> > > [snip re: Medusa/Hades/Milan/etc]
> >THey are often not ready for that. Most of them are rather small
> >Companies, or in most cases single person, not realy ready for
> >business, and rather driven by the idea.
> Then maybe their websites shouldn't say "Email me here if you want to be a
> dealer! We'll get right back with you!" Or even just email me back saying
> "Holy Scheisse! We're not ready to have a US Dealer!" Or even... "There's
> no dealer discount or anything, and I only make 2 per week..." or
> whatever... The lack of response is what I was upset about.
> If their website said: "Email us and we'll never answer you back because
> this is just a *#!%^~(_at_ hobby for us, but we wanted to put out a webpage"
> --> that would have been just fine, then. ;-)
I perfectly understand your anger. I usualy try to call these people
up to get a reaction. Good old personal contact. It's way harder not
to answer if you're addressed directly :)
> > > And in the more populous areas where pickin's are easier... we still have
> > > more crime, slow autobahns, and *really* *bad* *beer*.
> >No, that's not true, you may have some slow highways, but slow
> >Autobahns are limited to Germany - where basicly _every_ Autobahn
> >is so crowded that a parking lot gives you a better driving
> >experience. If you'll do an average over all Autobahns and
> >US Interstates, the Interstate system will come out first.
> >At least when counting cars per kilometer.
> Then things sure have changed from when I was there... I drove from Oerbke
> (I think that's the spelling... it's been a while since '91... 12-year
> brainfog) - 50km north of Hannover, anyway - I was driving an American
> Military vehicle (CUCV -> Chevy Blazer for those who've seen one) 130kph up
> to Bremerhaven (with oversized balloon tires only designed to withstand
> 72kph - it was *bouncy*!!) and rarely did those little, dinky,
> currently-domestic Porches & Mercedes drop below 170kph, even in the
> construction zones! Some of them zipped past me near cm away - that was a
> rather hectic ride!
For one point, trafic is ever increasing and 12 years is quite a
time. And then, what's hectic in going just 130 km/h (*1)? 170 km/h
is a nice travel speed for a family car ... if you can still travel
at that speed. Theoretical yes , theoretical even 200 km/h (125 mph)
is doable as sustained speed for almost every mid size car, it it
wouldn't be for all these slow downs. It is no fun to accelerate
psitive and negative (aka break) all the time. I had to travel
between Munich and Konstanz (~200 km) for the last years about
once per month, due company policies I had to take rental cars,
and I had a wide variety between a Smart (mayimum speed 135 km/h
~85mph) average VW Golf or GM Astra (max. 210 km&h~130 mph) up
to Crysler 300 or Mercedes E-class (top speed cut at 250 km/h
~160 mph), guess what, even when I was partly going way above
200 km/h (~125 mph), the difference where less than 7 minutes for
a two hour drive.
The fact that one is allowed to go as fast as possible and may
even go that for a few minutes doesn't help at all. Now go ahead
and tell me again that our Autobahn is not crowded over the limit.
> The bus trip I took to Berlin was similarly unencumbered by traffic, until
> we got into the city proper (which still isn't as bad on the stretch of
> Interstate 75 between Bay City & Detroit, MI, at least IMHO... imagine 30km
> of 25kph travel out of 100km, if you catch it the wrong time...)
You see how inacceptable it has become, when even slow busses are
made to slow further down. They have a speed limit of 100 km/h (but
most go 110 ~70 mph).
> And you had *no* witty comeback about the beer... ;-) ;-)
Why? Didn't you say all necersary about that - Ok, I guess I
have to hold up the stand for american beer, there are some that
are drinkable. And the rest cand at least be used to anoy people.
> To bring this back ontopic... I'm *still* trying to work out getting over
> to VCF Europa... we'll see...
> P.S. I don't have a Deutschland map handy... how far away is Munich from
> Garmish?
In CA measurements, Garmisch a suburb of Munich ... it's about
45 miles (70 km)
Gruss
H.
*1 - BTW, it's km/h, not kph (like it's r/min^-1 and not rpm).
km/h is not an abrevation of a word, but rather a description/
term. The unit is meter, and k is just a prefix for 1000. The
nice ting about the metric (or beter SI) system is that every
part fits nicely, and not just by definition.
There is just one thing worse than kph ... people translating
US books and keeping these hilarious abrevations. I just read
a nice SF book, and the translator did keep misspellings like
kps or mps (they even capitalized them!). The book even had a
apendix where the terms where explained (as the US original).
This is the worst kind of pseudo technoligy.
Anyway
--
VCF Europa 5.0 am 01./02. Mai 2004 in Muenchen
http://www.vcfe.org/
Received on Fri Oct 31 2003 - 05:47:35 GMT