The Valve Stem That Broke The Camel's Back

I've been falling behind, technology wise, for some time now.

The first sign that I was slipping was my total lack of desire to obtain a cell phone, dating all the way back to when they were the size of bricks. Maybe it was because I never liked telephones of any sort to begin with.

People at work always thought I was angry, because I would toss the receiver into the cradle of my desk phone, rather than gently placing it down. It was really because I found most telephone conversations of no value and of great interruption in whatever I happened to be doing at the time the damn thing rang. I hated the sound of ringing telephones so much, I dug into the guts of my telephone and taped up the bell's clapper so it would only rattle, rather than ring.

So, when cell phones came into daily life for most Americans, I fought it. If I wanted to be out of the office, I wanted to be out of the office, not carrying it with me in some faux leather case with convenient cigarette lighter power adapter.

Eventually I had to give in. To a point. I learned the basics, but I have managed to avoid the dubious joys of texting messages, custom ring tones, and the eighty-seven other features every cell phone now comes with. We sent guys to the moon, for God sake, with less technology.

And then there are the cars. You know I love cars. Yet when they started putting computers in them, I studiously made every effort not to learn how they work, what they do, and why. My automotive mind runs with shafts and gears, not electrons, thank you. I justified it by knowing that if there were a nuclear attack, the electro-magnetic pulse would fry all those gizmos buried inside modern automobiles, and I'd have the only car that could get me the hell out of dodge.
Assuming I wasn't fried by the weapon's heat, radioactivity, or killed by collapsing rubble, of course.

That was years ago. Now my nuclear-attack-proof truck is up on blocks in the garage, and I'm driving a couple of cars that make me feel like a moron.

My wife's Honda has a radio I've yet to master in three years of trying. I eventually resort to pushing all of the buttons in random order, hoping to switch from FM to one of it's six (or is it seven?) CD's.

Last weekend, we had a flat tire. I can change a flat. I thought. I succeeded only after reading the owner's manual. Now, I've built race cars; was crew chief on a Chevy V8 powered Porsche Bonneville Land Speed Record car, but I still felt intimidated enough that I had to resort to the manual so as to figure out where to place the damn jack.

The Honda has more warning lights than your average 747. If the tire pressure is off in one wheel, you'll get to see on the dash a little pictogram of a tire's cross-section with an exclamation point in the middle. I even know why the car cares so much about my left-rear tire being two pounds low; it's because it means the wheel is rotating ever-so-much slower than the others, making trouble for your anti-lock-braking system. Changing the flat for the spare tire "donut" caused the pictogram to light up.

Sounds like I know what I'm talking about, huh? Well, I thought I was down with that, as the kids say, up until this morning.

I get a new warning light. No exclamation points or pictograms this time, just meaningless letters. Back to the handbook... and behold: This idiot light is telling me the other idiot light has a problem.

I've got idiot lights for idiot lights. Oh. My. God.

So, I'm in the tire shop, reading the several dozen magazines they've got laid out while the mechanics (loose application of the word, there) putz around in the repair bays. I pick up an automotive trade magazine and, in an instant, I know we're not in Kansas, anymore.

It seems that the little idiot-light-for-idiot-light sensor is liable to come on if your favorite minimum-wage tire buster fails to apply the correct amount of torque, with the appropriately scaled torque wrench, to your tire's valve stems.

Valve stems need to be torqued nowadays?

And it gets better. Guess what? Putting air in your tires these days is just sooooo wrong now. The proper tire shop now uses nitrogen. Nitrogen? WTF? Said tire shop will also have special sniffers to tell if some idiot owner should dare put good old American air in the tire, too, contaminating their precious gas. And a recycling system to boot. And special valve stem caps with a pretty green "N" engraved on them. I didn't read further. I couldn't. My eyes had glazed over.

Cue Jim Morrison and The Doors as soundtrack to Apocalypse Now:

"This is the end (blam blam blam)
Beautiful friend
This is the end My only friend, the end
Of our elaborate plans, the end
Of everything that stands, the end ..."

Forty five years of learning about cars, and I've met my match, pushed over the edge by nitrogen gas and torqued valve stems.

I see visions of Martin Sheen, and F-4 Phantom jets dropping napalm on my collection of 1500 vintage car magazines.

So: I am not only not "with it," I am a dinosaur. I have now joined the ranks of the clueless, know-nothing 'droid masses, in a subject I thought I knew well.

I guess I'll be calling the Auto Club from now on. Probably from a pay phone.