Parallel Parking in Ridgewood

 

 

     Joe Farrell got off a good one liner in my post about Roger Sweeney teaching me the finer points of driving and about cars in the 70s being bigger and thus easier to parallel park, especially if you used the old standby calculation of 1 1/2 cars lengths to estimate your approach. When it came time for me to take my driver's test I had a choice between our "boat" of a Buick station wagon and this little Opel Manta Luxus, sans the young Molly Ahearn of course. Being young and wanting to show my prowess as a driver, I went with the small car which had the stick shift and passed with no troubles. The Opel had been purchased by my Dad when he had turned 50 and I sometimes wonder if there was some sort of mid-life change going on in his mind. Not a crisis but maybe a realization that life is short, and that if you can afford a small indulgence of a car like this one, then by all means go out and buy it. The rest of the family ultimately got much more use out of it then he ever did but that didn't seem to phase him, unless it was left dirty or without gas when he wanted to use it to go golfing on the weekends. On those occasions his temper would flare and pity the poor soul who forgot. He wasn't a violent man, and never once did he ever hit any of his, but you could expect a severe lecture and the loss of driving privileges until he had cooled down. Now that I am 50 I am beginning to see some of the changes that we all go through at this age, I wonder how this will all manifest itself. Living in NYC I don't have the garage space for a sports car, in addition to my tried and true Mazda. Though maybe a career change is in my future. I have spent the last 15 years working in IT and maybe there is some authentic next step which I ought to try and get in tune with. We'll see what changes lie in store. One thing for certain, you can count on me posting my observations here on this blog.