What i did not expect in moving to Ohio — i was raised, learning to drive in the Chicago area, to flash the brights for trucks that pass you so they know that their tail is clear of your nose. Helps them helps you, win/win. They usually flash their running lights back atcha.

That was true all the way down to Indy, but once i moved east of Richmond, Indiana, it turns out to be an unknown arcane custom. Anyone else see this or do it for passing 18 wheelers? Back up on the Tri-State, i see it’s still an appreciated ritual around Chicagoland, but there’s no sign i’m making it popular in these parts.

Some folks in the west will put wreaths on their trucks at Christmastime, too, basset. I did last year(!).

Connie, was that Pontiac 6000 the AWD STE model? That was an unsung sweet car in the late ’80s.

EDIT – Brian, crashing with a purporse on F1 is not EXACTLY new. In the past is was the province of hot-headed drivers like Senna vs. Prost, or Schumacher or Irvine vs. everyone else, not team orders. In the glory days of the ’50s, ’60s and most of the ’70s, such actions were unheard of.

BTW, watching the Japanese Grand Prix replay right now on SPEED!

Crashing with a purpose in F1 is nothing new, really. Did you aee that Piquet is scheduled to turn test laps for (wait for it) a NASCAR truck team in North Carolina next week?

Jeff, I hear ya on the urn signal thing; infuriating. But when I went to work in Mississippi and Alabama 25+ years ago, I noticed that on two lane roads, most drivers would signal the intentions of the car in front of them to the one behind. I was told it was a southern thing. Also almost without fail, southern drivers would wave at each other as they passed.

“…when multinational corporations battle it out in Formula One…” — Brian, especially in light of our previous conversation about Piquet’s team-ordered deliberate crash last year, doesn’t it seem that more and more, F1 resembles “Rollerball”?

We bought a set of tires for the minivan this past winter, and we selected a set from a Firestone-Bridgestone outlet….but here’s the key: we went to a business in southeast Fort Wayne (where Southtown Mall used to be), and the tires plus installation cost not much more than $100.

Years ago, we bought a top-drawer set of Michelins*, and I noticed that they were quite short-lived, so ever since then I always buy the cheapest I can find, from brand-name tire dealers, on the theory that they’re the same tires as the pricier ones. If anything, my major-brand no-name tires live LONGER than the brand name ones!

Aside from that, as the weather cools and the colors of the trees and bushes become more pronounced, I’ve become all the more enthralled with Burlingame’s massive Lincoln biography – and mid-19th century Illinois colloquialisms are “on the brain”. In Lincoln’s jokes, there’s always Hoosiers and Suckers (and preachers and farmers and old women and farm animals and so on and so forth!).

By the way – Burlingame is much, much more harshly anti-Mary than I was braced for; he is really on a jihad to make the absolute worst portrait of her possible. I take solace from the thought that I’ll get a crack at asking Burlingame to account for this, at the Twenty Fourth Annual Lincoln Colloquium in Springfield in two weeks. (as far as that goes, I’m extremely open to any good short pithy question y’all might propose, asking him what the f__ his problem with strong-minded women is)

*at Science Central, they have a NASA display including an actual tire from a Space Transportation System shuttle mission. The thing is bolted onto a display next to a wall – and if you look on the sidewall of the tire that faces the wall, you see that our shuttles are shod with Michelins! This surprised me, but then again, BF Goodrich, which has a large plant not far from here, was bought out by Michelin, which presumeably explains that