Windows

When the temperatures rise in the long summer days, it becomes the season when the roadways are jammed with people trying to escape the heat. What I've found is that there are two distinct groups: the red blooded men in work trucks and Jeeps who roll their windows down, and those stuck up blue bloods whose windows are tightly clamped down to make sure the air conditioning doesn't escape (though there is another breed, those who have the air conditioning on with their windows open...I'm not going to even go into these crazy bastards).

As you might imagine, I'm the kind of guy whose window is always down. Some might say that this is because I'm a smoker; no, that's the reason my window is down in the winter. In the summer, however, there is just something special about being in a pickup truck barrelling down Route 23 with bad shocks and shot out hub bearings with all three windows open, making it as windy in the car as you'd imagine Mount Everest. I hear some folks say that it "messes up their hair", and that they can't go to work like that. I say toughen up you fucking Nancies; I'm from Jersey, and if I don't want my hair going anywhere, its not fucking going anywhere (I swear though, from the way most women drive you'd think their hair and their cell phone was more important than that puppy they just ran over).

When your windows are down, you smell the street. I feel the humidity, the dryness, or whatever else nature has to offer me. If it's too rough, I'll take my shirt off and drive like that. People either think that's white trash or gay, of course, but being as I'm driving a ickup truck I figure its the former.

There's also a war going on between the two camps, ironically, one that is far bigger than I thought. The old wives' tale persists that a car driving around with the windows closed and the air conditioning on gets better gas mileage- something to do with aerodynamics or whatever. Guys like me point out that we think Mythbusters did a show where they debunked that ridiculous notion, even though I've never actually met anyone who saw that particular episode (not that it matters, because I'm sure it's true).

When it comes down to it though, it has nothing to do with gas mileage. It's that feeling of being young and alive, and feeling the air physically moving past you, so you actually feel that 75 MPH going by in air particles screaming around my head and out the back, tossed back onto the road after I'm gone. It's the look on people's faces when I pull up to their Lexus' or Mercedes', blaring my brand of callous rock n' roll, and getting to watch them dissaprovingly roll up their own windows because of me. YES!! I am young, I am the new generation, the world is at my feet, and I have nothing to lose! Roll up your window you old fuck, because I will not play my music any lower! I will spread it to the masses from through the doors of my black chariot, and you will make that right turn (even though you don't have to) just to get away from me!

Having my windows down all the time means that everyone around me hears what's going on, sees my tanned arm lazily hanging out the window with a cigarette...they're getting an image of me whether they like it or not. And when I drive along the River, I smell that summer scent of rotting bodies, dead raccoons, and nuclear waste permeating off the water's edge, and it is beautiful, and I dig it.

If you don't... then roll your fucking window up.