Yesterday was a big/surreal/strange day
La journée d’hier a été importante/surréaliste/étrange

We bought a second car.

The search is difficult here. I am only licensed to drive an automatic. Every kid these days is learning how to drive an automatic because the training for an automatic is cheaper, like 1000€ cheaper.

Thus, all the automatics are being snatched up.
We called on one and they miraculously answered, but only to let us know the one we were interested in was sold 15 minutes earlier.
The French are notoriously bad at returning cars or emails. This quick response was something of a shock.

All that said, I am getting a 2012 Peugeot 3008.

It is a car from the future. It has Bluetooth (for calls only) and it has a dial pad for your phone. How awesome is that? In all my years I never saw that.
A dial pad, chromium and shiny like a phone booth, though convex buttons, not concave. You would think the tactile feedback of a convex button would be ideal for making calls on the go… Oh well.

The choice came down to 2 cars, one that is 2 years newer with 26,000 miles less on the odometer for about 40% more money, or the car of the future.

Besides, my little miracle from the future has a trailer hitch. You have no idea how cool that is.

When we arrived here 2-1/3 years ago, I identified a trailer hitch as a necessity for country living. When we get a small trailer I can hitch it up and take the maggoty trash bags to the trash bins in town without bringing the writhing maggoty hell into the car, not to mention this completely ameliorates the possibility of wolf spiders hitching a ride. Or worse, a mommy wolf spider with her ensemble of 1000 babies on her back. Imagine that fresh hell.

If I were working, If I were cruising the freeways, if I were taking the 23 to the 118 to the 5 to get to work, I would have bought something fancier, more expensive, but here it is a new life, new needs and very different sensibilities.

Los Angeles was car culture, and I have had a lot of them in my life.
Chevy Impala, Oldsmobile Delta 88, Cadillac Coupe DeVille, Volvo 144, another Volvo 144, Mach 1 Mustang Convertible, Mitsubishi, Honda Civic, Infiniti, Mazda, Lexus, Honda Acura, Mazda,Mini, BMW M235i

Life is different here in France. We have shared a car for 2-1/3 years, but the security of a backup car and the independence of not leaving someone at home without transport, or needing to be dropped off and picked up was too much of a need.

They are meant to be doing some work on the car, there were some flags that popped up in the inspection. I get the car in about 20 days… That’s how things roll here, from our experience.

In the USA, every one of my cars that was bought off the lot, new or used, was driven off the lot. Here it is vastly different, apparently.

The Infinity was a great one. I had a fever at the dealership, we had our daughter with us, my wife was managing the child and the paperwork while I was outside barfing in a trash can. The salesman drove the car to our house for us.

The Acura was a fun one, we needed to get another car for me, don’t recall why the need was so great. I was doing what one does at the company I was working at, sleeping on the couch, working 100 hour weeks, and my wife calls; I’m buying you a car, which one do you like? I had sat in a few different models and makes prior. I said blue.

The search was arduous.
Spreadsheets, web links, Chat GPT evaluation/scoring/ranking. It didn’t clarify the haziness.

We found a local dealer here…
Drove in, talked to a sales person, wandered the lot, identified 2 cars:
The car from the future with the spacecraft-like dashboard and the 40% more euro car with 26k less miles and 2 less years under its belt.

I drove both.

Without paperwork, without trading my ID for the keys, without a signature.

Ok

We went home, deliverated, agonized, did some more searching and decided to pull the trigger.

Then things got fucking weird.

Voldemort (aka #47), The A Team and the sniper
Hard for me to process all this, I may be getting the details wrong.

I sat in the car from the future again, and had a list of questions. It was boiling hot, so I grabbed the keys and my wife and I wandered off to so shade to deliberate some more.

A guy wander up and begins a dialogue in French. He strikes me as a ‘murican based purely off his looks. He looks like a dairy fed Wisconsin boy, grown up, moved to France.

He and my wife get into a conversation. I don’t have enough French to understand most of what is transpiring between them but it isn’t car talk. It is America talk. It is Texas talk, Florida Talk. It is cost of living in America talk and a lot of other talk…

Whe we know about this individual…
America is a great place.
Voldemort is doing the right thing.
He would love a cattle ranch in Texas (my wife suggested Montana)
Locking those people up is a good thing.
All is friends know that if anyone wanders onto his property unannounced they will be shot.
He has no idea that without english, he will be an immigrant too.

He has watched the documentaries (aka done his research)
Why does it cost 3000€ for his wife’s dental work when a man can get a sex change for free, and that dental work would be so much cheaper in America? He asks.

This goes on for some time. There are many more head exploding moments.
He has to leave and goes to his, I kid you not, big transport van, painted black, with a (what looks like a home made roof extension) with a fake “A Team” California license plate…

OK

Off to the sales person, who picks up where Mr. Dairy Fed leaves off. Too many “closed communities” of non French speakers, he relates, looking at me. There is a language school in town full of immigrants where I would do well (undertone I am guessing is shade of skin. I am pasty white, like clotted cream.)
All you need to do is do something you love in a foreign language to better learn it, like when he was training to be a sniper in Germany…

All very surreal.

Here we are, the next day.
I have ordered some things that will allow me to either:

Link my phone via Bluetooth to a cigarette lighter “dongle” that then rebroadcasts my audio via FM radio to the car.

Link my phone headphone jack directly to the RCA plugs in the glove box.

Yes, you read that right.

Remember your Atari 2600 that you had to connect via the antenna to your television… That is sort of what solution number one is like.

Remember the 3 RCA plugs every VCR and television had, the Red, White and Yellow things… That is solution 2.

My new car even has a menu that allows me to select between audio or video in. To be determined whether or not it plays video to the screen. If it does then I need to make an HDMI to component converter. I’ll need to feed it SECAMand not NTSC since it is a French car.

Also designing some stickers for the rear window.

That’s the symbol for an NPN transistor. If you know, you know.

This is the symbol for PETN. It detonates at 8400 m/s. If you have worked with me, you know that I am just like PETN. Shelf stable but high output when ignited.

This is an ADSR envelope. I am not a musician, but this was formative to me when I was a kid.

I am very grateful for my new used vehicle of the future, and can’t wait for the freedom it affords me.