• Budwig_v_1337hoven [he/him]
    ·
    3 years ago

    Sorta, yes. For long drives I'll use navigation because my sense of orientation gets pretty messed up long distance - but generally, yea, driving is pretty chill. Sitting in a train is even more chill obviously, but I do generally enjoy being in control of a motorised vehicle, getting a sense of acceleration, the shifting of weight while cornering, finding traction in snowy conditions and all that. If I could afford it, I'd definitely do some amateur racing, every now and then.

    Obviously driving in traffic sucks and car dependency is a blight on the earth etc - but in more rural areas there's no getting around the car and yet traffic is bearable - and I won't pretend to hate it.

    • axont [she/her, comrade/them]
      ·
      3 years ago

      yeah, can't contain my jealously then. Every second of driving is hellish for me. I'm only just now realizing this isn't the case for most people, I thought everyone hated it except for a few who did it as a hobby. Also most people seem to have a much more intuitive sense of roads, locations, north and south, that kind of thing. They can just spit out a list of directions like "Take the 518 south and jump on 110th street then head east on 32nd" and that might as well be a mystic incantation to me. Like the other day my coworker asked me to point in the direction I live in while at work and I couldn't do it. I said like "How in the hell am I supposed to do that?" and I as we talked I realized that if it's within 50 or so miles, people just kind of know what direction things are in.

      Yeah

      • Budwig_v_1337hoven [he/him]
        ·
        3 years ago

        I feel for you, it must suck. The first... year or two of driving, I was extremely anxious about the whole thing. Not just navigation, but the driving itself, especially when I had to get around in unfamiliar vehicles. That really changed with practice over the years tho, I'm pretty relaxed behind the wheel now.

        I also get nervous driving somewhere far away for the very first time, since the navigation part is a bit of an issue for me too. But when I remind myself that I have all the time I need and can, at any point, just pull over and look for the way, I can generally deal with it.

    • drowns [he/him]
      ·
      3 years ago

      I do autocross in my almost bone stock jetta (upgraded suspension and clutch/flywheel). It's super cheap to get into autocross, most people use their daily driven stock cars.

      • Budwig_v_1337hoven [he/him]
        ·
        3 years ago

        Yea, those events sound like good fun, but even that is not cheap for me here - even the gas to get to the track would be a financial consideration lol

        And it looks like there are some serious regulations even on the most casual motor sports here, resulting in like a thousand bucks of gear just to do anything. And I really can't afford to crash my daily driver either

        • drowns [he/him]
          ·
          3 years ago

          yeah fair enough. I live in Maine and there is a small track out in the sticks that does amateur stock car racing. We take that over and do time trials on mostly cones courses... no events with multiple cars on the track. I admit I burn a fair amount of gas to get out there

    • Nagarjuna [he/him]
      ·
      3 years ago

      but in more rural area

      I've lived in rural areas with bus service between the towns and bike lanes letting you get from your house into town. That's bullshit. Transit is usually viable