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abitnotgoodiebag · 3 years ago

Text

Title: Criminal

Square Filled: Domestic

Rating: M

AO3 link

Word count: 10k

Summary: All reason aside, Sam just can’t deny— he loves that guy.

....literally just an extended feel-good, self indulgent thing I have been trying to put out for far too long.

For @winterfalconevents

Criminal

It starts with a card, of all things.

“Sam?” Bucky asks as he comes in from his now-routine morning run (Sam is a Very Good Influence). Bucky holds out the crimson envelope as he rounds the corner into the kitchen. “You got something here.”

Sam knows what this means and his heart drops into his ass. This is as much of a mandatory summons as jury duty or a subpoena. His mother has decided that it is Time To Bring Bucky Home. Sam is not sure if he’s ready for it (although he doesn’t think that he’ll ever be ready, so the point is moot). I mean yeah, he’s with Bucky and he knows that this is the forever kind of thing, but meeting Darlene? That’s a big move.

Sam’s smile must surely be closer to a grimace, but he plucks the offered mail from Bucky’s grip nonetheless. He slides his pinky inside the un-taped corner of the envelope and takes as long as he reasonably can in opening it. He can’t dilly-dally forever, though, and eventually he pulls out the card adorned with a stylish arrangement of fall leaves tumbling from a cornucopia.

Sam feels Bucky’s body heat as he crowds in behind him to squint at the elegant cursive font scrawled across the top of the invitation with a small photo of her and her Pekingese, Nippy.

“Did your mom seriously send you a paper invite for Thanksgiving, birdy?” Bucky asks incredulously.

Sam, used to his mother’s particular brand of extra, is unfazed. He is still stuck on the fact that she has played dirty. She knows he can’t ignore this sort of mandate. She knows that it’s likely that Bucky would see this and ask about it, since they live together. Sam mentally girds his loins for the upcoming week, he’s officially bringing Bucky to Meet The Family.

“Oh she most certainly did. And we are definitely going, I’ve seen what happens when you ignore Mrs. Wilson.” Sam makes a face remembering the guilt trip Sarah had been subjected to when she dared to miss Christmas for a Carnival cruise. She had almost asked the coast guard to just bring her home from the amount of messages from their mom. He grins, remembering that while he hasn’t given her any grandbabies (and doesn't plan to), he at least has made it home every time one of those cards has shown up in his mailbox.

Bucky doesn’t look bothered at all as he shrugs in assent, and Sam envies him. Maybe he doesn’t realize what this means, meeting Darlene and the rest of Sam’s family (because they will all be in Atlanta, that’s for certain). Or maybe he does and this isn’t one of those things that phases him. Either way, Sam is beyond nervous.

“How bad is it going to be, trying to book tickets this last minute?” Bucky asks with his head stuck in the refrigerator.

Sam doesn’t even want to think about it. “Probably ridiculous. Especially for the holiday. I would say we could just steal a quinjet but moms would kill me for ruining her yard.”

Bucky emerges victorious with eggs, cheese, and bacon. “Is it drivable?” He asks, smirking as Sam frowns and searches out at least one vegetable to add to whatever Bucky is planning on cooking.

Sam ponders this as he locates some bell peppers, half an onion, and a few mushrooms and sets them next to Bucky’s haul with a sigh. “Nine or ten hours, give or take?”

Bucky looks thoughtful, “That’s not so bad, bound to be easier than fighting with all the airlines.”

“Did you hear me, Buck?” Sam says facetiously, “I meant human hours. In a car. Not counting pee breaks, snack breaks, and dance breaks.”

“Oh damn, I thought you meant nine dog hours.” Bucky responds deadpan.

“Hardy har har, mister funny-pants.” Sam replies. “It’ll work out to cost the same if we fly last-minute, or if we drive and break it up into two days, I’ll leave it up to you.” With that, Sam leaves Bucky to cook breakfast, and goes to find the most ridiculous talk show he can, because what else are you supposed to watch while doing paperwork? He tries not to think of the fact that in four short days, they will be in Atlanta, under his mom’s roof and ever-watchful eye.

Whether they want to or not, they’re driving down to Atlanta for Thanksgiving. The closest flight they can find is into Charlotte and if they’re going to have to rent a car from there they may as well drive the whole way and avoid TSA and all of their nonsense. Bucky seems delighted with this turn of events, but Sam knows that dumb drivers in addition to his nerves caused by everyone he loves meeting the knucklehead he loves are not a combination he really wanted to deal with.

They pick up their sensible (‘stupid’ and ‘tiny’ are Bucky’s words) Chevy Cruze and begin their sojourn down to I-85 after an early lunch. Luckily, Sam planned ahead for their overnight stay in Charlotte, preferring to be guaranteed a room rather than stop at the earliest ‘vacancy’ sign. Sam has standards and those standards include not staying anywhere with outdoor hallways if he can help it.

“You take the spontaneity out of the road trip, Sammy.” Bucky protests when Sam doesn’t budge on pre-booking the very last room at the only Hilton Garden within an hour of Charlotte for the Tuesday night before Thanksgiving as Bucky pulls out of the lot.

“And you completely overestimate my tolerance for bedbugs, Cyborg.” Sam replies as he taps the blue ‘Book Now’ button on the screen. Setting aside his StarkPad, he sets his gaze on a pouting Bucky. “It’s bad enough we’re going to be stuck in the world’s worst traffic jams without adding in the stress of trying to find a room in some rinky-dink motel on the side of the road that houses all manner of serial killers and rapists.”

“Like any serial killer could take us.” Bucky scoffs with a huff as he approaches the on-ramp for I-95 to begin their hours-long journey to North Carolina before they’d call it quits for the day. “In fact, that would probably add some excitement.”

Sam rolls his eyes, thinking of the inquisition he and Bucky are sure to get in Atlanta and disagrees. “Why does everything have to be an adventure? Why can’t we just have a low key drive and a chill weekend?”

Bucky smirks in his peripheral vision. “Because at the rate that we attract psychopaths and bad guys, I have decided that welcoming constant adventure is my new coping mechanism.”

Sam could find fault with that logic if he were so inclined, but decides that Bucky may have a point, as they are thrust headfirst into world ending situations with little to no warning so often that Sam’s ‘danger-meter’ is severely skewed. Well, as someone who voluntarily signed up to be strapped to some experimental wings, it has probably been a little off for longer than most people think, but the point is, Sam gets it.

“Well, when some Hannibal wannabe strings us up and starts carving a roast out of our asses, I’ll be sure to remind you that you wanted the excitement. Before we get eaten.” Sam fiddles with the tuner dial, settling on whatever Sirius deems fit for Road Trip Radio, smiling softly at Little Red Corvette radiating out of the speakers.

“A Corvette sure would have been nice.” Bucky interjects as he passes another sedan meandering their way into the far left lane only to go two over the speed limit. Bucky grits his teeth and Sam keeps his little chuckle internal. He may be over a century old, but Bucky is a speed demon on the road and he isn’t shy about using the horn. It's why Sam likes to drive when they’re at home (plus Bucky knows what he did to Sam’s last car); can’t have Avenger’s being road menaces in their own neighborhood. Out here, though? If he can get them off the road an hour earlier, Sam is content to let Bucky take the first leg and put his foot down.

“I’ll make sure to keep that in mind the next time we decide that a last minute road trip is necessary.” Sam responds as he opens up Candy Crush to settle in for his shift as passenger and navigator.

“You say that, but why do I get the feeling that we will end up in another Beetle with no leg room?”

Sam scoffs. “The fact that you think a Beetle has no leg room, but you want a Corvette is not making much sense, Robocop.”

“Why does it have to make sense, birdbrain? A Corvette is a nice ride, the back of a bug is...not.” Bucky replies.

“Can’t relate, I had plenty of room.” Sam says and reclines his seat in the rental just because he can

“Karma is a real bitch.” Bucky grouses as he whips around yet another left lane lollygagger.

“It’s almost as if snatching steering wheels out of cars leads one to have shoddy seating, isn’t it?” Sam asks mildly as he wins his jelly spreading battle against the Jelly Queen.

Bucky, wisely, doesn’t respond and they make good time weaving through the cars to make it to a truck stop in Petersburg, right before they get on 85 for the long haul.

Sam stands in the aisles intently debating between a Zero or Payday as Bucky grabs a large bag of peanuts and a couple bottles of Coke and water. Sam smiles at that, settling on the Zero and grabbing some Fun Dip and peach rings for Bucky’s inner 12 year old and a Baby Ruth for himself as well, thinking they may as well stock up on the junk food now.

They pay for their grub and head back to the car. Bucky volunteers to continue driving until they get to the Hilton and Sam is content to let him. The car drags a bit as they start off down I-85, but Bucky shrugs it off and Sam doesn’t see any warning lights or smoke, so they decide that it must be a quirk of the car. The traffic gets worse as they creep closer to Charlotte, and Sam can see Bucky getting irritated with the lack of movement.

“There is probably no reason for this,” Bucky gripes as they slow to a stop yet again, a little more than a half an hour out of the city. “Probably just some asshole got pulled over and these Nosy Ninas have to stare.”

Sam hums in agreement from his reclined position.

Several minutes later he is brought out of his light doze by Bucky’s angry grunt. “See? Idiots.”

Sam chuckles as he sits up, bringing his seat back to normal after he rolls his neck.

“Do you want me to take over? It’s not like we’re moving and you’ve been at it all day.” Sam asks, knowing that Bucky will refuse.

“You know what? I sure do. These people are ridiculous.” Bucky unclicks his seatbelt and puts the car in park right there in the stalled traffic.

Sam, not thinking that Bucky was going to agree, is much slower in getting out of his seat, but they manage to run around the front end of the car and switch seats without getting yelled at by any other drivers, although they do get some strange looks.

Sam adjusts the seat as Bucky laughs softly, “Aw, Tweety, gotta move the seat up? Do you need a high chair?”

Sam rolls his eyes, “You are one word away from riding to Charlotte in an Uber, buddy.”

“Calm down, angry bird. Don’t get your feathers all ruffled.” Bucky says as he eagerly opens his fun dip. Up until this point, Sam and Bucky have been just pouring their peanuts into their sodas and drinking them both for sustenance.

It only takes 45 seconds for Bucky’s entire tongue to turn red and 2 more minutes for the color to spread to his lips, providing the most tempting distraction Sam thinks he’s ever faced while operating a vehicle (and yes, he is counting the time with the steering wheel). Bucky, who doesn’t seem to notice how his snack is affecting Sam, continues through half of the red powder, sucking it slowly off the Lik-a-Stix, not caring that it, too, is dissolving in his mouth.

“Mm-Mm!” He hums, resorting to just pouring the rest of the cherry flavored powder directly into his mouth before tossing the remains of the white stick in and chomping on both of them.

Sam, grateful for the reprieve, slowly accelerates as the traffic starts to move again. They aren’t going nearly as fast as before, but 20 mph is a lot better than standstill so Sam will take it.

They pass the remnants of what looks like a minor fender bender and Bucky snorts again. “Look at that. 45 minutes wasted, and for what?”

Sam hums in agreement. “If only people watched where they were going.”

“Life would be easier if the bad drivers just stayed in the right lane out of the way of the rest of us.”

That makes Sam grin, “Of course you think that, Mr. Speed-limits-don’t apply-to-me.”

“Don’t act like I’m wrong, Sam. The left lane is sacred.” Bucky explains as if Sam is a 16 year old on the road for the first time. To be fair, Sam thinks that paved roads might not have been invented yet when Bucky first got in a car.

“Whatever you say, Buck.” Sam says as the traffic all but dissolves, letting them reach cruising speed again.

Sam makes it to their hotel just as the sun sinks behind the treeline and he pulls into the second to last spot in the parking lot. Bucky brushes the powdery remains of his Fun Dip off his shirt and pops the trunk to retrieve their bags, following after Sam as he heads inside to check in for the night.

The next morning Sam drifts awake only to be greeted by the super soldier drooling all over his chest. Sam smiles and tightens his arms around Bucky trying to banish the ever present nervousness their upcoming destination brings. Sam thinks back to the first time he brought anyone home for Darlene’s approval. He had been dating Dominique for two and a half years before he even entertained the thought of bringing her home and while the eventual visit went fine, this isn’t some college girlfriend, this is Bucky. This matters more than he would like to think about because what if it doesn’t go well this time? Sam can’t stand the thought of his family with any sort of condemnation in their eyes as they politely smile and turn away.

Sam hasn’t lied to his family about who he is, of course he hasn’t, but while Bucky isn’t the first man presented to Darlene for approval (Sarah’s late husband, Julius, had passed with flying colors), he is certainly the first one that Sam will be bringing.

Bucky twitches slightly before nuzzling his face deeper into Sam’s pectorals right into the small puddle of his own saliva. Sam can’t help but laugh at the way he scrunches his face up at the wetness, even in sleep. The jostling is enough to rouse Bucky from his sleep and he blinks, deepening the crease between his eyebrows as he realizes what he’s laying in.

“Good morning, Buck!” Sam chirps, grinning.

“That’s debatable.” He grumbles as he grabs the nearest corner of the flat sheet to wipe at his face as Sam watches in horror. Bucky raises a questioning brow.

“There are perfectly good washcloths in the bathroom and you choose to use hotel linens.”

