Fresh Ideas

Sometimes I get an idea that just seems, well, really good. For instance, I have two cars. One of the cars has the stereo controls on the steering wheel. Pretty handy, right? The other one does not. It just has the cruise control stuff on there.

If I drive the new car long enough, sometimes I forget which car I’m driving and I’ll try and adjust the stereo volume with controls on the old car’s steering wheel. This means speeding up when I want turn up the volume, and then slowing down when I’m trying to lower the volume because I just hit the car in front of me.

I replaced the stock radio in the old car with a slightly newer one. It can’t give me control via the steering wheel, but it does come with a remote control. It took maybe a whole two seconds of thinking that I could mount the remote onto the steering wheel.

So I took a minute to look around and saw that the ony place that had enough room to hold the remote would be the center. So I got some super strong double-sided tape and taped that baby right smack in the center.

I took it out for a spin to see how much new life had been given to the Battle Wagon. I got up to cruising speed, put on some Starland Vocal Band and then tried to crank up the tunes!

What I got was a lot of horn honking. I tried to turn down the music so I could find out who was honking at me (should be everyone, right? Who doesn’t like Starland Vocal Band, right?) but that just brought on more honking. So I tried to turn it up! More honking!

After a while I noticed a police car behind me with his bubble gum machine going. I pulled over and this trooper stalks up to the car and tells me to turn down the music. There was more horn honking. He told me to stop honking. I said, “What?”

“Turn down the volume! Stop honking! Turn down the volume! Stop honking!” Finally he reached into the car and slapped my hands away. Then he started hammering on the remote until it flew into a bunch of pieces. That’s when the air bag went off.

He was a little annoyed. Annoyed enough that he decided I needed a cavity search, right there on the side of the road. For drugs. Or something. I don’t know.

In the end, if you’ll excuse the phrase, I realized that the center of the steering wheel was not a good place for the remote. Turns out, with sufficient pressure, I could honk the horn as I tried to change the volume. Go figure. Not that it mattered, anyway, because the remote needs a line of sight to some magical spot on the radio to work. It wasn’t going to happen with it pointed to wherever the wheel was turned, but upwards. Although, if I had turned the wheel to the right every time I wanted to do something…. No, I’m better off not messing with it. Besides, I’m not going back out to the car because I walk funny.