And 633 litres rather than 580 ...
(It came top at this comparative review.)
]]>Yes, but the Volvo is more convenient in town. And as you ought to have noticed, the bit of Scotland Charlie inhabits is a city.
]]>I'd quite happily have taken my old A4 over the Alps - it was really quite nice and nippy, though the 2.6 litre V6 was a bit thirsty.
And manual shift, yes. I want to be the one to tell the engine it needs to shift now because we're going to start coming out of that bend in half a second's time.
(Pace Ian Smith @103)
]]>Oh my god, now I feel old. I learnt on .303
]]>Did you put: Left angle-bracket / a / href / equals / quote / link / right angle-bracket / title / end-job?
Please do tell!
]]>The only downside I can think of is that the road noise at motorway speeds isn't up to (say) Lexus / modern Merc standards. As the man said, a million taxi drivers can't be wrong...
Safety standards are pretty good for a car that's 10 years old: I'm pretty sure side airbags were standard. If you're buying a 1999-2004ish model you want the "Elegance" rather than the bottom spec; disc brakes on the rear instead of drums & a bit more power in the engine which can easily be chipped for more power if that's your thing. Oh & those engines will happily run on chip fat (well, nearly), unlike the later PD versions.
]]>It's a little dangerous to generalize over every member of any species of bear. Black bears have a) stalked people for hours, killed and eaten them; and b) shown up in camps and mauled multiple people for no apparent reason (some bears are just assholes, evidently -- perhaps particularly old, male bears).
That said, black bears will almost always flee humans when they encounter them.
]]>Especially when you're carrying a standard issue M-14 rifle, and the other bloke is firing mortar rounds at you from a klick away. But I got my revenge when the C-130 with the miniguns showed up. Note to self: never carry a mortar into an air-support fight.
One thing I learned quickly is that the shiny new equipment they show in the news footage and the movies isn't necessarily what the grunt on the ground gets to use. I spent a year in Vietnam and got to hold and fire an M-16 exactly once: to qualify to use one when I first came in country. Then I was issued an M-14 (with copper-jacketed "armor-piercing" rounds). As a demonstration, someone fired one of those rounds into the aluminum side of an M-113 Armored Personnel Carrier, resulting in a loud thud and a ding in the armor, but no hole. Somewhat later a guy I knew got bored on guard duty at the main gate of the compound we were at and fired a round from his .50 cal machine gun into the side of an APC. It made a hole, which answered the question he was asking. It also scared the crap out of everybody in the APC, and got him an article 15 nonjudicial punishment from the battalion commander (who didn't want a court-martial to interrupt his cozy black market operation).
]]>Secondly ... thinking at a strategic level, you don't want a battle rifle that kills, you want one that maims. If you shoot and kill an enemy soldier, the net cost to the enemy is one (1) replacement soldier, and two hours' time for a burial party. If you shoot and injure an enemy soldier, the net cost to the enemy is one (1) replacement soldier, and a metric fuck-ton of medevac, hospital, rehab, and rear echelon expense that vastly exceeds the cost of a burial party by many (3-6) orders of magnitude.
]]>Do the math.
]]>But in general I am not enthusiastic about attracting the attention of any law enforcement officer. If you want to know what my nightmare scenario looks like, it would be something like this. (NOTE: I know Peter, I am familiar with the circumstances of his prosecution, and anyone who takes this as an excuse to start sniping or attempting to justify what happened to him is going to receive an immediate ban.)
]]>Whatever makes you think anyone is in charge? They all just go their own separate ways, occasionally working together or arresting each other as circumstances require. Case in point: the Feds are trying to pursue the War On Some Drugs in towns where the local police are trying to uphold medical marijuana laws. All just good clean fun.
]]>That's a sign you were being overcharged beforehand.
Actually, in this case I suspect not. I suspect a combination of the room was otherwise going to be empty, and some recognition of extraordinary circumstances.
An empty hotel room is not earning anything, but has pretty low overheads (no chambermaids required, no hot water, etc., etc.). Putting someone into that room if they're paying more than it then costs for the laundry, bed-change labour and so on, is a profit. But the hotel must charge more than that as a regular price, as otherwise the other costs aren't covered, the ones that are still there even if nobody checks in at all.
Room prices also vary considerably. There are some times when I'm booking a hotel room that a day may be quoted at well more than twice the cost of an adjacent day. On occasion, I've even taken one of those, if the cost of the room over the whole set of days I want is still decent.
]]>