“The bathroom means I have to get up, and I don’t get up at ass o’clock.” Bucky flops back down on the less drooled on side of Sam’s chest after his declaration and closes his eyes. Sam, knowing that Bucky won’t get up before noon without serious prodding, starts prodding. Bucky’s obliques don’t garner much response, but once he starts poking at the ribs, Bucky begins to squirm.

“Sammy .” Bucky whines, though it does nothing to stop the fingers, in fact, Sam adds his left hand as well, turning pokes into tickles. Bucky squirms harder, but Sam is relentless in his attack, leaving none of the skin he can reach in peace.

Sam can feel the moment Bucky decides he’s going to get up, but the manner in which he does surprises him (although, Sam really should not have been, even slightly). Bucky braces himself on both his arms, hovering directly over Sam’s face before leaning down to rub his still crusty cheek all over Sam’s beard.

“Eurgh!” Sam pushes Bucky off him and rolls out of bed. “You are such an ass.” Sam says, absently rubbing at his beard with one hand while the other grabs his toiletry bag.

“I’m your ass, babe.” Bucky says with a lopsided grin, folding his hands behind his head. His eyes light up further as Sam turns and moves toward the bathroom, already groaning internally, Bucky is like a child sometimes. “Does this mean that now I’m America’s ass?”

Sam snorts as he turns the shower on, not even bothering to respond to Bucky’s foolishness. He does flex his ass in the mirror as he waits for the water to heat up. ‘Bucky wishes’ he thinks as he grins at his own reflection.

The steam finally creeps around the side of the curved shower curtain and Sam gets in, sighing contentedly at the hot water pounding against his chest. His anxiety soon begins to creep back into his gut, and Sam reaches for his body wash, hoping to get himself washed and groomed so that they can hurry up and get on the road. His hand grabs at the spot he set the little bottle and comes up empty. Before he can question the whereabouts of his soap, it appears in front of him in the grip of a softly smiling Bucky.

“Care to save some water?” He asks as he waggles his eyebrows suggestively, Sam plucking the body wash from his vibranium fingers.

“That depends, are you gonna start singing your show tunes?” Sam asks as he pours some body wash into his open palm. He steps closer to the shower head, giving Bucky room to come in behind him.

“I’ll try to keep my song on the inside today, Sammy.” Bucky steps up into Sam’s personal space, leaning down to place a kiss on his left shoulder.

“Oh really?” Bucky’s presence, as it usually does, soothes a bit of Sam’s distress, and he enjoys the hungry look on Bucky’s face as he turns around and drags his gel-covered hand across his chest and shoulders. Bucky doesn’t let him get too far in his cleaning, instead pulling Sam even closer so that there is no air between them from navel to knee.

“I don’t know about your song though, birdy.” Bucky murmurs as he slides his hands back to grope at Sam’s ass. Sam lets him, knowing that stealing a private moment in Darlene’s house will be difficult.

They kiss slowly, the steam magnifying the scent of Sam’s body wash, soothing him. The knot of trepidation slowly melts away the longer he’s held in the pleasantly strong cocoon of Bucky’s arms. Sam relaxes completely letting himself get lost in the heat and steam and lets himself be loved.

Well Bucky did say they needed some spontaneity, Sam muses to himself.

Ten minutes away from the hotel, they have the misfortune of the back tires blowing out. Thankfully they hadn’t been injured, nor had they crashed into another vehicle and Bucky is able to maneuver them onto the dirt on the side of the road with no problems.

After contacting Enterprise to request a courtesy car to get them to a new ride, Sam and Bucky settle in to wait the estimated 45 minutes until they could be picked up. Of course, Bucky is never one to waste a moment alone with Sam and the time passes in a way that would scandalize anyone who happened to peek in the windows. Fortunately no one does and they are only slightly rumpled when their lift arrives.

Bucky has a shit-eating grin on his face the entire ride back into town to pick up their replacement car, and it’s all Sam can do not to roll his eyes. The driver, who introduced himself as Allen, hasn’t said a single word other than ‘Hello’, although he keeps sending starstruck glances in the rearview mirror at the both of them. He drops them off outside the squat, green and black storefront with a smile and quick wave and Sam makes his way inside, Bucky following closely at his heels.

There are only two people ahead of them and before long Sam is being called up towards the tired looking man behind the counter, whose smiling nametag bearing ‘Hi! I’m Quinton :)’, seems to be a bit of an overestimation of the level of cheer currently being felt.

“I’m sorry Mr. Wilson, these are the only options and we are the only Enterprise with any vehicles within two hours.” The clerk says wearily as he pushes a laminated sheet with three vehicles that haven’t been scribbled over with dry erase marker, as though he’s had this conversation multiple times already.

Sam smiles at Quinton, “That’s fine.” He turns to Bucky, “Well? The Porsche or the Rover?”

“You know I’m going to say the Porsche.” Bucky answers with a smirk.

Sam laughs, “Of course I did.” He turns back toward Quinton. “Welp, Terminator has spoken. We’ll take the Porsche.”

“There will be no additional charge to you, since the vehicle you picked up was unable to get you to your destination.” He says, moving to get the keys to the Panamera and a new rental agreement for Sam to sign. “You don’t have to drop it back off here, either, you can take it back with you to DC. All we need is your John Hancock right here, and you will be all set!”

Five minutes later, the two of them are cruising through downtown Charlotte in their new sporty ride, Bucky all smiles behind the wheel.

“Now I feel like the blown tires were a carefully orchestrated incident to reach this exact outcome.” Sam remarks, not too upset, since a Porsche is a Porsche. The gorgeous wine colored bucket seats are cradling Sam so softly that Bucky may have a run for his money.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about, pigeon. How exactly would I know which exact Enterprise would have the exact model of car that I wanted to drive?” Bucky retorts, smirking. “How would I know that the tires on that sad little Chevy were balding, especially on the back passenger side? You act like I’m some sort of mischief savant.”

Sam serves the most potent side eye he can muster Bucky’s way. “Savant is your word, I would never give you that much credit.”

“Like you aren’t benefitting from this upgrade just as much as I am?” Bucky laughs back. “Pass me the peachie-os, babe.”

Sam grumbles but opens the bag and sets it in the cupholder between them, blocking Bucky’s hand as he tries to grab the bag. “I am not letting you pour the whole thing in your mouth like you did with the runts. I didn’t get a single banana one and I take that very personally.”

Bucky’s response is to grab at least five rings and shove them in his mouth, chewing loudly.

Sam redirects his energy to turning on the radio, finding the previous station to be blaring some pop/punk nonsense so Sam keeps turning the dial until The Payback is drowning out the mouth noises. Sam can’t resist bobbing his head along as he increases the volume. I-85 stretches out in front of them and Sam settles as best he can, trying not to think about their destination.

Somehow, by some wondrous miracle, they make great time for the first three hours but all good things must end, because as soon as they hit the Jefferson exit in Georgia, both lanes of 85 come to a grinding halt. Sam, having just taken over driving duty for the final leg, is both relieved and tense to be stuck.

He has no reason to think that Darlene won’t like Bucky, she’s never given him any hint that she doesn’t accept everything about Sam and his choices (except for the unfortunate hairstyle he tried in college, but they don’t speak about that). Sarah has met Bucky, and Bucky and Kayla get on like a house on fire, so Sam logically knows that he shouldn’t be concerned, but he is bringing Bucky home and that means something in his family.

They move inch by tedious inch for about an hour, before they begin to actually move faster than a tortoise. Sam is gifted by a good thirty minutes reprieve until they hit the outskirts of the city where another stretch of standstill traffic stretches into another forty five minutes of tedium. Sam grabs the last peach ring, to Bucky’s dismay, so he rummages through the bag of snacks until he finds the last flavor of his fun dip and begins eating the grape powder with gusto.

Traffic continues slowly but surely for the scant few miles to the perimeter where Sam barely refrains from cursing out one of the many poorly driven F-150s that has decided that theirs is the only car trying to get on the ramp. Bucky has no such qualms and flicks off the driver.

“What the hell is up with all this traffic?” Bucky asks, chewing on the last bit of his powdered sugar stick.

“Welcome to Atlanta, the third worst traffic in the country.” Sam replies creeping off of the on ramp and quickly maneuvering his way into the middle lane, not wanting to fight with either the super speeders or the creeping crawlers that fill the roads.

“This is hell. Why do people do this to themselves?”

“They know when and, more importantly, when not to be out on these roads.” Sam actually does curse as a lowered Lexus with illegal tint and a matte lime green paint job completely ignores the rules of the road and swerves in front of them from the carpool lane to cross all four lanes of traffic and barely make it to an exit. “Remind me again who thought this expedition was a good idea?”

“You didn’t tell me the drivers here are worse than DC. I thought only California was worse than DC.” Bucky says around the last mouthful of grape powder, a small cloud of it puffing into the air.

“You’re forgetting Texas, but it is definitely an experience. Sarah embraces the chaos, while I just avoid it whenever I can.” Sam manages to make it to their exit with no further stops or near misses with the other drivers. Thankfully, away from the highways, the last leg of the drive is much calmer, although the addition of traffic lights does slow them down a bit.

A quick stop at a package store ensures that while he has committed to the long weekend, he doesn’t have to commit to the weekend totally sober. Bucky wholeheartedly approves and although his mother may raise an eyebrow, Bucky insists on all five bottles. Four turns later, they are finally on the narrow, tree-lined street leading to his mother’s house. In no time at all, Sam is pulling into the driveway next to Sarah’s Avalon.

He turns the car off and sits for a moment, ignoring Bucky’s questioning glance. He takes a deep breath, holds it in for 5 seconds and lets it out slowly, mentally preparing as much as he can. Satisfied that this is as calm as he’s going to get until they get in the house, Sam looks at Bucky and unclicks his seat belt.

“Well, we better get a move on before she sends Nippy out to bite at our ankles.” Sam says with a forced grin.

Bucky looks slightly alarmed and gets out warily. “Should I be worried?”

Sam huffs a laugh, “No Buck, My mother is going to love you just like Sarah and Kayla do. There will be no dog related injuries,” He pauses outside the door with a sideways glance at Bucky. “I hope.”

Sam raises his hand to press the doorbell, but is beaten to the punch when the door is thrown open and a loud shout of “UNCLE SAM!” is all the warning he gets before he has his arms full of his favorite niece.

“Hey there, kiddo.” Sam is left with empty arms as she squeals and grabs Bucky’s vibranium hand, swinging it back and forth.

“And Buckaroo! C’mon, mom and nana are in the kitchen.” She says, pulling him inside, leaving Sam to follow with a bemused smile at her use of the nickname.

Kayla drags them through the foyer to the kitchen, where Sarah and Darlene are sitting at the table peeling a variety of potatoes. She releases Bucky and runs off down the hallway, ostensibly to avoid helping with the meal prep.

“I was wondering who had stirred Kayla up so much.” Darlene says with a wry smile as she rises to her feet. “Come here, son.”

Sam goes in to give her a hug and feels his tension melt away. This is his mama, the person who has been in his corner since he came screaming into the world. “Hey mama.”

She holds him at arm's length and looks him up and down. “Hm, I see DC is agreeing with you.”

Sam ducks his head to hide his dopey grin and murmurs, “It most definitely is.” Sam quickly turns to Bucky and grabs his hand pulling him forward a bit. “Mom, I’d like you to meet James Barnes.”

Bucky tips his head in greeting, a large smile on his face (Sam is peeved to see that he doesn't even look the tiniest bit nervous). “Hello, ma’am.”

Darlene grabs him for a hug as well, and while he freezes for a split-second, he returns it immediately.

“So you’re the man making my Sam look happy and healthy?” She asks, backing up a bit to examine Bucky as she had Sam.

“I’d like to think we keep each other that way, Mrs. Wilson.” Bucky answers.

Sarah snickers as she finishes her last potato and rises to hug her brother. “Hey there.”

Darlene, not finished with Bucky yet, says, “Oh, you have manners? Samuel, I like him.”

Sarah and Sam chuckle as Bucky blushes. Sarah whispers a quick ‘told you so’ as Sam rolls his eyes.

“Sarah, I have excellent taste, I don’t need you to tell me that.” He says, a bit louder than he means to, because both Bucky and Darlene look at him with twin looks of amusement.

“Is that so?” Darlene asks, trouble in her tone.

“I feel like I should plead the fifth.”

Darlene turns to Bucky and Sam knows he’s in for it. “How would you like to see some of Sam’s baby pictures?”

Sam, knowing that there is no force in the world that will stop his mother now, debates between seeing exactly which photos and running off to find Kayla and hide with her. He decides on the latter, seeing Sarah’s devilish expression.

“Well that’s my cue, see you, Buck!” Sam says as he edges toward the door.

Bucky looks torn between hysterical laughter and terror at being left alone with both Sarah and Darlene.

Sarah wraps Bucky in a side hug. “There is one photo in particular that you need to see.”

Sam stops in his tracks. “You wouldn’t.”

Sarah only smirks. “I truly must.”

Darlene, already making her way to the sitting room to get the photo albums, calls out after them. “Are y’all just gonna stand there?”

Sam sighs in defeat and glares at his sister, “I hate you.” He mutters, but not loud enough for his mother to hear.

“Lies!” She shhots back and Bucky is once again pulled down the hallway to see what all the fuss is about.

Sam shakes his head and passes right by all three of them trying to fit on his mother’s cream velvet sofa, Bucky squashed in the middle looking confused. “I’m going to get our bags, enjoy embarrassing me!”

