It is easy for us old farts to bemoan the condition of today’s
youth. It is just as easy for us to be wrong.
The image is a soft slug glued to a monitor with a
controller in hand playing games. Wanting “safe spaces”. True to an extent.
Have you ever watched closely skateboarders? BMX bicycle riders? Despite helicopter parents
and swathing in protective layers, these kids, of both sexes, are out there
risk taking.
We probably will never see again as big a “Hot rod” scene as
we remember, partly because more modern cars are harder to work on and far more
costly. Still, you see import “tuner”
cars on the streets. If nothing else, these kids know how to retrofit a loud muffler.
There may be less sandlot baseball, but there is a lot of
organized soccer and volleyball. Football is still played.
Risk taking seems to be part of human nature and no amount
of feminism, social justice whimpers, and forced socialization will kill it.
What I see, and respect, are the young people fighting for
their own identity and values. Long may they prevail.
9 comments:
I see young kids and their Dads at the R/C racetrack I go to. These kids are building their own cars and understand what they're doing. It's great to see.
I've only seen a few "Tuner Cars" with fart-can exhaust around here, but there's a thriving Import Car scene in Denver.
Last summer I saw a couple of gatherings around Greeley.
I remember our elders being disgusted with for wearing tight jeans and long hair and wild, sexy dancing. Some youth will push the envelope, as we did. I feel most will be great adults regardless of the liberal school systems.
CP
They have great bullshit detectors.
Concur. The 'hot rodding' today is all done via computers... The generations growing up now ARE significantly different than we were due to a number of advancements. Better food, better communications, computers, etc. That has also brought out the nanny state in full force. Sports are about the ONLY output some of these kids have that is considered 'legal' anymore, and it has to be organized! Ghnu forbid some kids do a pickup game and one gets hurt! The ambulance chasers will sue everybody in site... dammit...
The "tuning" part is all done with your laptop, but there's only so much you can tweak an otherwise stock setup. A lot of these guys go much further, and are also bolting on hardware, and/or swapping out bits. That takes some mechanical skills and understanding.
We used to worry about camshaft lift and duration and carb size, and they talk about different "scroll ratios", downpipe sizes, and intercooler plumbing.
Nobody hot rods engines anymore by Old Skool methods. They slap a turbocharger and intercooler on it, along with a high tech engine management system, and make their power with boost.
The trick these days is getting reliability along with the big numbers. Sure, you can get 1500HP from a junkyard Chevy LS engine, but how long is it going to last?
Old NFO
I'm encouraged by the number of young people rebelling against the nanny state. Many are joining the military.
drjim
Had a flashback to the 2 cycle days of European imports. Cars like SAAB and DKW where you mixed a quart of oil with a gasoline fill up. The engines still had a pan, like an oil pan, that you could fill with fiberglass or equivalent and raise the compression ratio. A friend did that with a DKW and had the engine disintegrate while he was doing about 70 mph.
Well said.
Thank you.
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