Zen and the art of driving in the dark

In the dark there is the occasional opportunity to drive somehow on the limits of perception and judgement. I'm not mean driving on the edge of sleep more driving on some conscious level that allows a deep and trusted automatic pilot to take over. This is night time motorway driving at it's best and it can be a surreal and rewarding experience. The miles and the road clicks slip by, the constant speed and rhythm propel you into a driving mind state quite unlike anything else. At some point you will tire and become aware of some seat discomfort, a stiff leg or and itch and the spell will break. Then it's back to normal controlled driving, more muddy thinking and an anxious wait for a dark hot coffee at the next service station.

Steak Bake

Not a particularly active Cougar day today. A shortish, well normal and the same length every time drive to work and back. A brief stop in a Greigs for a traditional Scottish breakfast proved however to be slightly damaging to both my jeans and the slightly worn driver’s seat. The accursed, over heated and a bit too runny and tasty for it’s own good steak-bake did the damage. After a bit of wiping up and emergency garbage disposal I was back on the road again. I burned the roof of my mouth also, a bad experience to be filed under greedy bad, early morning decision.

Still and dark

The metal stays cold. It's been cold for months it seems, and muddy and salty and spattered with a thousand different marks thrown up by a thousand trucks or buses or Range Rovers. Road film, grease, oil and unidentifiable matter, a stew of mixed material from the four corners of a five cornered universe. I need to get to a car wash pronto, once the daylight returns.

Night

Sometimes I lose myself in a night time drive. The motor hums in the distance, the radio chatters, the lights and traffic life blur and folds up around me, outside we are traveling. The tyre noise can be dismissed, vibration and dry heat are ignored, the aches and pains and irritations of the day before. All passed on and away, grippnig onto the wheel. Only the sense of traveling, traveling in some kind of vehicle. And when you get there you know.

Smoothly eccentric

Up and out in to another January morning, engine starts first crank, no sign of the annoying squeak that the latter part of the trip back from Aberdeen generated and after about six miles a puff of heat emerges from the reluctant heater. The heater has never been very good or at least quick to respond. The heater matrix had a major fault early on in my ownership and a new one was fitted, whilst this solved a host of other problems (massive water leaks) it never does really offer up a shot of quick early morning warmth that these chilly mornings call for. Ho hum.

In the end the recurrent minor faults and the things that you never get round to fixing or refuse to fix are what gives your car character and to some extent, if you believe these things a personality. One day I'll list the faults and perhaps they'll add up to some greater whole that might explain or define or I suppose balance up the good points about living with any motor car however smooth, rough or in my case eccentric...smoothly eccentric.

Aberdeen

Drove to Aberdeen and back again. My daughter and son in law were moving house. Carried numerous boxes and bits of furniture. A quick run to a Chinese carry out called Chop Chop and then home, in the rain. It rained all day, very tired etc.

Open bonnet

I did open the bonnet the other day and everything seemed to be in right place and was of course, much to my predictable horror, covered in the customary January road film.

Day 723 of Cougar ownership and drivership: The gauge says 4 degrees of something is occurring outside, the every present weather resetting itself. Now that its turned marginally milder the gritters seem to be spreading again, all normal inefficient balances restored once again.

Petrol prices creep up to point where there is no right price. A few pence on a litre obviously bumps the oil company profits but most motorists driving older and dirtier cars are past caring now - we have accepted the inevitable and the steady decline in our fortunes that must occur. Having said that I'm still hitting the 38.7 mpg mark. The computer never lies but the custom and bespoke tyre sizes (thank you Tom Farmer) probably blow the calculations and everything else.

Who is counting?

Day 722 of Cougar ownership has dawned weakly, got a bit brighter, then cloudy, overcast, the sun set but I wasn't really paying attention and it got dark (as expected), the street lamps came on somewhere and various other things took place, I missed many of them. I enjoyed the 7 mile drive to work and listened to the wonky radio - the nearside door speaker bursts into life unexpectedly now and again surprising me and my occasional passengers. Then I drove home via a brief but necessary detour.

Meanwhile, earlier in the day (or was it yesterday?) I replaced the wipers on the firm, clean and well lit car park surface at a branch of Tesco. Oil was also added to a 3/4 full engine. Easier done there than on our very muddy front drive.

Lest we forget

There are of course many types of Cougar, some more interesting than an old and slowly rusting vehicle made of steel, plastic and rubber. You'd be far better perhaps getting an eager and intimate welcome to Cougartown or possibly somewhere on the outskirts via the warm jets of Air New Zealand. There are other airlines, other countries, alternative big cats and more appropriate and kinder names for the older type of active lady, if you must generalise and label things and people.

Parked and dirty

Sunday: Declared an impromptu no-drive day for no good reason. Doors stay closed, locks stay locked, everything quiet and at rest.

The snow and temporary ice age has passed so we walked up the lane and enjoyed a liquid lunch at the village pub. Sometimes cars look fine just standing still, parked and dirty and a good walk sparks the circulation and unblocks the blockages. They also use a lot less juice in this steady state.

The Art of Cougar via the aliens

I'm quite fond of this tinted and fuzzy night time photograph that's nicely showing the curvier aspects of the car's design. I like the sexy rear window line and the UFO Area 51 inspired top design. Funnily enough just out of shot and hovering over the Fife street lights was in fact a real UFO, one of many to be regularly seen in this area. I thought for a few seconds and decided to keep my camera steadily focused on the car, you've got to get your priorities right in this wonky life.

An unexpected visit

I had ten minutes to kill so I wandered into a handy Halfords. A new set of Bosch wipers and a proper jug of 5w30 squiggle oil (or something) was duly purchased. I felt like a proper motorist. I also managed to escape without buying any useless gadgets or crap from the January sales dump bins. Motoring is such fun, at times.