“We will!” Sarah chirps opening the first album. “You two have the blue room downstairs, I claimed the yellow one already.”

Sam groans as he retrieves their bags from the back of the car, the yellow room has a better mattress topper, but at least they get a bedroom with a door, rather than the loft on the tiny third floor. Once he is finished and can’t put it off anymore, he climbs the stairs and goes to rescue his boyfriend.

Said boyfriend has the most syrupy smile on his face as Darlene shows him every single school photo Sam has ever taken in his life. The one where he’s missing both his front teeth seems to be a favorite. At least until a few pages later and his senior homecoming photo shows Sam standing proudly in the middle of the football field adorned in a bejeweled, plastic crown and sash next to Sheila Evans in a matching get up.

“Of course you were Homecoming King.” Bucky says, looking up at Sam.

“Yup. Class president, too. What can I say, I’m amazing.”

“I’m very lucky,” Bucky says, but instead of it being snarky, as usual, it’s soft and sincere and Sam melts just a bit more inside.

“Ugh, you two give me cavities.” Sarah says as she grabs for the album Sam is dreading, containing the pictures chronicling his and Sarah’s college years.

Darlene lets Sarah take over and sets the large album aside with a put-upon sigh. “I know all you two speak is sarcasm, but there are other ways to communicate.”

Sarah huffs and opens the album, letting Bucky look at a young Sam unloading a sedan in the parking lot in front of a large brick building, lots of families milling about in the background. Another one of Sam in his finished dorm room decorated in navy and red, huge smile the same as ever. Bucky flips through seeing Sam’s first home game in the stands, photos of him in a large group of students on a beautiful quad, Him at various DC landmarks making silly faces. And then Bucky flips the page and freezes.

Sam facepalms, there will be no living with Bucky after this. “Not a single word.”

Bucky stares at him, trying desperately not to laugh.

Sarah cuts in, “Please share your thoughts, Bucky. I am very interested in them.”

Darlene rolls her eyes at her children, throwing her hands. “Where did I go wrong with you two?”

“I have...questions.” Bucky says, attempting tact.

“Well, it all started with the Thong Song-” Sarah begins, but Sam cuts her off.

“I stand by the fact that several other people on campus did it too.” Sam grits out, sourly staring at the picture of him with platinum blonde hair pointing at the sky in what he clearly thought was a sexy pose, white outfit, head to toe, just like Sisqo. “It was very popular!”

“So, not a Halloween thing.” Bucky says and it sounds like he can barely contain his glee.

“Why?” Sam asks Sarah in exasperation. “Why are you like this? He’s never gonna let this go.”

Bucky did laugh at that, covering it with a cough as he remembered Darlene’s presence. “I have no idea what you mean.”

Sam just huffs fondly and motions for them to continue with the photos, since the most embarrassing ones have past. Bucky finishes the album and Darlene finally declares that they have too much prep work for tomorrow’s gathering to do to continue lollygagging.

She and Sarah remain on kitchen duty while Sam and Bucky are sent back out into the pre-holiday throng of people to pick up a few last-minute items at the store.

As they leave the house, Bucky can’t help himself. “So when I call you Tweety…”

Sam grips the wheel and prays for patience. “It wasn’t that bad.” He says, backing out of the driveway to head to the nearest grocery store.

Bucky says nothing, pulling out his phone instead, but a minute later Sam hears the familiar violins and sighs and decides to just go with it, singing along.

“This thing right here, is lettin’ all the ladies know... ”

Sam finds Bucky and Kayla in the living room surrounded by hair ties, barrettes, beads, and rubber bands when he wakes the next morning. Kayla’s hair is already brushed down in the front save for two beaded plaits hanging past her ears, leading back into two puffs with purple ribbons peeking out from underneath and it seems it’s Bucky’s turn on the floor. Kayla is laughing at whatever Bucky said to her and she immediately hops up on the couch behind him to get started on his hair.

“Morning, mister sleepyhead.” Kayla greets with Bucky echoing.

“Be careful with this one,” Sam warns, although the sentiment is lessened somewhat by his tender smile. “Very sneaky.”

“Whatever, pigeon, Kayla is about to give me the razzle dazzle I’ve been missing.” Bucky replies, complete with wavy hands as she pulls the top half of his hair into a bun to keep out of the way.

“I was talking to my favorite niece, cyborg.” Sam deadpans, causing Kayla to giggle.

“Samuel!” Darlene calls from the kitchen. “Is that you?”

Sam freezes like he’s been caught doing something bad. Bucky smirks at him and mouths ‘Samuel’ just before Kayla pushes his head forward and begins parting the back of his hair.

“Sure is, mom!” Sam replies as he moves toward the kitchen, knowing she is about to call him inside anyway. He enters the kitchen and is greeted to the sight of her normal tightly controlled chaos. There are half-finished side dishes on three separate surfaces along with the delicious smell of ham roasting in one of the ovens. Sam's mouth can’t help but water as the smell of Thanksgiving dinner takes him back to his younger days, him and Sarah doing more to make a mess than to help his mom and aunts.

“There’s my boy!” Darlene tugs him forward and leaves a bright red imprint of her kiss on the apple of Sam’s cheek. “I see you finally decided to join the land of the living.”

Sam ducks his head. “Come on, we were on the road for two days.”

Darlene gives him a look as she pours some sugar into her cornbread batter. “That young man of yours has been down here since 8:30, Samuel.”

Sam is startled by that, he didn’t think Bucky had been up that long without him. “And he didn’t somehow burn this place down?” Sam speaks without thinking, only realizing what he said as his mother gives him an even more unimpressed look.

“He’s been a real help. Kayla has been entertained all morning and my kitchen is much calmer because of it.”

Sam smiles, “Kayla and Bucky need constant supervision, I stand by my previous statement. And ‘young man?’ Bucky is almost a thousand years old by now, he has a platinum AARP card and everything.”

Darlene doesn’t speak for a moment, and Sam waits and she stirs the batter and then pours it neatly into a greased skillet. She is still silent as she moves the cornbread and the finished pan of mac and cheese into the lower oven to bake.

“I know that this has been hard for you.” Darlene says, serious as she turns to face him fully. “What, with the news crews and the questions and the rest, but you would tell me if you weren’t ok, wouldn’t you?”

Sam melts at the look of concern on his mom’s face, hating that something new has been added to her list of Concerns About Sam. “Of course I would. I know it looks like we ran away to Wakanda right after...everything. But I just needed a quiet moment.” Sam pulls her into a hug, remembering the anger, disdain, and disrespect he felt that week as he tried to center himself outside of the public eye as best he could. “In fact, you would love it there.”

“I’m sure I would.” She gives Sam an assessing look, yielding to Sam’s subject change but having one last thing to say. “I just worry about you. And Sarah too, although I guess both of you have someone to lean on now.”

Sam looks surprised by that. “Sarah has what, now?”

“You’ll see in a few minutes, I believe. She left to get him from the airport an hour and a half ago.”

Sam belatedly realizes that he hadn’t heard or seen Sarah since going to bed last night. “I’m glad. I know that she had a hard time of it after Jody. I certainly didn’t help with the stress after running off with Steve, and…” He trails off, thinking about his time spent as a fugitive from Ross. He wonders what SHIELD told his mom and sister about him, whether they called him a traitor or not.

“Oh, baby, you wouldn’t be you if you didn’t do what you thought was right.” She says, patting him on his lipstick stained cheek.

“Still. Who is this guy, anyway? And why haven’t I heard anything about him?” Sam asks, leaning back against the kitchen island.

“If you would be patient,” Darlene answers, glancing at Sam in mock sternness. “You’ll meet him shortly.”

She turns back to the array of food left to be prepared in the next few hours. “Now, since Sarah is gone and your James is already being helpful, grab an apron and help me with these deviled eggs.”

By 2:30 that afternoon, Darlene’s house is full to bursting, with her two sisters, their kids, her brother, his kids and grandkids, and multiple family friends all spread out both inside and out in the backyard. Sam’s uncle Larry had taken charge of the grill and his aunt Shirley had brought two of her famous caramel cakes. Sam’s stomach has been growling for the past thirty minutes, but Darlene is giving any stragglers still heading their way a bit more time to make it to the hoouse.

Sam had lost Bucky in the crowd a while ago, him getting along surprisingly well with Sarah’s new beau (a civil engineer who was, funnily enough, also named James). Bucky still had his hair twisted up just the way Kayla fixed it, Sam observes with a smile. Sam had drifted away to catch up with his cousins, who he’s joined in search of more beer. The cooler had been in the garage that morning, but was apparently moved, since the teenage kids seem to have taken over the garage.

Sam eventually finds the cooler (thankfully restocked) outside on the patio under his uncle’s watchful eye.

“Hey, unc!” Sam greets as he grabs a bottle from under the ice.

“Well! If it isn’t mister America himself.” Larry laughs as he bumps a plastic gloved fist against the hand holding the beer. “Finally got sick of fighting bad guys and took a vacation?”

Sam laughs, “When Darlene calls, I must answer, you know the rules.”

“Oh it’s that kind of vacation?” Larry transfers the ribs onto a sheet pan and bastes them liberally with barbeque sauce. “She in there with your boy? You know that’s dangerous.”

Boy does Sam know it. “I hope not, I’d hate to see those two teaming up, I don’t think the world could take it.” He takes a swig of beer and starts as a hand lands on his shoulder.

“Sammy Sam! How long has it been?” He hears at his back.

Sam turns to see his cousin Chris standing next to him with a huge grin on his face.

“Has to be at least since I got started at the VA. It’s good to see you, man.” Sam is about to ask after his family, when Darlene calls them all into the house for dinner. Sam quickly downs the rest of his beer and heads inside after his cousin and uncle, all of them carrying trays or cooking tools.

Sam sees Bucky, Sarah and Kayla in a corner between his mom and aunt and squeezes between Bucky and Sarah as everyone arranges themselves in a vague circle. Larry leads the prayer and soon the buffet line is moving through the kitchen. Armed with a loaded plate and a glass of sweet tea, Sam motions for Bucky to follow him out to the patio table where he sees his sister and cousins.

Various introductions are made and Sam and Bucky are folded into the existing conversation without fuss.

“I’m just saying, Escalades are overpriced. Just get a Suburban.” Chris says to Sarah and James laughs.

“Ugh, all of you are against me.” She says, disgusted. “Next you're going to tell me to keep my Avalon instead of getting an LS 500. Y’all have no sense of style”

Bucky perks up at that. “The sport?”

“See, I want to, but the hybrid seems more practical.”

“There you go,” Sam says, finishing a rib.

“Whatever Sam, you two rolled up in a Panamera, I don’t want to hear it, I’m getting my fancy car because I deserve it.” Sarah says and Bucky laughs.

“That’s you? With the red leather seats?” Cynthia, Chris’s wife, asks. “Chris damn near drooled when we pulled up.”

“That is the work of Loki junior over here.” Sam says, jerking a thumb at Bucky. “I rented a Chevy.”

Cynthia looks alarmed before Sam realizes how his statement could be taken. “We not-at-all-suspiciously got two flats near the super conveniently located Enterprise with only a Panamera and a Range Rover left. How randomly lucky we were.” Sam says, deadpan.

“It’s not my fault the tires were bald, Sammy.” Bucky replies perfectly innocently, causing Cynthia and Chris to laugh.

“Wait, Sam, you’re really going to tell us you’d rather be in a Chevy? Was it a Supersport from the 60s?” The youngest cousin of their generation, Brianna asks as she sets down her fork.

“Is this bizarro day?” Sam asks rhetorically. “Of course not. I don’t even know why I’m arguing. Sarah, get the Lexus. Treat yourself.”

“Now to convince James.” Sarah says cutting him the side eye.

“I agree with Chris, though. Escalades are overpriced. A Cayenne, though, that’s reasonable and not too big. It makes more sense.” James explains.

“See? No one likes an Escalade but you, Sarah.” Chris retorts and the conversation washes over Sam as he leans back in his chair and watches them bicker.

The afternoon turns into evening, the darkening skies signal everyone to grab a sweater, but they stay on the patio eating, drinking, and laughing. As they nurse their various beers, Chris once again instigates the group by suggesting shots of the gin and whiskey that Sam had retrieved from the car.

It only takes two rounds before Cynthia and James beg off. Sam, Sarah, and Chris, clearly sharing the same stubborn streak found in all members of their family, are in some strange competition to drink the most yet not become too intoxicated. They have gone through two thirds of a bottle of whiskey when Chris turns to Bucky, nursing his own bottle of gin, since he’s been taking two shots to every one of theirs.

“How in the world are you not a slobbering mess?” He asks in wonder, slightly slurring.

Bucky says nothing, he just picks up the ¼ filled bottle and polishes the rest of it off, with his pinky in the air and doesn’t even have the decency to cough afterward.

Sam groans, “Why would you go and do that? Now I look like a lightweight.”

“You don’t need my help for that, I remember perfectly well what happened when Thor brought out the vodka last time. I’d hate to see what Asgardian mead would do to you.” Bucky said, reaching to open the second bottle of gin. He pours another round, passing the glasses out.

“Hold up, Thor was passing around what? What do y’all get up to in New York?” Chris asks as he grabs his shot glass.

