Some years ago, I found myself with a dead battery in the office parking lot. One of my coworkers tried a jumpstart. His puny little four-banger couldn't do anything more than produce a sad little click on my very large heavy-duty V8, so he took me down the street to the nearest store and I bought a new battery.

Now, it's important to put yourself in the shoes of an average city-dweller with no particular mechanical or automotive interest to understand what happened next. He'd always lived in town. He'd had a cell phone for years. He'd always had AAA. If you look at a modern engine and then at all the fasteners involved in changing the battery from the perspective of a totally non-mechanical, non-electrical, non-handy type, you can see how it might be a little intimidating.

After he saw me replace a battery in the dark in only a few minutes without even getting my office clothes dirty, he realized that it was actually pretty easy, just a step-by-step process you had to understand and a couple of tools. It inspired him to do a little learning, even though he always had help close at hand, simply because he saw value in being just a little more self-sufficient.

But that didn't make him reckless. The next time he had a problem that, at a glance, seemed like it should be easy, he sat down to do his own research. He saw that it was clearly more than he could handle, so he had a shop do it.

That's the best possible outcome. He will never do much of his own work, nor should he because that's not his background or his interest. It really isn't mine either, and he knew that, so seeing me just casually do something that had always looked like black magic flipped a switch in his head. It gave him the power to make his own decision, and he had the wisdom to know his own limitations.

Excerpt from a police report on an accident:

A preliminary investigation has found that the vehicle was traveling east on 223rd Street. The vehicle went over the railroad tracks in Bucyrus, lost control, went into the south ditch causing it to go airborne. The vehicle crossed 3rd Street in the air, struck a tree, struck the roof of the residence and landed on its side trapping the driver. Speed is believed to be a factor.

The driver lost control at the railroad crossing and hit the ditch fast enough for the car to go flying over the street, bounce off a tree, bounce off a roof, and land in somebody's back yard. Yes, I think there is a chance that speed might have been a factor here.

Rolling down the interstate.

@HammerheadFistpunch That class is clearly not named correctly. It should be "Leadership in Large Companies".

@HFV The engine doesn't have boost so they use boosted paint to make sure every car can have boost. But if they put that paint on a car with the turbo it would be too much boost and the car would explode.

I had to hit a Chrysler/Dodge/Jeep/Ram/foo/bar/baz dealership parts counter, which was near the back of the lot in a separate building with all the service and repair work. This was on display by the door. I was short on time and the light was bad, so no really good pictures.

When people make a mess at S.H.I.E.L.D., they really make a mess. So I think I should make the budget work to get myself a Viper.

The Viper AS1050R runs dual brushes at 240RPM and can scrub a 3-foot swath at 5mph. They claim it can clean over 84000 square feet per hour and scrub its way up a 16% grade. It has 53 gallon solution and recovery tanks - no running dry at critical moments. And I can use its USB power outlet to keep my phone charged while I work to ensure that I'm always reachable in case of a custodial emergency.

To be clear, wanting a Viper isn't about the bragging rights, or the night shift basement corridor racing scene, or the women. Sure, all of those are great, but really it's about the heroes. I don't mean me, no matter how often people say I'm the real hero I still don't feel like one. I mean the field agents who lay it on the line to keep the rest of us safe. You can't afford to have your team distracted by a grimy floor when the fate of the world could be hanging in the balance. After all, all of us in the business know that Kim Philby used spills to distract people when he smuggled secrets to the Soviets during the Cold War, and a key strategy in the HYDRA infiltration was leaving greasy fingerprints on the interview room walls.

A while back I got a call from Kraus who cleans the Avengers compound. Almost her whole crew was down with the flu. Next thing I know, there's a big battle on TV, and then half the world turns to dust. And who had to clean up all that dust? Only about half the janitors were left. I had to give Bobby's wife a vacuum cleaner bag of his remains, and I didn't even have time to go get a flag to drape over it even though he died in the line of duty wiping down the doorknobs in corridor 3C.

People were still finding that stuff two years later. With the right cleaning equipment maybe they could have stayed focused and reversing the snap might not have taken 5 years. See, the real reason I want- no, not want, need a Viper AS1050R is for all of you, and for the rest of the world, and for the whole universe.

Here's some footage of this baby in action:

@ranwhenparked Isn't there a third possibility? You could murder the seller. It's important to keep an open mind about your options.

It was a National XT Commando, if you care.

@Snakesm13 Are you going to post a writeup once you figure out how to use a push-up bra to control an electrical outlet? A lot of residential circuits are only rated for 15A, so a 36A bra should have enough capacity.

You can still dress kind of like Han Solo, even if you're not racing a Jag in your Challenger. It's a timeless look.

@Gabriella

@Otto Obviously you should have one each of yellow, pink, gold, and blue. If you memorize the pattern you'll be able to tell at a glance when you last rotated them!

@MUSASHI66 I think travel is almost the only time I eat a real breakfast, so I always make sure it's a good one. I'm too lazy to do it myself most days, so it's just tea and coffee until lunch.

@ash78 At most of the companies I've been at it's been common for people to either adjust their hours to have at least a little overlap with other offices or have late/early calls to check in and do any turnover. In some cases it was an official working shift, but usually the teams could do whatever worked for them.

The bigger problem was when US teams worked with Middle East teams who had a Thu-Fri or Fri-Sat weekend. You'd hit the two different weekends back to back and everything would end up taking a full week to turn around.

@CarsOfFortLangley I live in a place where you almost need an off-road vehicle just to survive the city streets.

@Roadkilled "You can see an egg on the road 10 feet ahead of the car." Was some madman running around West Germany in the 1970s leaving eggs on the road?

@tae I might have once compared somebody's driving to that of an untrained monkey behind the wheel.

@Mazda616 I hope you've been instructing him in all the proper profanity to leave the right first impression on teachers.

@CB I think the three big things are reliability, maintenance, and fit-for-purpose. Even if it's not doesn't-run level problems, some cars just always have something noticeable that isn't working right. Some cars will last forever but require normal maintenance items ridiculously often. Some are perfectly adequate but get sold specifically to do things that they can't do properly. All of those things are also relative, because even the "bad" mainstream cars today are often better in all of those ways than most of the cars 30 years ago were.

And, beyond that, any car that does not have enough exterior wood is bad, but really that's so obvious that I don't know why I'm even bringing it up.