had to work VERY hard to keep my eyeballs from rolling totally back in my head in disgust but instead, I rolled them over toward npJane and read the tweet to her. Btw, npJane is a life-long denizen of The Planet Ann Arbor. Sheesh. Our wondrous city council in its infinite wisdom has actually been considering making it illegal to idle your automotive vee-hickle. Okay. I get that idling an automotive vee-hickle *unnecessarily* adds to air pollution, which can cause problems for people with asthma, etc. I remember all the perfectly coiffed Lincoln Navigator (is that even a car any more?) moms picking up their kids at Forsythe, letting their vee-hickles run to preserve the inside atmosphere. That kind of idling *is* egregiously unnecessary. My kind of idling? Yaknow. I do not have a gaaaarage at the Landfill. When it is below 32 degrees Fahrenheit and my veeeendsheeeeld has a quarter inch of ice on it, starting the vee-hickle with the defroggers on and, uh, letting it idle for 10-15 minutes makes it a heckuva lot easier to scrape zee veeeensheeeeld. Well, and then there’s the kind of idling that happens when the left turn signal at the Jackson / N. Maple intersection has one of those hiccupy days when it only lets five vee-hickles through at a time and I have to wait for 4-5 cycles before I can actually, like, turn left. What are we gonna do about that kind of idling, hmmm?
Oh, our fav-o-rite comment?
What’s next for the People’s Republic of Ann Arbor…a no-farting law?
Gooooood night. Who knows what’s next for tomorrow? I wish I had a crystal ball. Oh, wait? Wasn’t that on my birthday list? Or not…
Love y’all,
KW
January 17th, 2012 at 10:33 pm
Really – and who is going to enforce such an ordinance? I guess the upside is that apparently the council has to make up silly ordinances because they don’t have bigger problems to deal with.
January 17th, 2012 at 10:46 pm
Seattle has signs at all drawbridges requesting cars to turn off their engines when the bridge is up. Hard to believe, but many do not follow the polite request.
January 17th, 2012 at 11:06 pm
I would comment, but my car is idling …
January 17th, 2012 at 11:22 pm
Silly!! Cars do idle, even when there is a person at the wheel. I don’t let mine do so without me in it because a few in my neighborhood have had their cars jacked when they left them out idling. (and also because mine is garaged) Do love wifi myself!!
January 18th, 2012 at 8:23 am
My Prius shuts itself off – I’m just so so so green