“Why do you hang on to old stuff, Barnes?” Sam gripes, downing his shot, his thoughts already starting to go hazy. “Those of us with normal biology can’t just down a whole tray of shots and keep going. And if you ever find yourself being offered a drink by Thor, just say no or resign yourself to waking up in the altogether the next morning with no memory of how you got there.”

“A tray?” Cynthia says cradling her drink to her chest, shocked as Bucky snickers. “Oh no, I can’t hang with you. I’m sticking to my wine coolers.”

“Wait, I have questions. Who left you naked in public and why was that not on the news?” Brianna asks as she takes a beer from the cooler.

Sam, reaching for a beer as well, pauses. “Oh, ummm...”

Bucky smirks. “Yeah, Sammy, I think people would remember seeing America’s ass all over the news.”

“You are not helping, you robotic nightmare.” Sam says as he twists the lid off his bottle and turns to Brianna. “All I’m saying is I didn’t wake up naked in public and that’s it.”

It clicks immediately as she looks back and forth between them and squeals, “Sam Wilson, you thot!”

Cynthia, Chris and James burst out laughing, catching on, while Bucky looks confused. Sam drops his head to his hands wondering in inebriated amusement how this is his life. Sarah drops into the seat at his side and motioning for a beer.

“Who’s a thot?” She asks.

“Sam is! Walks of shame and all.” Cynthia adds and Bucky’s confusion eases into a laugh at the implication

“First, there was definitely no shame in my game. Second, I can’t believe you just called me a hoe.” Sam counters.

“Oh are we finally getting the hoe tales?” Sarah asks, smirking.

“There will be no hoe tales, because there are no hoe tales.” Sam says and thinks he may deserve another shot, headache be damned.

“Whatever, are you ready for this ass whooping?” Sarah asks Chris as she starts clearing the table of its various bottles, cups and shot glasses leaving nothing but two decks of cards in the center.

Chris rolls his eyes and Cynthia perks up and moves to sit across from her husband. Sam nudges Bucky to the side a bit as Chris grabs one deck and begins to shuffle. Brianna volunteers to keep score and Sarah ends up opposite Sam.

“Rummy?” Bucky leans in close to ask Sam.

“Spades.” Sam murmurs back and Bucky hums in acknowledgement. “You know how to play?” He asks, curious.

“Sure do. Played a lot of cards between ops.”

“Joker joker ace?” Brianna asks as she digs a pen out of her bag.

Sarah makes a noise of dissent as she pulls two cards from the deck, “Joker joker deuce deuce in this house. We’re going to 250.”

Sam cuts the deck and Chris deals the cards. Sam and Sarah quickly take the lead in the first hand, and team C faces a setback when they are set in the third hand, but Cynthia and Chris won’t go down without a fight.

“I don’t know why you thought this would be easy,” Cynthia says, dropping the ace of clubs to start the fourth, collecting the book and throwing out the queen.

Sarah rolls her eyes as she throws out a 9, but Sam tosses out the king, winning them the book.

Three books for team C and 4 for team S, and it’s come down to the wire. Unfortunately, Cynthia and Chris discover that neither one of them has any Jokers, but Chris comes back to make bid with the deuce of diamonds.

“And that’s that.” He says, smug.

Sam throws out the deuce of spades and takes the ace from Cynthia, her pout making Sam’s inner competitor smile. “Is it though?”

“Don’t get comfortable,” Sarah says as she collects the last book.

“And that’s all she wrote, clear up outta here!” Sam crows while Chris grumbles good-naturedly as he moves to the corner chair, leaving his seat open.

James perks up as they lose, taking the vacant chair.

“Couples game?” Sarah smiles at him before turning to Sam who has frozen.

Sam can’t. He hasn’t lost a spades game since he was 17 years old. He has never seen Bucky play spades in his life and what if they lose? Sarah will never let him hear the end of it. There are lines in any relationship and Sam didn’t think he’d find one in Darlene’s house, but a man’s gotta stick to his code. “Uh…” He stalls, trying to come up with a plausible reason to say no.

Bucky slides into the chair that Cynthia vacated as James speaks up, “Actually, me and James--sorry, Bucky, would like to take on the Wilsons.”

Sarah, in the process of getting up, sinks back into her chair and gives James a calculating look. “Oh, do you now?”

Sam, happier with this outcome, because he and Sarah play like a well oiled machine, relaxes as James deals.

Thirty minutes later, Sam and Sarah would be hard pressed to explain what happened. He has never seen such a score in a game, and if he hadn’t just participated in it, he wouldn’t believe it.

“Oh, birdy.” Bucky laughs. “I told you I played a lot of cards.”

“What happened?” Chris asks as Brianna passes him the score card, squinting at it before letting out a burst of laughter. “How in the…?”

“I call shenanigans!” Sarah says, scowling, as James smirks. “You two colluded somehow.”

“Don’t be like that, honey.” James says, pecking Sarah on the cheek as she gives up her chair to Cynthia for the very first time in her life.

“Oh how the mighty fall. You could have at least finished the game with some points, two fifty eight to negative sixty is just sad, bruh.” Chris taunts taking Sam’s chair.

Sam and Sarah stare at each other from their unfamiliar corner seats, both wondering how the two James’ could have outplayed them so well (If they were of slightly less inebriated mind, they may have come to the conclusion that, while they are amazing at spades, they are also drunk, but unfortunately that hasn’t yet occurred to them).

Chris and Cynthia fall prey to team J as well (which makes Sam feel slightly better, although he’s going to have to have a talk about the future of he and Sarah’s partnership) and soon after everyone is either yawning heavily or already in a stupor. They straighten up the patio and make their way inside, where they find Darlene and her siblings snoozing around the sectional with the third quarter of the Bills-Saints game playing on low volume.

They wake the adults up, and everyone leaving says a quick goodbye before Sam and Sarah insist Darlene go on to bed. The remaining four clear up any leftover dishes and cups, wrap up the last of the desserts and turn off all of the lights. The two couples part ways at the bottom of the basement stairs after a brief discussion of who gets the downstairs shower and who gets the one on the main floor (Sam wins the rock paper scissors game).

Sam starts the shower and smiles as Bucky comes up behind him slipping his hands around Sam’s sides and down his stomach to toy with the button of his jeans. There is nothing that Sam wants more at that moment than to get up to some good old fashioned hanky panky but he is in his mother’s house so he slowly pulls away, removing his own clothes in a much more perfunctory manner and stepping into the shower before he could change his mind and jump Bucky.

Said man seems to be intent on giving Sam a hard time because he follows him into the shower, closing the glass door behind him.

“C’mon Buck, you know we can’t.” Sam says mournfully when Bucky leans in for a kiss.

Bucky leans back and raises his brow, but makes no further moves. “Why’s that?”

Sam closes his eyes to keep from looking at Bucky and sighs, the man already tests his self-control on the best of days. “It’s my mom’s house. No coitus in the shower in mom’s house.”

“Is that a Darlene rule or a Sam Wilson rule?” Bucky asks as he begins to drag his gel-covered fingers down his chest.

Sam's eyes follow the movements greedily before he remembers to answer. “Neither. Both? It’s an unwritten rule.”

Bucky laughs as his hands slip down his stomach in a mirror of his earlier actions. “Seeing as I heard two sets of footsteps head upstairs at the same time and I only hear the shower, not the sink, I think you may be the only one following it right now.”

Sam pauses for a moment, thinking it over. Bucky may be on to something, it’s not like they aren’t adults. Committed adults in a monogamous long term relationship. No reason for them to pretend to be chaste. So lost in agreeing with Bucky's points, he is almost surprised when Bucky’s vibranium hand wanders over to grab him by the hip, urging him closer.

Their lips meet in a lazy, sloppy kiss, the water raining down on their skin warming them inside and out. Sam feels himself step even closer, their bodies sliding together sending tingles of pleasure down to his toes. Their hands slide across any skin they can reach, soapy and slick, finally reaching the one place Sam has been aching for Bucky to touch him all day. Strong fingers work over both of their cocks, and Sam lets Bucky swallow his moans as he brings them both over the edge, quick and dirty. They can't stop kissing each other even after reaching completion and one more quick lather later and they are drying each other off carefully.

Donning some briefs to sleep in, they get in bed where Sam settles against Bucky’s back to be the big spoon. A few moments pass before Sam speaks softly. “Did you have fun?”

“It's been first class, birdy.” Bucky squeezes Sam’s hand, “I already told your mom we’d be back for Easter, so be ready for another card.”

Sam smiles, half-wondering if Bucky is serious, brushing kisses along Bucky’s neck. “I love you, Buck.”

“Love you too, sugar." Bucky gives Sam’s hand one last squeeze as he yawns and relaxes into Sam’s light hold. "Sweet dreams.” Moments later the air is filled with quiet snores as they curl even tighter around each other.

Once again, Bucky rises before Sam (apparently it is possible for him to wake before noon and Sam will not forget it), but at least he can blame it on the Seagrams this time, not everyone is a supersoldier. Sam throws on a sweater and some sweatpants and heads upstairs, but Bucky is not in the sitting room or the den. Sam gulps as he heads toward the kitchen, he hopes he won’t find Bucky there either, he doesn’t think he’ll ever be ready for his mother and Bucky to cook in the same kitchen, that would be a recipe for disaster.

Sarah, James, and Bucky are all working on various parts of breakfast, to Sam’s horror. Thankfully, Darlene is nowhere to be found.

“What is happening?” Sam asks, more to himself than anyone else.

Sarah snorts, “Usually people eat this thing called breakfast in the morning.”

Both Jameses laugh and continue cooking, Bucky stirring something and James frying up bacon and sausage links. Sarah is cracking eggs into a bowl before seasoning them and beating them.

Sam zeroes in on Bucky’s hands. “Are you making pancakes?” He asks incredulously.

“Waffles, actually.” Bucky says as he pours some batter into the waffle iron and flips it over, starting the cook timer.

“How? You use instant pancake mix?”

Bucky grins, “I hate to break it to you, birdy, but Sarah found some of that mix in the pantry.”

“I will not sit here and let you both slander my mother’s pancakes.” Sam sniffs.

“Whatever Sam, mom has used the mix since we were teenagers, I don’t know why you think they’re from scratch. Now make yourself useful and get the grapes out, and then slice up the pears on the island, please.”

“Where is mom, by the way?” Sam asks, following Sarah’s orders to prepare the fruitg.

“She and Kayla decided to go out and do the black Friday thing at Burlington, apparently they had good doorbusters.” Sarah answers, switching places with James, who has just removed the last of the meat from the pan.

Breakfast is ready just as Sam hears Kayla’s excited voice coming through the front door, followed by Darlene calling out a cheerful greeting. Everyone converges to the table, laden with food and drink after they’re put away their purchases and washed their hands. As they sit down and Kayla says grace, Sam thinks that this may be the best thanksgiving he’s had in a good long while. Family, both new and old surrounds him and the gratitude that brings Sam fills him with contentment, cheating at cards, instant pancake mix, and all.

#sambucky #winterfalcon #winterfalcon bingo 2021 #square filled: domestic #k’s sambucky playlist #track six #up next: ooh ooh baby #of course the picture of Sam is coming #I obviously couldn’t help myself #fanfic

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gruntydiecast · 5 years ago

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Casting Call: Vector W8

First off, I’d like to apologize for the fact that I’ve not been updating my Tumblr lately. I’ve been busy at work and haven’t had time to write something. To make up for this... I’m writing quite possibly one of my longest posts yet.

By popular demand, this is the casting you chose on Instagram for me to document: the Vector W8. Grab some popcorn, a drink or some music... and enjoy the read. This is also in some ways a car that time forgot, but it’s not a concept car... but I can break the rules because I made them.

When it comes to cars of the ‘80s, there is a debate as to what the best car of the era was. Many say it would be either the Lamborghini Countach or the Ferrari Testarossa. But I have something that is neither of those things. Today, we’re going to take a trip down memory lane and explore the car that attempted to elevate a small company to the dizzying heights of the supercar realm. This... is the Vector W8.

First, here’s a bit of background. The W8 was manufactured by a company known as Vector Motors, then known as Vector Aeromotive. The company was founded in 1971 as Vehicle Design Force by Gerald “Jerry” Wiegert in Wilmington, California; we’ll get to the full history of Vector in a post in the near future because it is honestly very interesting.

In essence, the W8 was a highly refined version of the Vector W2, one of the company’s initial prototypes (the “W” in the name stood for “Wiegert”). Wiegert wanted to put the W2 into production, but an economical downturn prevented him from doing so. However, by the ‘80s, Wiegert had eventually secured enough capital through public stock offerings and even various lawsuits, allowing him to chase his dream: to build his ultimate sports car, designed and built by his own company.

Design inspiration for the W8 (and by extension the W2) came from this green car: the Alfa Romeo Carabo (Hot Wheels actually did a model of this way back when). Its sleek, futuristic and aerodynamic design was perfect for Wiegert, especially with the aerospace theme the company was going for in the ‘80s.

Combining the sleek looks of the Carabo with the geometry and technology of fighter jets of the time like the F-15 Eagle, F-16 Fighting Falcon and F/A-18 Hornet, Wiegert and chief designer David Kostka set out to create what would be quite possibly the most insane supercar of the ‘80s, and probably still is now: the Vector W8. The term “Aeromotive Engineering” was used to describe the process of manufacturing this car, for the car used the newest and most advanced aerospace materials when manufacturing the W8.

