It was great meeting everyone I saw yesterday. It's always
wonderful to be able to put faces to the names of net.friends.
It *might* just be my imagination but I could swear that every year
the cars at the Palo Alto meet get, on the average, a little bit
nicer. It seems to me that there used to be a lot more cars that
served as slightly eclectic (or eccentric) daily drivers. When I
bought my first Sprite for about $250, (in 1980) a college student
could afford to buy one. Even a nice sprite was only worth about $2000,
so there was a lot less incentive to put a lot of money into the car
and bring it up to show quality.
In some ways it's really nice to see all of these cars getting the
attention they deserve lavished upon them. It also makes me realize
why I see so many fewer LBCs on the road every day. When people
lavish that much time, money and effort on a car, they save it for
"special" occasions, rather than wearing it out with they daily commute.
It's kind of funny, because rather than wearing out the LBC they just
dropped $8000 into fixing up, they'll buy a $15000 toyota and wear it
out instead.
It's not just LBCs either. How many beater VW bugs do you see anymore
compared to 20 years ago.
--
Rome did not create a great empire by having meetings; they did it by
killing all those who opposed them.
lrc@red4est.com http://www.red4est.com/lrc
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