The Car: A place to do everything but drive

It is said that we spend almost six years of our lives driving a car. We are wasting six years driving to places to spend the rest of our years, well if you are like us, you aren’t wasting those 6 years at all, you’re milking this time for all its worth. Rather than look at car rides as a negative, look at them as a positive. This is a solid block of time when there is nothing you HAVE to do but a world of possibilities of what you can do at your fingertips, and none of the things you can think of involve solely driving.

Driving a car has always been a multi tasking sport. In fact, in case you didn’t know, like many things, the Ancient Egyptians were the first to multitask. While hauling huge bricks to the pyramids, Egyptian men found away to move these bricks while praying to the sun god Ra, while also permanently ruining their spine simultaneously. No small feat.

The modern days of in-car entertainment however started with the radio, two things which separate can be boring, but together are great. Have you ever sat in a room and just listened to music? No, it’s boring as hell, but listing to music as you do other things, is great. Driving is the same way, have you ever had a broken radio in your car and driven in silence? Well they say the seat belt is the most important safety feature in a car, but I’m going to have to go against that and say the radio is. You know how many times you would fall asleep out of sheer boredom without a radio to keep your mind occupied? Try every drive over twenty minutes. The radio is the most basic and safest thing to do while driving, but it is far from the only thing you can do. Why just drive when it can be accompanied by:

- Talking on the cell phone - talking on the phone while driving is the modern day listing to the radio while driving. Seemingly every month studies come out that say talking on the phone while driving causes these many accidents or talking on the phone while driving hinders your concentration by so much, but may we present the theory that talking on the phone is actually a safety harness? Much like the radio being in the car, talking on the phone keeps you active, alert, lively and most importantly awake. You can only listen to so much NPR or Delilahhhhhhhhhh before you are nodding off. Talking on the phone allows you to stay entertained and awake, and also lets you be productive while you’re driving. How many times a week do you think, ah I was supposed to call Mike back, oh I’ll call him when I get in the car? How about all the time. It’s so much easier to keep in touch with people when you’ve got a long car ride to take every day and you can bang out a few phone calls in. When your done getting those out of the way you inevitably call up “Long Drive Friend” (for more information on long drive friend please see the blog entry: Phones and Friends) For John, making a long hour and 15-minute commute to and from work would have been impossible everyday if not for the lifeline that was his dad. In fact, John’s relationship with his dad improved 10-fold. So not only is it a Driver Safety Feature, but it’s also a Relationship Bolster Valve.

- Texting- Where as we tried to make an argument that talking on the phone while driving is a safe thing to do, texting while driving is probably the most dangerous thing you can do while your driving. But just like people who smoke or those who ignore the “dry clean only” tag, we do it anyway. Everyone has done it, and everyone should stop. Talking on the phone is one thing, you can have a hands free device, or you can hold it with one and still drive just as easily with the other hand, but texting? If you have a phone with a full QWERTY keyboard you’re texting with 2 hands and driving with the knee. But despite the fact that we’re asking for an accident, it’s way better than actually calling the person you’re texting. In the time it would have taken to simply call up your flaky friend to cancel your “play date” (Approx. 5 seconds), it’s way better to text “I can’t make it, sorry dude, something came up” which takes about 7 minutes of looking up and down at the road and at the phone screen. If you don’t have a QWERTY keyboard you may think you are at an advantage because you only need one hand. Not so fast my friend. That predictive text can be a killer. Instead of “I Can’t make it, I’m sorry dude, something came up,” you’re typing something totally illegible like, “I cant male it? Go sorry dude, something band us.” That’s not good either because who rereads their text while in the car?

By the way, what’s worse than driving with your knee? Your eyes are clearly focused on the keys on your phone, you’re not even looking at the road other than a slight glance every now and then. But it’s all worth it right? Driving in these dangerous conditions is totally worth letting Betsy know that you thought last nights episode of the office was hilarious too, LOL. The worst part about texting while driving? We all know it’s not a good thing to do, and we’re writing this post about it, but its not going to stop us from doing it. In fact we wrote much of this post via text message in the car.

- Eating- Who has time to enjoy that subway sandwich IN subway? That foot-long turkey is getting housed the second you get back in your car. Shit, you don’t even park the car to unwrap it. That’s just delaying you from being late even more. In fact you’re spreading even more mayonnaise on that hoagie WHILE you drive. That little mayo packet comes in handy when accomplishing this feat. No knife necessary with the packet because now you’re spreading the mayo with the tip of the packet. So what if a little lettuce is the casualty of mayo sticking to it as you spread sandwich lube on that Italian herb and cheese roll. It’s all in the name of not wasting one more possible second, while evenly spreading that mayo also while not getting your hands dirtier than they are.

- Like eating a sub, changing clothes is another perfect time saver when you’re late. Stuck in traffic? Boom the shoes come off. Though to be honest, you weren’t driving with shoes on were you? No way. Anyway, you’re at a traffic signal, you’re sliding the pants off and grabbing the gym clothes and putting them on. Who needs the gym locker room and the discomfort of seeing all those naked old men strut their stuff when you can change in your car? If you’re lucky and get it done fast enough you may even be able to lean forward at the next light and stretch your hamstrings and arms. Now there’s nothing getting between you and the stationary bike.

- Watching a movie is a relatively new feature in cars. Some Fancy McRichPaws may have some gizmo that’s integrated into the dashboard or something like that. But you can get a ghetto hook up with your iPod or even your laptop with the help of a FM transmitter or a tape deck converter. Now your car has become the ultimate home theater. Where else are you going to get 6-speaker surround sound in a 6’x6’ area? Nowhere, that’s where. But if you’re going to do this, it’s best that you play a movie you know really well because that way you don’t need to actually see it. When Forrest Gump says, “…it was the most beautiful voice I’d ever heard in the whole wide world,” you know he’s getting on that bus and he’s meeting that skank Jenny just after being told, “you can’t sit here-aaaaaaa,” by that douche kid with the flattop haircut.

- For some who have inter web capabilities, the car has also become your fantasy baseball team’s official home away from home. If it’s after 7 p.m. and you’re in the car, you’re checking the stats. Of course the best thing about this is that phone Internet takes about 4 minutes to load ANY page so therefore by the time you’ve looked up four of your players, you’re already arriving at your destination.

- Because you’re doing oh so much on the road, one thing that’s bound to happen is that you’re going to miss that exit on the highway or that part of the road where the road changes street names. In a predicament like this it’s time for the ghetto-on-star. No one actually has the real On-Star. That’s because you’d have to own a GM make car for that, and then you’re using the On-Star to get your hog towed from the spot where you broke down. Anyway, ghetto GPS/On-Star is simple: it consists of calling your friend who is hopefully by a computer and having them google-Maps you back to where you need to be. Who hasn’t done this at one point or another? Yet another way how cell phones+car=lifesaver, only this is more of a headache lifesaver, but a lifesaver nonetheless because who likes being lost.