The car passed the mandatory DOT crash tests and emissions tests. It used a semi-aluminum monocoque chassis which was epoxy bonded and riveted using 5000 aircraft-specification rivets with an aluminum honeycomb floorpan. The body was made mainly of carbon fiber and Kevlar. The car featured scissor doors, like a Lamborghini.

The beating heart of the W8 was this: a highly-modified aluminum resleevable 6.0L Rodeck twin-turbocharged racing V8 with variable boost pressure. The engine produced 625 horsepower and made 649 lb⋅ft (880 N⋅m) of torque at 4,900 rpm at 8 psi of boost pressure, and as if the Rodeck V8 couldn’t get any more ridiculous, it featured TRW forged pistons, Carrillo stainless steel connecting rods, stainless steel valves and roller rocker arms, a forged crank, a dry-sump oiling system with three separate filters and braided stainless steel hoses with anodized red and blue fittings. This engine sounded mad; click here to hear a Vector starting up and revving.

Yes, you heard that correctly; variable boost. The boost for both turbochargers was adjustable from 8 to 14 psi through a dial in the interior. And speaking of which, let’s talk about that next; because, if you thought the engine was already mad enough, the interior is on a whole other level.

As you can see, the interior of the W8 is mad. Fighter jet-inspired screen? Check. A million buttons everywhere? Check. Gauges? ...no check. And hang on... is that what I think it is? A Turbo-Hydramatic 425 transmission?

Yep, that’s right, and that just makes the car a lot more insane; this ridiculously powerful 6.0L Rodeck V8 was mated to a 3-speed Turbo-Hydramatic 425 automatic transmission. Next to it on the right was the handbrake, sort of shaped like the throttle on a fighter jet. Due to the placement of the transmission and the handbrake, the driver side doorsill is very, very wide, making it a bit tough for the driver to get in and out of the car. You will also notice that there are buttons on top of the gear stick. I’ll get to those now.

As if this car couldn’t get any more ridiculous. This is the screen of the Vector W8, with four different settings (controlled with those four buttons), marked “Main”, “Performance”, “Performance” again and “Chassis”. This is the “Main” screen, showing the odometer, fuel gauge, speedometer and tachometer.

This is the first “Performance” screen, showing engine temperature, oil pressure and temperature, the tachometer reading and various other metrics.

The third screen was the second “Performance” screen, showing the transmission pressure (because it had a torque converter) and transmission temperature as well as battery voltage.

The last screen was the “Chassis” screen, which showed a picture of the W8 which updated in real time when a door was opened, when the engine compartment was opened and so on.

On the other side, you will notice that the W8 doesn’t actually have a partition between the driver and passenger side footwells. So it is a little awkward. This car also has no glovebox; in its place is a... CD changer?

Yes, that’s right. The car came with an in-car stereo... and a Sony CDX-A2001 ten-disc CD changer which graced the entire right side of the car’s already insane instrument panel. This was a nice innovation, although it did came with one drawback; no passenger-side airbags. Good luck if you get into a crash riding shotgun.

Back to the interior though. It was upholstered in premium leather and suede, with electrically adjustable leather Recaro seats and featured a premium air-conditioning system. Some driving amenities such as power steering were excluded. The seating position for the driver was made slightly towards the center for better drivability.

The rear of the W8 was dominated by lines, and the rear sightline... wasn’t very good, mainly because of that gigantic wing. The license plate holder is located on the left and apparently may have been an afterthought. “TWINTURBO” is seen gracing the back.

The car also features a trunk which is just behind the engine.

As for the front... oh, right, the headlamps. They’re not pop-up... they’re pop-DOWN.

The car also has a storage cubby up front, although really, it wasn’t much.

Also gracing the front were windshield wipers, as you would expect on practically every other car. However, there wasn’t just one, nor was there just two: there were THREE. A moonroof was also standard. It also had sliding side windows like a race car, as well as power-adjustable side mirrors.

The logo on the side of the car was the only thing that really gave any indication as to what manufacturer it was.

The car had unique six-spoke “turbine” wheels fitted to Michelin XGT Plus tires; the car used 255/45ZR-16s in the front and very, very strange 315/40ZR-16s in rear. These wheels were apparently of a bespoke design made to the driver’s specifications.

In terms of suspension, the W8 featured double A-arms up front and De Dion tube suspension at the rear, located by four trailing arms that stretched all the way forward to the firewall. The W8 used 13-inch vented disc brakes with Alcon aluminum 4-piston calipers.

In terms of performance, the Vector shined; it claimed to be able to do 389 km/h (242 mph) and a 0-60 mph (0-97 km/h) time of 3.9 seconds. These numbers were never officially tested, but if true, these are very impressive numbers for the time. Okay, enough about the W8’s performance and figures; let’s get to the part you’ve been waiting for, the history.

The W8 was first introduced in 1988 with a sticker price of about $185,000, priced within striking range of European competitors like the Lamborghini Diablo.

One high profile owner of a W8 was this man: Andre Agassi, although he ended up giving the car a bit of a bad rap. Agassi had insisted that his car be delivered before it was fully prepared; Vector agreed to this on the condition that Agassi not drive it and keep it in storage as the car was adjusted for the various emissions regulations in place. Agassi did not listen and drove it and ended up burning the rear carpeting due to an overly hot exhaust system; Agassi ended up requesting for a refund, which was ultimately granted. I’ll let you decide who’s at fault here.

Car And Driver magazine also tested the W8, but couldn’t complete testing because all three cars they were sent somehow managed to break down in different ways, leading to even more bad publicity. However, not all is bad as Road and Track magazine waxed lyrical about the Vector, praising practically every aspect of the W8’s performance.

Vector was still going strong in 1993, selling W8s; however, Wiegert was already planning for a successor. That successor was to be known as the AWX-3, better known as the WX-3 (Hot Wheels also made a model of this one too), where the name stood for Avtech Wiegert eXperimental, 3rd generation.

I’ll get into more details of the WX-3 in a later blog when I receive my WX-3 from the United States. Production of the W8 ultimately came to a halt in 1993 as Wiegert attempted to put the WX-3 into production; however, as the company was engaged in a hostile takeover by a Bermuda-based Indonesian company known as MegaTech, production never resumed and Vector entered a sharp decline. I’ll get into the rest of that history in another post.

In total, twenty-two cars were produced; seventeen of which were customer cars and five of which were prototypes. The car is now worth over $1 million today; so, if for some reason you ever see a car that looks like this on the roads, drop everything and take as many pictures as you can, because you have just seen one of only twenty-two Vector W8s. Okay, now that we’ve gotten all that out of the way, let’s get to the reason why you’re here.

This... is the Hot Wheels version of the Vector W8. Named the Vector W8 Twinturbo in the Hot Wheels lineup, this casting was first introduced in the 2012 HW Boulevard series in the Ahead Of Its Time sub-series. This casting was designed by Manson Cheung.

The base of the W8 features no mention of “Vector” anywhere; instead, just the SKU is displayed: W4831.

The sides feature the text “VECTOR W8 TWINTURBO” and nothing else. Black lines streak across the back to represent the engine cover.

The rear fascia is nice, although my only real gripe is a lack of rear detail apart from the engine cover.

The front fascia is also well done, with “VECTOR” and “TWIN TURBO” on the windshield, although a lack of detail on the body apart from the side reflectors leaves me wanting more. The interior is painfully cramped so I can’t get any good photographs, but what I see are the Turbo-Hydramatic shift lever, the steering wheel, seats and molded pedals (those pedals are part of the base). The distinctive screen and CD changer are absent from the instrument panel, but of course, you can’t have everything.

Folks, I believe you may have heard of the term “One-Hit Wonder” before. This is exactly an example of that; the W8 only saw one release in the HW Boulevard series and has not been seen since. As a result, prices for the Vector have been steadily climbing on eBay and I don’t see them going down for some time; why don’t you take a look for yourself?

I hope this long writeup has given you a better idea on this turbocharged thrasher, and what is quite possibly my new favorite supercar from the ‘80s; step aside, Lamborghini Countach. As usual, I’d do something like this any day.

This article is the first in a three-part series I will call The Vector Saga. The series will document the W8, the WX-3, and the history of Vector Motors as a whole.

#hotwheels #CastingCall #vectorw8 #vectorw8twinturbo #mansoncheung #thattimeforgot #vectoraeromotive #thevectorsaga

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hencethebravery · 7 years ago

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⤀ “Falling Catching,” by @hencethebravery. | After a long, hot summer, Emma and Killian escape Storybrooke to enjoy all the aesthetic pleasures that fall has to offer. Post S6, newlywed road trip 2k17.

Notes: For CS Halloweek (“Seasonal”)! Please note, I am a biased little bean and had the babes spend some time in NY because NY in the fall is the actual best. The lil tale Killian tells towards the end is taken from a short story by Angela Carter in The Bloody Chamber. Many thanks to @the-reason-to-sail-home for her notes on this. Also on Ao3.

+ A few months after the wedding (and yet another curse), a few months after things return to normal by Storybrooke standards, the weather finally starts to turn. Summer takes an unusually long time to end; the hot, occasionally humid days persisting long after the first official day of autumn. By the end of September, the heat starts to feel oppressive. However much Emma had enjoyed the feeling of the sun on her skin, had vainly admired the smattering of dark freckles on the bridge of her nose and along the tops of her cheeks, her enthusiasm had begun to severely wane.

The only way she could seem to find relief from the heat were those few blissful moments standing beneath a freezing cold shower—those few seconds after she’d step into their adjoining bedroom, luxuriating in the warm breeze against her wet skin. Unfortunately, it never lasted very long. Despite lying perfectly still and mostly (if not completely) naked atop the bed, she would almost immediately begin to feel the sweat gather in the dip at the base of her throat, sliding down the smooth, flat pane of bone between her breasts.

Killian wasn’t generally one for bemoaning physical discomfort, living on a boat in a uniquely inconvenient world made him almost annoyingly patient with the irritating realities of being a human being. She could see the damp floppiness of his hair at the end of the day, the way the sweat would create an unpleasant looking rash between the leather of his brace and the flesh of his wrist. What he couldn’t really handle, apparently, was her complete lack of interest in being touched.

It wasn’t as if they’d gone all summer without indulging in one another, she could, in fact, recall many a time in early and midsummer when she could barely keep her hands off him; relishing in the slipperiness of their bodies, the saltiness of his skin under her tongue. But now, with summer officially over, and that sluggish, inescapable exhaustion that comes with too much sun keeping her from wanting to do fuck all—it’s time to admit it, enough is enough.

“I don’t care how resilient you are,” she moans into the hot, oppressive space above his shoulder, “there’s no way you aren’t miserable right now.”

“What is this new obsession with dragging me down with you, darling?” he asks on a laugh, trying to chase after her lips, only she will cry if he comes any closer, and he’s already far too close—she can feel the heat coming off of him in waves, and it’s not enticing. If anything, she’s feeling a bit nauseous.

“You’re too perfect, it makes me nervous.” He laughs and flops onto his back, pushing the hair off his brow. “Please be miserable with me.”

“I guess I’ll admit to this infuriating lack of being able to kiss you,” his eyes meeting hers over the gentle, sloping hills of pillows and tangled sheets between them. “Don’t tell me you don’t miss it.”

Despite the heavy note of sleepiness in his voice, he still manages to ignite a fire in her belly with the way he’s staring at her lips, and she has to actively remind herself that she will not be seduced anytime soon. Sure, it’ll feel nice in the moment, but very soon after she’ll feel like a swamp monster and have to take another cold shower.

“Don’t even think about it.”

“I haven’t the faintest idea what you mean, love.”

Against her better judgment, she takes a heavy finger and starts prodding at the soft, sweaty, fuzziness of his bare chest. “You’re a terrible liar, Killian Jones.”

“Ah, yes,” he admits in a whisper, his lips coming closer all the while. She can only just make out his features in the now near-darkness of their bedroom, but she can feel the enticingly light feeling of his lips against hers, and takes a moment to mentally chastise herself for being utterly weak.

“...But so are you.”

The heat breaks with a storm off the coast and the entire town breathes a sigh of unmitigated relief. It’s October, but better late than never. It takes a few days for her body to adjust to the drastic temperature change, and she manages to get a stuffed up nose and a sore throat in the days that follow.

It’s annoying, but it’s better than being so hot you can’t sleep properly, or touch your husband, or put on pants. She takes a day off to sit on the couch and drink water full of so many lemon slices her lips start to get chapped, and in preparation for the upcoming season, watches a handful of old Halloween-themed television specials that she hadn’t thought of in ages. There aren’t many pleasant memories of her childhood, but there’s still something about this time of year—the changing of the world, as if everyone’s getting a second chance.

There’s a lot about how the both of them have grown up that can make it challenging to relate to certain experiences that other non-magical folk might get equally as giddy about. Lily, for example, despite her propensity for grumpiness, was more than happy to indulge in some hot, spiked cider with her on the porch. She’d even shared the large, heavy blanket that Emma had pulled from the hall closet. There’s just a certain kind of magic to autumn—to the ending of one season, the beginning of a new one. The break in the heat is kind of like a jolt to your otherwise languishing system, and while she couldn’t necessarily ride on horseback growing up, or take a potion to instantly cure her chicken pox, Misthaven didn’t have apple festivals. Or seasonal coffee drinks, or oversized, fuzzy cardigans.

“Had a bit more to worry about, didn’t I?”

