The first thing that caught my eye was the color. A bright yellow car really stands out against a green landscaping and a blue sky. Then what really grabs you is the size. This is a small car, a very small car. It is smaller than a Mini Cooper for crying out loud!I was looking at a smart fortwo, an interesting little car from a joint venture between Swatch, the Swiss watchmaker and Mercedes-Benz. The EPA gas mileage rating for this pod of a car is 33 city/41 highway mpg. Prices start around $14,000.00.
This smart fortwo was spotted in the parking lot of 6955 Oakland Mills Road (think Ledo’s Pizza and Sizars foodmarket) in Columbia.
It was my daughter who spotted these. We were driving up Frederick Road from downtown Ellicott City towards Rogers Avenue. My daughter was in the back seat.“There are shoes in the wires daddy,” she comments, “what are they doing there?”
Of course I didn’t see them. I was focused on the road ahead among other things. Then again, I really didn't have to, I’ve seen shoes hanging from telephone wires before. I told her that sometimes people just toss a pair of shoes up into the wires for no good reason at all. That seemed to be a good enough answer for her.
Today, when I found myself heading up the same stretch of road, I looked for those shoes. I don’t know how they got there but I do know that at some point those laces will rot away and a pair of Nike hiking boots will return to earth. On the other hand, those are probably nylon laces so it could take awhile.
2 comments:
That car only gets 41mpg on the highway? A Honda Civic gets 35mpg.
I saw tons of these in Germany when I was there working in 2002. Many more small cars there for a long time as the roads are often more narrow and the gas prices hirer there for a long time. In fact there was a display of them in large clear boxes, stacked on top of one another in the way that Swatch watches used to be displayed. A Smart car on the Autobahn where there is no speed limit is an interesting thing.
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