On Sat, 25 Jun 2011 23:30:01 -0700 (PDT), Larry Fishel
wrote:

On Jun 25, 3:55*am, mm wrote:
OT *Your opinion?

On a 3-day weekend a while back I went to a singles event at a beach
front hotel

On Saturday a woman at least 30 y.o. had heard that I lived in the
same city she did, and asked me for a ride home on Monday. *(Most of
those there came from my city or another one.)

I said, "Sure. *I drive a convertible."

How should she have interpreted those words?

Well, after I read that line I assumed the rest of the post was going
to be about how she thought you were trying to impress her, which is
at least as reasonable of an interpretation, especially for anyone
who's never ridden in a convertible with the top down (if you've only
seen it on TV or in the movies, you might think your hair wouldn't
move). Not to mention that this is a singles event where she's had
guys trying to impress her for the last 3 days...

If you, and others, thought of that, I guess it might well be what she
thought of. Convertibles are only about 15% more money than other new
cars, iirc, and by the time I buy the car several years old, that's
not a lot of money. So I've never thought of it as a way to impress
anyone**, but my older brother, who had two of them for maybe 8 years
total told me stories of girls who didn't like them, because of their
hair and the wind, so that's what I was trying to call attention to,
and that's what I thought she heard.

My first convertible was a loan, then a gift, from my brother when he
was in the army in Viet Nam. It had ongoing mechanical problems which
the dealer (soon to be out of business) coudln't fix, and so he bought
another new convertible when he got back from Viet Nam, which worked
fine. So I didnt' even pick out the first car and I liked it mostly
because it was only 2 years old, compared to my previous car that was
15 y.o. It took me a whole year to really get hooked on having the
top down. And this is all part of why I don't think of a convertible
as a way to impress anyone. For me it's about the vista and the breeze
and the relaxation. It still suprpises me but even if everything I'm
looking at would be visible through the windows of a hardtop, it looks
so much better with the top down.


You probably could have spared another 3 seconds to be more clear...

I wish I had.

**I don't think of the car as a way to impress people, though whem the
top is down, I've gotten unsolicited compliments, even once by a
65-year old man when I stopped at a yard sale and hadn't said a word
about my car, and the car was 15 years old. With the top down,
Chryslers and some others have a very sleek line that even hard top
sports cars may not have. But the soft top is a pain in the neck.


Thanks and thanks to everyone who tried to help.