The kitchen is bathed in a soft, warm glow as she sits patiently at the table, her feet pulled up beneath her thighs to stave off the chill. She hasn’t really gotten sick of it yet, the sight of him at the stove, stirring or steeping something or other. The scent of some kind of spicy seafood chowder hits her nose in just the right way and she can feel all that stuffed up nastiness clear for a few blissful seconds, her mouth watering and stomach grumbling.

“So, what, you just weren’t paying attention? Do seasons not change at sea?”

He’s serving up two bowls as he scoffs at the suggestion, playfully scolding her ignorance of seafaring matters. “Of course we have seasons at sea, Swan, and I paid very careful attention, thank you very much.”

She wonders if it has something to do with modernity and culture. Killian makes it a point to consider the pre-modern age of this world, when people had to rely on the Earth for their living, when the day-to-day was far less easy than it is now. There just simply wasn’t time to indulge in such things.

“But you did have magic, didn’t you?”

“Oh, it existed certainly,” he chuckles briefly, wiping some excess broth off her chin, “but it wasn’t quite so easy to access as your parents and Regina make it seem.”

She wrinkles her nose at the deeply complex realities of living in a fantasy realm and backs away from that rabbit hole before she completely tumbles down, down, down inside, never to be seen again—choosing instead to consider this reality, and all its delightful, season-specific propensity. It’s hard to explain it and not sound like an idiot, quite honestly. And even though she feels shockingly comfortable speaking with Killian on almost any subject, it’s still kind of hard to really relate in words the sheer feeling of hearing dried leaves crunching under your feet.

Which is when she suggests taking a small vacation.

“Are you sure, Emma?”

Never taking a honeymoon, too anxious to leave Storybrooke as if everything would fall apart once she crossed the town line. Nervous about Henry, even though he’s more of a teenager than ever these days and most of their communication is via text. She knows her parents and Regina would be more than able to keep a handle on things, but still, the idea of an actual break seems like a fantasy to her. Something you imagine and dream about, but which is, ultimately, far too good to be true, and if you start thinking like that, Emma Swan, one or both of you will end up cursed or dead.

“Yeah,” she answers suddenly with a shake of her head, sniffing away the unpleasantness, “Yeah, I’m sure.”

The bug is confirmed drivable before they leave. The brakes get checked, the tires pumped full of air. The trunk is packed with duffle bags, the backseat is stacked with thick quilts and maps and a cooler full of snacks for the road. She’s an old gal, so the only musical option is the radio and a tape deck, which would suck, if you were a monster and hated Fleetwood Mac. Killian might hate Fleetwood Mac, but there’s no way of knowing until they’ve listened to Rumours about 500 times.

They leave early on a Saturday morning, before the sun comes up, and Main St. is flooded with a thick, damp fog. The air is cool and smells a bit like smoke as they drive through the woods towards the town line, the AM station on the radio crooning some old, classical concerto beneath the turning of the tires. It doesn’t feel much like a time for talking, so she reaches out to curl her fingers around his hook instead, his face flushing a delightful pink in the periphery of her vision. As they pass the sign for Storybrooke he emits an audible hum of relief, and her toes wiggle restlessly inside her boots against the gas pedal. So much better than magic.

They drive for about half the day before making their first stop, far too enamored with the infiniteness of the highway, the pine trees towering overhead—the sweet, heady scent of them seeping in through the cracked windows. The fog dissipates eventually, but the day stays grey and cool, and by some unique, human trick of the head she’s all but forgotten about what the heat had felt like, as if those last few, brutal weeks had never happened. They make it over the border into New York around noon, and despite all the coffee the inside of her head still manages to feel like it’s been wrapped in wool.

The bleak day finally gives way to a light drizzle, and Emma yawns as they pull into a local hotel, lovingly adorned with garlands of fake leaves, piled high with pumpkins and cinnamon-scented pinecones peeking out of a barrel. A lone ghost hangs from a string by the front office, and she feels a kind of delightful, anticipatory chill in her bones.

“Wait here, love,” he says lightly, stopping her from abandoning her post against the side of the bug. “I’ll check in. Back in a tick.”

There’s a vision stirring in her mind and it’s the unique, dark quiet of an unclaimed hotel room; freshly cleaned (hopefully) and awaiting new occupants. While hopping from place to place had gotten exhausting and depressing after a while, there was always something comforting about the expectant nature of hotels. Especially when there were nice people behind the counter, ignorant of whatever petty crime she and Neal had committed that day, no way of knowing the pathetic sordidness of her life. They would stand there, smiling and chatting behind the counter talking about free amenities like they actually wanted her there. We’re here to help you, they’d say happily, not a hint of bitterness in their tone, enjoy your stay.

Thunder claps as Killian closes the door behind them, the sound of the rain growing louder in its ferocity, lashing against the windows. She falls heavily onto the bed without removing a single item of clothing, her feet still trapped inside her boots, the creases of her elbows stiff inside her jacket. He lets out a chuckle from somewhere by her feet, his own voice carrying a hint of drowsiness, “While I would be more than happy to join you in this endeavor, you might be more comfortable without the boots—” he pauses and she can almost hear the way his hand comes up to stroke at his jaw, “and the jacket.”

“Are you flirting with me, Jones?”

Her voice is muffled against the comforter but he lets out a chuckle regardless as he begins to peel the boots down her legs. “I would never.”

He undresses her slowly, and while there’s almost always an attraction simmering beneath the surface, it doesn’t interfere with the platonic affection of this particular moment. Each variation of their intimacy has its own kind of magic; whether it be entirely domestic and fleeting, as if an afterthought, or deliberate and physical, a mad moment of almost painful lust. She’d taken note of it before they’d gotten married, but it had just seemed so much more obvious after the fact. The foreverness of their intimacy; all the different kinds she would be able to know and love with a certainty she’d never felt before.

Eventually he manages to secure the both of them beneath the blankets, but not before cracking open a window at the back of the room to let in the wetness on the air, the sound of the rain and wind a quiet, drumming soundtrack to the warmth of his breath against her ear, the beating of his heart against her back. She feels herself drift away in time with the sensation of his fingertips trailing up and down the top of her arm, her body sinking heavily into the pleasantly soft mattress.

When she opens her eyes, there’s a rich, buttery light falling across the carpet. For a moment, she wonders if maybe they’ve slept until morning, but a cursory glance at the digital clock on their nightstand reveals that it’s only been a few hours. It’s a pre-dusk light, the final, powerful rays of the sun reminding you that they’d been there all along, even with the doggedness of the clouds during the day. Killian is a sturdy presence at her back, a warm and blissful reminder of where they are at this very moment—asleep and away, with no one to bother them.

A gust of post-storm air slinks in through the open window and she can feel the bite of it against her nose, smell the impending frost as it crawls south through the mountains. She had noticed a cheap set of wind chimes hanging from the office door and she can hear them now, an inelegant clanging softened by the walls of their room, the insulation of the pillows and blankets cocooned around them both.

Without really thinking about it she adjusts herself against him, trying to better fill any of the empty space left between their bodies, and his arm tightens around her waist; her heart thumping with an overwhelming feeling of affection for this man she now calls her husband. His wrist skims lightly over her hip and she slowly turns to face him, hoping that she’ll have a few more minutes to admire him in the stillness of sleep, but predictably he’s already awake, his tired gaze mirroring her own.

His voice is gruff and quiet when he inquires after the time, and she whispers something about it being close to 5 or so before hushing him with a kiss. It’s not as stale as she’d expected, having only slept the few hours, and his nose is unusually cold against her own. Normally she finds genuinely concerned that he might have some sort of fever with how hot he tends to get in his sleep.

“Your nose is cold,” she whispers against his lips, trying to avoid disrupting the peacefulness of the moment. He grunts and playfully hides his face against the warmth of her neck, and she laughs loudly into the silence, relishing the feeling of his skin against hers. The rest of their clothing comes off easily enough, as they’d be down to nothing but their underwear anyway, and she spends a leisurely amount of time enjoying the sensation of his breath between her legs; his unshaven cheeks and chin sliding along her belly.

It’s another few hours before they emerge, the sun having set somewhere between his fingers sliding through her hair and her legs wrapping lazily around his waist.

The night is quiet as they make their way towards the bug, hoping to find a diner open somewhere for dinner, and she has to pull her jacket a bit tighter about her person to ward off the cooler temperatures of the evening. Not a bad way to start, she thinks happily as she watches Killian jump behind the wheel, his hair wonderfully mussed at the back, not bad at all.

The rest of the trip follows in a similarly blissed out, pumpkin-spiced state of carefreeness that she’s never really experienced in her life. By the many happy, confused looks on Killian’s face, she thinks it’s fair to say that he feels the same.

There’s one day spent in a state of near-endless intoxication, having stumbled upon a farm that offered apple picking and impossibly cheap alcohol all at once.

“This realm is a miracle, Swan,” he had been forced to admit, delighted at the prospect of their being apples and booze made from those same apples all on the same premises; the cider bubbly and sweet, it’s hard to forget it’s actually alcoholic, and they get lost in the multicolored infinity of the orchard until one of them’s sober enough to drive back to the hotel.

They take another day to hike through a particularly dense forest, where the sun can barely manage to break in and out between the leaves of the trees, coating the forest floor in vivid oranges and yellows, as if the whole world were on fire. It’s an unexpectedly strenuous hike, the land shot through with rocks and exposed roots; the topographical nature of the area made of steep inclines and narrow paths through the mountains.

Luckily for them it’s the middle of the week, so there’s few people to bother them, and it’s as if the world is empty with the exception of the two of them, the only sound being the crunchiness of leaves underfoot (just as satisfying as she remembers), the heaviness of their breath loud and taxed in the cold air. When they finally make it to the top mid-afternoon, the view is enough to effectively silence them both; the atmosphere becoming charged with an as yet to be determined significance that hadn’t been there before.

The mountains stretch on, and on, and on towards the horizon, as if they’ll never end, and there’s the look of the sea reflected in Killian’s gaze as he stands at the edge of a cliff, his lips parted in appreciation.

“I feel as if I could set sail,” he admits softly to himself; to her, to the howling of the wind as it whips around the mountain’s peak. It sounds like a confession, as if he were revealing some kind of hallowed secret, and there’s a feeling of honor in its profundity—that he’s chosen to reveal his misdeeds, his desires, the benign secrets that pass through one’s mind at any given moment.

She hums in agreement, coming up behind him to link their arms and rest her chin atop his shoulder. When she takes a deep, cleansing breath, the smell of him mingles with the air and the earth and if she could bottle it she would—the mustiness of the leather, the hint of apple on his breath, sweet and enticing. An illustration from Henry’s book springs suddenly to mind. The Jolly Roger sailing through the air, her wing-tipped sails almost indistinguishable from the surrounding clouds.

“Me too,” she whispers into his ear, giving his arm a reassuring squeeze. No harm in taking a moment to indulge the lost, lonely children inside them both; the travelers and adventure-seekers they’d been before they had found a home in one another. Thinking about the past is so much easier than it used to be, not quite so heavy as it had once been. It probably has something to do with a renewed faith in the future. It doesn’t feel quite so painful, thinking about the person she used to be, knowing where she’d end up, who’d be at her side.

“Let’s get back before it gets dark,” pressing a firm kiss to his cheek, tugging him back towards the trail for the return trip, “I hear there’s some rum in it for you.”

A week or so before Halloween they find a drive-in screening a few horror classics. Thanks to Henry, he’s gotten a bit of a crash course in film, although he’s never really watched a horror movie or sat in a car to watch one, but he does seem to understand the general principle of the thing.

She spots an ad in the lobby of one their hotels, a stack of fliers next to restaurant menus and haunted house attractions. Apparently it’s been there for years, and when they drive up past the ticket booth the age of the place is undeniable. It’s a large swath of open field surrounded by tall, imposing pine trees, in front of which stands a large, slightly dilapidated movie screen.

“Explain the charm of this particular activity to me again?”

It’s only after she’s grabbed a quilt from the backseat and laid it across their laps, a full flask of mulled cider and a half-empty bag of locally-made caramels resting between them that he finds his answer without her having to say a single word. She’d had to spend some time curating his sweet tooth before and during the trip, not wanting him to miss out on some of the more crucial tastes of the season: all that sticky, sugary goodness.

She manages to stay awake all the way through Dracula, but falls asleep about halfway through The Mummy, her head in Killian’s lap, blanket tucked securely around her shoulders. At one point she realizes she’s falling asleep, which is odd—most of the time it happens too fast to really notice, only this time she can feel herself losing her grip on wakefulness, the growls, shrieks, and gasps growing less focused, the dialogue less comprehensible.

“Are you having fun?” she mumbles sleepily, trying to stay awake long enough to appreciate the heat of his body, the scratchiness of the blanket that smells like the inside of her mother’s large, superfluous trunk of cloaks and quilts.

He chuckles and tries to remove some of the hair from her eyes and mouth, “I do believe I am, love. Are you?”

There’s a suggestion that they leave for a more suitable bed, but she manages to utter a hasty refusal, wanting him to enjoy the rest of the night despite her own surrender. In her few, final moments of consciousness she manages to hear a gasp of surprise and delight at something that’s happened on screen; the sound of a crinkling candy wrapper, and it’s the soundtrack of his movements, unintentional and familiar, that lulls her the rest of the way into sleep.

