| I am become White Van Man, shouter of obscenities |
[Jul. 3rd, 2007|12:59 am] |
Cambridge is now ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) wildeabandonless (but it's ok, because she'll come back regularly). Things I have learned and/or (over-)generalised from helping with this process:
- Cambridge Car & Van Rental are to be recommended and will hire vans to a 23-year-old (me as of a month ago), though they were a bit booked up and therefore didn't have a long wheel base one available.
- I seem to be able to drive a van passably (yes, I'm aware that this is almost as foolish an ability to announce as tech support).
- I probably would have had somewhat more difficulty with a long wheel base van. Manoeuvres were difficult enough as it was.
- London driving is hard, London parking is harder, more so in a van. This was only the Finsbury Park area; I dread to think what it would have been like further in.
- "Drive-by-wire" vehicles (those with power-assisted everything) are annoying; they provide far too little feedback in the controls and therefore require more attention to e.g. sound.
- There is nowhere sensible to place a GPS receiver in a van cab, even if separate from the device running the software; there's just slightly too little sky that isn't blocked by metal. This can result in directions being spoken a few seconds too late, which is irritating. Adjustable timing of TomTom's directions would have solved this, but does not exist.
- Moving the brake pedal of an empty van by a seemingly sane amount will result in enough braking power to stop a full van (and therefore potentially an emergency stop).
- People don't just slam van doors out of frustration or for dramatic effect, they really don't close properly otherwise.
- On a vehicle the proper parking of which is that difficult, I can be grudgingly persuaded of the usefulness of the I-have-parked-stupidly-and-caused-a-hazard lights, for 30-second stops.
|
|
|
amused