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Mind Boggingly Big

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caldrail

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This morning was wet. Not heavy rain, but that persistent drizzle that dampens everything. Quite a change from the cloudless sky I saw last night. Most of us star gaze once in a while, and that's exactly what I did from the back window of my home. Sadly, the atmospheric conditions and the glow of street lighting meant you could only see the brighter stars. The night sky is sometimes so much more vivid in the countryside. But there was the Big Dipper, probably the only constellation I recognise.

 

I find it hard to take in what those tiny points of light actually are. Each a massive nuclear furnace that dwarfs the earth, and the nearest a whopping twenty five triillion miles away. At a steady pace, it would take me something like nine hundred and sixty million years to walk there. Even if I drive in a Ferrari flat out, it would still take sixteen million years. A transatlantic jumbo jet takes four million years. The fastest car ever, Thrust SSC, won't be there any sooner than two million years from now. An Saturn V moon rocket at full throttle will still need more than eighty thousand years to cover that distance.

 

You know what? Douglas Adams was right. Space really is mind-boggingly big. This means of course that if space aliens really are visiting earth on a regular basis as is often claimed, they're certainly paying less fuel tax than we are.

 

Big Car of the Week

Is it my imagination or are 4x4's getting bigger? One enormous black vehicle turned a corner in front of me today. I can see why americans class them as trucks, this one surely required a heavy goods vehicle license to be legally driven. Vehicles like that might be okay on the american highway, but in the British west countrys somewhat restricted lanes, it looked ridiculous. Still, you can't argue with sales. Bigger is better in many peoples minds. If it carries on like this, we'll need to drop a mountain-sized meteorite off the coast of Mexico to render them extinct.

 

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No, they've been getting bigger over the years...which peeves me to no end. I've been semi-in-love with the RAV4 for a while...and then saw a brand new one. They made it bigger! The whole point of why I liked it is that it was kinda small--not much longer than my Corolla. Now it's as long as an Avalon, which is quite big. Yet it's still much more cost effective than other small SUVs of its class. *sigh*

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What is it with women and little 4x4's? We blokes go to great lengths to purchase full on supercars and the ladies sneer at our outward display of testosterone. Show them a cute little box on four chunky tires and they melt. I just don't get it. What's the attraction of a faux cross country vehicle that can't corner properly, doesn't seat more than anyone elses, isn't equiipped for arctic tundra, won't be driven on anything remotely muddy, and uses more fuel to go slower?

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I can't speak for all woman-kind, but for me it's practicality yet versatility. The first time I looked at them, I was considering a position in a very snowy area, and my little Corolla wasn't going to cut it...so it made sense. I don't like big cars at all, of any class. But if it can fit easily in a compact space, hold a bit of stuff, and get me around, then I'm all for it.

 

Like I said, now that they've made the RAV4 bigger, it's off the list. Too big!

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