The night before the drive back he suggests that they camp under the stars, and while she’s never been one to pass up spending the night in a soft bed, it’s hard to say no when he seems so excited. Not to mention the fact that he’s gone along with pretty much every objectively silly fall-flavored activity she’s suggested thus far.

He manages to find the most isolated patch of land he can, right on the edge of a sizable lake that reflects the moon in absurdly picturesque fashion. They’d spent most of the day hiking through the forest to find it, taking advice from the park rangers as well as Killian’s own attractive map-reading abilities. It’s mesmerizing—the sight of his shoulder angling back to pull it from his pocket, the way he glances at it quickly and easily, confidently turning one way and then another. She has a great many skills, but intuitively wandering through the woods has never been one of them.

They set up the tent in the event of rain, but he’s pretty determined to lay out beneath the stars, and she arranges their bedrolls, blankets, and pillows in an attempt to create a satisfactorily cushioned bed between their not-quite-so-spry bodies and the unforgiving reality of sleeping on the edge of a forest.

“Trust me,” she says at the sight of his indignant glare, “your back will thank me.”

He puts up a bit of a fight at first, but she ends up using magic to light the fire, as it would take significantly less time than rubbing two sticks together, and the frigid air is starting to make her grumpier than she’d like. The flames lick and snap their way towards the sky, the embers floating lazily upwards to meet the stars. She asks him for a story and he happily concedes, embarking on an oddly familiar tale about a girl who falls in love with a beast, only he doesn’t turn into a prince at the end. She’s the one who’s grown a lovely fur coat after their shared kiss, her nails sharp and teeth bared.

“I hope this isn’t some kind of weird guilt trip,” she says afterwards, tilting up her chin to glance at him from her cozy place between his legs. It rings a little too harshly of the worries that plague his own heart, the fear that he’s somehow corrupted her with all his villainous misdeeds, but he actually surprises her with a shake of his head.

“Not at all. The girl’s happy at the tale’s end, aye?”

Shaking free of her fine dress, the pins falling from her tightly coiled hair. The story ends with the pair of them running through the trees, howling at the moon.

“I guess you’re right.”

“Oh, you ‘guess,’ do you?” Playfully mocking her words, poking at her ribs in a way that proves unexpectedly delightful. It’s like she’s a teenager again, the way he laughs against her ear and she helpless to do anything but shriek gleefully and unashamedly into the night. “Howling at the moon are we, princess?”

Not a princess, she thinks, watching the clouds as move against the sky, the silver light of the moon intermittently bathing their campsite in an eerie glow, never a princess. When she throws her head back against his shoulder, a resounding, ecstatic cry on her lips, the past has never seemed further away.

A few days before they’re scheduled to make the trip home, she starts to get a little bit ahead of herself. Nervous at the prospect of the night before and the morning of—wondering if she’d spend the entire trip back thinking about what they’d missed while they were gone, what fresh hell they’d be expected to fix.

She knew she was sullying the last few days of their trip, which she wasn’t particularly proud of, but it was hard to ignore the impending reality of the fact. In a few days she’d be back in Storybrooke, back at the sheriff’s station, fielding calls from her mother and Regina, worrying about portals opening and spells gone awry. She’s sitting on the balcony off their hotel room, watching the sunrise from behind the mountains when she initially thinks of it. Which, she’s not entirely sure why she hadn’t thought of it earlier, it makes perfect sense, and honestly, the mere suggestion makes it feel as if a weight’s been lifted off her shoulders.

“Hey,” she exclaims in an excited whisper, straddling Killian’s stomach as he drifts in and out of sleep, “wake up.”

“Am I not allowed this one morning of peace?” he groans, his hand and wrist coming to rest on her thighs regardless of his apparent ire. She can remember the days when touching one another was this planned, careful thing. The wrong moment, a touch too firm or too light, and the whole thing might have fallen apart. She can’t deny the joy of noticing this particular touch, as if he hadn’t even thought about it.

“I had an idea.”

He opens one of his eyes, a twinkle of mischief there despite the rudeness of his awakening, and he grins. “How unfortunate.”

“Shut up. This is a serious idea.”

“Which is?”

It had seemed impossible to keep inside only moments earlier, with the sun shining on her face, the hot coffee running in her veins. Really, an incredible idea, almost mad at herself for having waited this long to think of it, only now that it’s here and she’s got his undivided attention she’s a little more terrified than she thought she’d be. What if he thought it was stupid? What if he refused?

“Emma,” he says firmly, giving her thigh a gentle pinch, “what’s your idea?”

Be my deputy. Be the hero you always wanted to be—that I’ve known you could be for almost as long as I’ve known you.

“I need a partner.”

He lifts a quizzical brow, imploring her to continue within this same vein of her vague suggestion, while she desperately hopes that her face is not as red as it feels. “Being the sheriff,” she elaborates, slowly finding the words as she continues, “David won’t be helping out as much anymore, and… I need someone I can trust. To help.”

“You think the Storybrooke denizens would be content with a pirate replacing their king?”

“He’s not a ‘king,’” she corrects quickly, rolling her eyes. “And I think you’ve proved yourself capable more than enough times.”

She tries to keep her gaze from seeking out the sensitive skin of his neck, the feeling of his heart beating beneath her legs, and instead attempts to gauge his reaction, consider what he might possibly be thinking in these few moments of torturous silence. Tries to imagine what he might look like with a badge at his hip instead.

“I suppose,” be begins carefully, “if that’s what you want, I might find it within myself to accept such a charge.”

“But is it what you want?”

He takes a few moments to think it over and she’s grateful he’s not jumping at the chance simply because she’s the one to have suggested it. He sits up rather abruptly, the hint of a smile on his face, and she has to hold onto his shoulders to keep her balance, her eyes meeting his as she wraps her arms around his neck.

“Well? What do you say, Captain?”

Whereas the drive west had been wet and dreary, the return trip is bright and unusually warm as they make their way back to Storybrooke. The leaves have somehow turned even more vibrant in the intervening weeks, and she keeps her window rolled down the entire trip back, basking in the comfortable weather before it turns frigid and unpleasant.

The bug is packed once again, only there are bags of apples for baking, bottles of cider and liquor to keep them sustained in winter, and a few other odds and ends for Henry and her parents. The fear that she’d felt a few days earlier, the overwhelming certainty that she’d be headed back for disaster had slithered quietly away. Driven off by the feeling of Killian’s lips against hers, the familiar charm of his words against her ear.

“Of course, Emma. I could never imagine myself anywhere else but at your side.”

She glances over and smiles at the sight of him asleep, handsome as ever. It’s hard not to be suspicious when you find yourself with nothing to worry over, but she does her best to keep herself in time with the voice crooning softly from the speakers. Admires the leaves falling from the trees as they whiz by, back towards the sea. Back home.

#cs halloweek #ouat #ouat edit #cs edit #cs ff #cs fanfic #captain swan #cs: shit is breathtaking bro #@hencethewriter #@hencethebravery

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perfectirishgifts · 4 years ago

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Here’s How You’ll Get Paid To Ride In A Self-Driving Car

New Post has been published on https://perfectirishgifts.com/heres-how-youll-get-paid-to-ride-in-a-self-driving-car/

Here’s How You’ll Get Paid To Ride In A Self-Driving Car

How to get paid to ride in self-driving cars.

Self-driving cars are gradually getting ready for prime time.

To-date, the public roadway tryouts of self-driving cars have primarily consisted of having a human back-up driver at the wheel, serving to monitor the driving, and acting as a safety operator that can take over the driving controls if needed. This meant that any passengers in the self-driving car were still potentially reliant upon a human driver, albeit that much of the time the AI driving system was driving the vehicle.

You’ve likely seen in the news that some of the self-driving car companies are now aiming to remove the back-up driver and let the AI do all the driving. As such, the occupants in the self-driving car will entirely be passengers, going along for the ride and not taking part in doing any of the driving.

It is both exciting and somewhat unnerving to sit in a self-driving car during a driving journey and see a completely empty driver’s seat (for my eye witness coverage on what it is like, see the link here). Watching the steering wheel going back-and-forth, seemingly on its own, becomes mesmerizing and can stoke a certain amount of awe. It can also cause shivers up your spine as you silently wonder about whether the AI will do its job properly or not.

Do not though be misled as to what these latest trials portend.

An aspect that is not especially pointed out is that these experimental roadway efforts are within constrained or limited areas and otherwise relatively narrow in scope. Referred to formally as the Operational Design Domain (ODD), self-driving cars are currently crafted to focus on a geographically bounded area, and might have other stipulations such as not being ready to drive in adverse weather, or can only drive during daylight hours, and so on.

You could say that your mileage will vary, in the sense that the self-driving cars are first toying with confined ODDs and we’ll have to wait and see how this goes.

Eventually, after a wide array of ODDs are tested out and successfully achieved, presumably we might see self-driving cars that can be essentially unconstrained in that they are permitted to drive anywhere that you might be able to drive. I mention this aspect of driving where humans drive since the official standards indicate that a self-driving car is only held to the requirement of driving where humans are capable to drive, not necessarily having to be able to drive in circumstances that humans would not viably be able to drive (i.e., human-managed drivability).

It is generally assumed that ultimately the mainstay use of self-driving cars will be for ride-sharing purposes.

In theory, since there is no human driver needed for a true self-driving car, the vehicle can be utilized nearly 24×7 and continually be underway (excluding time for fueling, maintenance, etc.). There is no need to try and find a driver or make sure that a driver is suitable for driving a car. The driver, the AI driving system, willingly runs all the time, won’t get drunk, and can drive whenever so called upon to do so. Note that cars today are only used about 5% of the time, meaning that they sit around as underutilized and expensive assets for nearly 95% of the time.

Via ridesharing, most pundits predict that self-driving cars could be a tremendous moneymaker. There will be some owners of self-driving cars that are large companies such as the automakers, ride-sharing firms, rental car firms, and other corporations, and they will put forth a fleet of self-driving cars, hoping to make bundles of money.

Note that I have also espoused that individuals will also seek to own self-driving cars and be able to make cash accordingly too. This is considered a contrarian viewpoint and there are doubts expressed that this will occur. In any case, imagine that when you are at the office for work that your owned self-driving car is running around providing ride-sharing lifts, and likewise at nighttime while your head is resting on your pillow at home that your self-driving car will be earning dough for you. The rest of the time, you’ll ride around in your self-driving car for your own purposes, such as your daily commute or getting over to the local grocery store.

Either way that things play out, the core and the seemingly “obvious” assumption is that people will pay to take rides in self-driving cars, just like people do so for today’s use of human-driven ride-sharing and assorted taxi-related services.

There is no doubt that most of the time, you’ll be paying to have a self-driving car give you a ride. One hope is that the cost of using a self-driving car will be less than that of human-driven conventional cars, indeed a lot less costly, and thus there will be an opportunity for those that today are mobility disadvantaged to be able to become more mobile. That’s a certainly laudable outcome if it turns out that way.

There is a bit of an interesting twist that I’ve pointed out and tends to (again) be a somewhat contrarian viewpoint.

Here’s the intriguing and out-of-the-box aspect to contemplate: Are there going to be circumstances that people will get paid to ride in self-driving cars, and if so, what would the Top 5 reasons consist of?

Let’s unpack this claim and see.

Understanding The Levels Of Self-Driving Cars

As a clarification, true self-driving cars are ones that the AI drives the car entirely on its own and there isn’t any human assistance during the driving task.

These driverless vehicles are considered a Level 4 and Level 5 (see my explanation at this link here), while a car that requires a human driver to co-share the driving effort is usually considered at a Level 2 or Level 3. The cars that co-share the driving task are described as being semi-autonomous, and typically contain a variety of automated add-on’s that are referred to as ADAS (Advanced Driver-Assistance Systems).

There is not yet a true self-driving car at Level 5, which we don’t yet even know if this will be possible to achieve, and nor how long it will take to get there.

Meanwhile, the Level 4 efforts are gradually trying to get some traction by undergoing very narrow and selective public roadway trials, though there is controversy over whether this testing should be allowed per se (we are all life-or-death guinea pigs in an experiment taking place on our highways and byways, some contend, see my coverage at this link here).

Since semi-autonomous cars require a human driver, the adoption of those types of cars won’t be markedly different than driving conventional vehicles, so there’s not much new per se to cover about them on this topic (though, as you’ll see in a moment, the points next made are generally applicable).

For semi-autonomous cars, it is important that the public needs to be forewarned about a disturbing aspect that’s been arising lately, namely that despite those human drivers that keep posting videos of themselves falling asleep at the wheel of a Level 2 or Level 3 car, we all need to avoid being misled into believing that the driver can take away their attention from the driving task while driving a semi-autonomous car.

You are the responsible party for the driving actions of the vehicle, regardless of how much automation might be tossed into a Level 2 or Level 3.

Self-Driving Cars And Getting Paid To Ride

For Level 4 and Level 5 true self-driving vehicles, there won’t be a human driver involved in the driving task.

All occupants will be passengers.

The AI is doing the driving.

People will pay to ride in self-driving cars.

And I assert fervently, there will be circumstances whereby people will get paid to ride in self-driving cars.

How so?

We’ll start with the famous line that if you are not paying for something that you are getting, you aren’t the customer and instead you are the product (this is infamously a widespread saying, traceable to the 1970s and referred to people as they watched TV, though the exhortation was made especially noteworthy during the advent of social media).

Suppose a firm hawking life insurance wanted to get your undivided attention in hopes of your buying their insurance.

