I’ve left New York. What started as a ten-day trip to hammer out some business with Alex turned into five weeks of sleeping on his blue velour sectional, plenty of brainstorming, a ton of new friends and adventures the wooly world of startups that I couldn’t conceive of when I boarded that eastbound redeye in Sacramento over 4th of July weekend. But come to an end it has. We’re off to Monterey in 144B. We’ve enlisted the talents of Autoblog’s resident Northern California boy, Damon Lavrinc, to handle additional driving duties. We’re also attempting to warp the poor man’s brain. We’ve never attempted a driveplan that involved meeting an airline flight before, but that’s exactly what we’ll be attempting this time when we pick up Liz Moses.
She claims that she’ll bring some much-needed sense to the proceedings, but we’re a bit curious as to how much sense anyone who hitches a ride in a fake German police car crewed by a bald man, a bearded man and a blogging man could possibly have. Nevertheless, we intend to make our trek a memorable one. We’ll be broadcasting live video from Seero, as well as putting together one of our signature maps. We’ll be ruminating on the nature of driving in today’s America, passing through hamlets large and small as we travel the entire length of Interstate 80 — from the George Washington Bridge in New York to the Bay Bridge in San Francisco, then tooling down 101 through Silicon Valley and south to Steinbeck Country — where we’ll take in the goings on during what’s internationally recognized as the most fantastic collection of automotive events in one weekend. If you call yourself a car guy and haven’t made it to Monterey, mark your calendars. And once you experience it, you’ll want to come back every year.
Seems logical that Cali would have the most speed traps (according to speedtrap.org) as they’re the most-populated and have tons of roads. The rest of the top 10 fall into the similar population-to-area ratio. In descending order after Cali, the most speed traps are in Texas, Florida, Illinois, Michigan, NY, Ohio, NJ, Pennsylvania and Georgia. South Dakota, which is near the bottom, also has the city considered the safest to drive in, which is Sioux Falls, according to Allstate Insurance. You probably won’t be finding many of Jalopnik’s Top Ten Real Life Car Chases coming from that state.
The New York International Auto Show brings together automotive enthusiasts of every stripe and level of interest. Hardy souls journeyed from as far afield as Austria, Sweden and Virginia to check out Polizei Interceptor 144B and chat about our jovial, demented brand of law enforcement. Sadly, inevitably, some folks were either ill-informed about the goings-on in the automotive world or — at the extreme end of things — complete and utter dunderheaded Ostrogoths when it came to cars, the law and life and how to live it. Of Visigoth persuasion ourselves — especially Mme. Lau — we enjoyed a few hearty chuckles at their expense. Come along, won’t you, and peruse our list of sublime, stupid, and outright head-scratch-frenzy-inducing quotes from the show after the jump.
It’s not the new Sony/Cannon/Olympus point-and-shoot mega megapixel camera, it’s Laser Atlanta’s SpeedLaser B radar which utilizes LIDAR technology that can give a reading in 0.3 seconds. It also includes proprietary stealth features, jammer detection and inclement weather modes. Perhaps this will keep Mike Valentine busy for a while.
I’ve never understood houseboats. Bad houses, worse boats. How many seemingly congruous combo "things" have ever been as good as their separate components? TV/VCR’s? No. TV’s can last decades, yet VCRs seldom last 5 years. TV/DVD players? Same problem. SUV’s? If you want a sports car yet need a truck, even a Porsche Cayenne Turbo isn’t as good a sports car or truck as the Porsche Cayman S and Ford F-150 you could buy for the Cayenne’s $115,000+.
Truth is stranger than fiction. Valentine Research - makers of the vaunted V1 Radar/Laser Detector in uninterrupted use by yours truly since its initial release in 1992 - chose, in a highly appreciated yet unexpected move, to use a (long-forgotten) quote of mine in what someone at their office with a sense of humor must consider an expert/celebrity(!?) endorsement of the V1’s supremacy.
GPS functionality has grown common amongUK detectors, yet although I’m convinced of its utter necessity if implemented correctly, I’m still not convinced it’s time to replace my V1.