The insurer might cut a deal with a self-driving car fleet owner and offer the following. If a rider requesting a self-driving car lift meets various criteria related to the propensity to buy life insurance, and if during the ride a series of ads will get displayed inside the self-driving car, the insurer will not only cover the cost of the ride, they’ll pay the passenger to take the ride.

This might be a savvy deal for the insurance company.

Assuming that the cost of the ride itself is going to be relatively low, and the added cost to pay the passenger is relatively modest too, the insurer has that passenger in an essentially guaranteed confined space and can bombard them with ads. Also, keep in mind that self-driving cars are likely to be outfitted with interactivity, such as allowing people to take an online course while say on their daily commute. In that sense, the insurer might display a canned video ad, and potentially make available remotely a live human agent (a salesperson) that does an online chat with you during your ride inside the self-driving car.

Your first thought might be that you’d gladly take a free ride and cherry-on-top get paid, simply by having to ensure a sales pitch. Part of the reason you might be so willing to go along with this notion is that you figure you could readily ignore the ad anyway. All you need to do is put on your headphones and listen to music on your smartphone, or perhaps stare outside the window of the car and watch the scenery, ignoring completely the ads being shoveled at you.

Well, it might not be as easy as you think to disregard the ads.

Realize that self-driving cars will have cameras pointed inward, doing so for purposes of letting you do interactive discussions remotely, perhaps conferencing into your work while making the morning commute. Those cameras are also intended to catch people marking graffiti inside a ridesharing self-driving car or otherwise attempting to damage the interiors. All in all, this gives the owner of the self-driving car a chance to watch what is happening inside the vehicle during a driving journey.

This ties to the advertisements in that the deal might be that you have to be avidly looking at the video ads to get the promised money for being a passenger. There is AI that could easily do monitoring of the inward-facing camera and detect whether you are looking at the ad versus looking outside at the passing scenery or that you are staring down at a cat video on your smartphone. If you aren’t attentive to the ad, you lose the pledged payment and perhaps even will get charged for taking the self-driving car ride.

How do you like those apples?

Again, some might refuse to take up such an offer, while others might be quite willing to act on it.

Undoubtedly, this will raise hackles and consternation. This approach could be accused of being an elitist kind of scheme that entraps those unable to otherwise afford to use a self-driving car. Another angle is that it could be a privacy invasion of sorts since it not only would possibly capture info generally about you, there would also be a complete video and audio taping of you that the advertiser could presumably retain and reuse as they see fit.

Moving on, a variant of this aforementioned approach consists of paying you to go someplace in particular.

Suppose a high-end jewelry store is having a special sale. They want to attract customers to come and hopefully purchase a pricy necklace or a tony speckled bracelet at their brick-and-mortar store. There might be prospective customers that would come but do not want to drive there per se, which might entail dealing with parking of their car and coping with traffic hassles. The easiest way to get there would be via a self-driving car, which could drop them off directly at the door of the jewelry store.

Similar to the earlier points, the jewelry store might do a deal with a self-driving car firm to offer payment for the ride and the rider too. In this case, the destination is fixed. The self-driving car will pick you up at your home or office and whisk you directly and only to the jewelry store. This prevents those sneaky riders that might figure they could falsely agree to the trip and then reroute the self-driving car or have it stop sooner. Of course, you could still be tricky, perhaps once you get delivered to the door of the jewelry store, you wanted to go there anyway since it is at the local mall, and now you got a paid ride to the mall.

As an aside, I’ve suggested herein that those companies that want to get your attention are going to contract with a fleet owner of self-driving cars and do the deals in that fashion. It could be that the companies doing these types of efforts will purchase self-driving cars for their own use. Thus, rather than paying a middleman as it were, an insurance company or a jeweler might outright own a self-driving car or have a set of such vehicles and use them extensively. This would be a relatively straightforward cost-benefit calculation as to whether it is more prudent to do a deal with someone else or to buy and utilize the vehicles on their own.

Shifting gears, consider other ways in which you could get paid to ride in a self-driving car.

For this next example, it is a bit of a twist so please bear with me for the context.

One issue that will arise with true self-driving cars is the riding around of children inside self-driving cars and doing so without any in-car adult being present (see my analysis of this, at the link here). A busy parent wants to send their kids over to the school and thus plunks them down into a self-driving car, waves goodbye, and the vehicle presumably takes them directly non-stop to the school grounds. Some people say they will never allow their children to ride without an adult present, worried that the kids might go awry, possibly try to jump out of a moving car, or maybe have a mugger that tries to get into the vehicle, and other such horrifying possibilities.

Nonetheless, the convenience of having kids riding in self-driving cars is going to be alluring. Furthermore, potentially, the parent can at least watch the kids via the inward-facing cameras and be able to interact with them while they are on their driving journey. Of course, there is little the parent can do if something adverse occurs within the vehicle, but at least the parent will be aware and could take some remote action.

Anyway, this build-up brings us to the next reason that you might get paid to ride in a self-driving car.

You could get paid to be a kind of chaperon or “nanny” overseeing kids that are riding in a self-driving car. Having an adult present in the vehicle would be handy in case something goes kilter such as a child starts to choke on some candy they just ingested or for handling other such situations.

I’ve predicted that this could become a full-time occupation for those interested in performing the simple act of riding along in self-driving cars, serving as a rider with a purpose. Think of it this way. We currently know that a human driver in a ride-sharing car can potentially aid the passengers in their car. The true self-driving car lacks that human driver. Ergo, perhaps it makes sense to add a human into the vehicle, a responsible adult, aiming to assist kids when they go for a ride (or, aid others such as the elderly that need an extra hand, and others).

Just as today’s ride-sharing drivers can work full-time or part-time, these ride-a-long chaperons could work full-time or part-time. They might be listed on various ride-sharing networks and in a coordinated fashion be arranged to be inside the self-driving car for a lift that you’ve requested. When the self-driving car arrives at your house to pick up the kids, you meet the chaperon, and then away they all go inside the self-driving car.

Unimaginable?

I think it is quite imaginable and indubitably practical.

Consider college students that need to earn some extra money. In-between taking classes, they ride around throughout the day, ready and working as a child-watching chaperon. Any unused time is spent studying for their classes or even taking classes online while traveling inside the self-driving car.

Anyway, it is a means to be paid for riding in a self-driving car, though admittedly in this use case you are working as a chaperon while doing so.

The next reason for getting paid to be a passenger in a self-driving car is a bit gloomy, so get yourself ready for this one.

Suppose that some people are fearful of using self-driving cars. They vow they will never set foot into a self-driving car. It just seems eerie to not have a human driver and therefore they refuse to try it out.

A fleet owner of self-driving cars might decide that to increase the base of users or customers, they will run a special promotion. Take a ride in a self-driving car and you’ll get paid for doing so. It might be that the deal is only valid during the slow times of the day or on days of the week that ridership in the self-driving car is quite low.

This is the classic give-a-taste and hook-the-fish kind of gambit.

A variant on this approach involves the possibility that self-driving cars might find themselves in a fiercely competitive landscape.

Imagine that “desperate” fleet owners of self-driving cars are trying to woo people away from taking human-driven ridesharing. Or perhaps there is a glut of self-driving cars in a given area, being run by differing fleet owners, and so one of them decides to stand out by offering a promotion by offering (temporarily) to pay riders and hopefully create a semblance of customer loyalty.

Endless permutations.

The last reason and one that preferably will not arise involves the chances that a self-driving car gets into a deadly incident and causes widespread dread, sparking a tsunami-like reaction of people avoiding the use of self-driving cars.

One means to get people to get back into the saddle, as it were, might be that after presumably making AI system changes to try and ensure that no such incident will recur, some fleet owners might initially be willing to pay people to start riding in their self-driving cars, attempting to prime the pump all over again.

Conclusion

Okay, now that we’ve covered some of the major reasons why you’ll get paid to go for a ride in a self-driving car, we can rank them as follows:

1) To be served ads during the ride

2) To be taken to a specific destination as a prospective or existing customer

3) To be a paid chaperon

4) To give you a taste of wanting to ride in self-driving cars

5) To overcome reluctance to use self-driving cars

In case you were thinking you could become rich while getting paid to ride in self-driving cars, I’d caution that you are perhaps overthinking the matter and wishfully overstating the money to be made by doing so.

Probably, your better chance for riches might be by devising ways for people to get paid to ride in self-driving cars and then arranging for it to happen, taking a fee for setting things up. Alternatively, you might simply use the time will inside a self-driving car, while getting paid to be a rider, by contemplating other ways to get rich.

That would be quite a feat, namely while being paid to ride, you have a eureka moment and identify some altogether other means to become rich.

As a helpful heads-up, just don’t blurt out your idea while inside that self-driving car, since the AI might hear you, and the next thing you know, your idea has been stolen and used by someone or something else.

Be wary of the AI.

From Transportation in Perfectirishgifts

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morganbelarus · 5 years ago

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YouTube’s ‘Shitty Robot’ Queen Made Her Own Tesla Pickup Truck

YouTuber Simone Giertz is known as the queen of "shitty robots," the kind of robots that make a mess of chopping vegetables, serving soup, cutting hair, writing holiday cards, and wiping your nether regions. Her inventions are clever, the robots intentionally excessive and comically inept. Hilarity ensues; Giertz curses, to the chagrin of her advertisers. But she keeps churning out machines as well as videos, exploring a variety of building projects in her San Francisco workshop—even as she battles a brain tumor.

Which makes Giertz’s newest project even more remarkable—and functional. It marks a kind of turning point for Giertz, who says she’d like to focus more on building cars, and not the shitty kind. Today, she revealed an electric pickup truck she calls Truckla. It’s a heavily modified Tesla Model 3 and, as Giertz’s stylized promotional video states, it’s available exactly nowhere. Only Giertz will drive it, but she insists it is indeed drivable. (She’s also publishing a 31-minute video detailing how she built it.)

“This is going to be my daily car, which in some ways is fucking stupid,” Giertz says.

Simone Giertz

Giertz, who’s Swedish, says the EV pickup truck has been a dream of hers ever since she got her US driver’s license a couple of years ago. Elon Musk has been working on an official version: Last week, the Tesla CEO said the “cyberpunk truck” will make its official debut “probably some time towards the end of summer,” though the man isn’t much for hitting deadlines. Giertz decided not to wait. If there was ever a subtweet, going out and building the thing before Elon Musk managed to might just be the ultimate.

Around this time last year, Giertz partnered with a friend, engineer Marcos Ramirez, to start sketching out what a Model 3-turned-pickup-truck would look like. Two other YouTubers, Laura Kampf and Rich Rebuilds, got involved. Other friends and family pitched in on the project in exchange for “high fives and food,” Giertz says. Their initial goal was to launch Truckla by the fall of 2018.

Then Giertz’s noncancerous brain tumor returned, after it was previously removed through surgery. She underwent several weeks of radiation therapy early in 2019, some of which she has vlogged about on YouTube and Patreon. During that time, she continued to work on both “Shitty Robots” and the Truckla.

“One of the initial designs we had was to essentially strip everything from the midway and back, and just put in a flatbed,” Giertz says. “There are a lot of trucks that look like that, with a chassis up front and then a bare bones flatbed. But I didn’t like the look of that. So we decided to salvage as much of the back half as possible and try to build it into more of an El Camino pickup truck.”

The Truckla is “usable now, but fully drivable in July.”

Giertz says the EV made for an easier conversion than an internal combustion engine-powered car, because the battery adds structural integrity. The team did have to add some reinforcement to the beams at the top of the truck, which will allow it to hold together and “not, just, taco,” Giertz says. “I mean, I love tacos, but a Tesla taco would not be the best investment.” She plans to do some additional waterproofing to protect the battery pack. The Truckla is “usable now, but fully drivable in July,” Giertz says.

“This is going to be my daily car, which in some ways is fucking stupid,” Giertz says. Her other ride, which she refers to as Cheese Louise, is a yellow Sebring-Vanguard Citicar, and is easily recognized. “I said, the next car I get, I need to get a very anonymous car like a Prius, so I can park it outside of my house and workshop,” she says.

“And then I realized, this is not that car.”

Original Article : HERE ; This post was curated & posted using : RealSpecific

YouTube’s ‘Shitty Robot’ Queen Made Her Own Tesla Pickup Truck was originally posted by MetNews

#MetNews

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junker-town · 7 years ago

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4 reasons why the Genesis Open should be the best PGA Tour event in years

Tiger Woods makes his first visit in 12 years to the historic Los Angeles PGA Tour event. But there’s much more to go all in on at Riviera this week.

The 2018 Masters is still 50 days away but that’s just fine because the first major championship of the men’s season begins this week.

We’re having a bit of cheeky fun, but the Genesis Open in Los Angeles is set up to be one of the most exciting PGA Tour events in years. From a hype standpoint, it has to the best on the “regular season” schedule this year. The shots still need to be hit and the stars still need to align — it could turn into a runaway bore with some name the wider sports world has never heard of winning. That happens in golf. We’re not arguing this has the stakes or importance or intensity of a major. But sitting here at the start of the week, it’s hard not to be fired up for this tournament in a way that almost approximates that of a major week.

The PGA Tour doesn’t actually run any of those major championships (if you’re a close, or even semi-close follower of golf, you know this). This is not an intuitive thing a casual sports fan would really think about often. But the majors, the events that rate the highest and are the most coveted, are actually run by four different ruling bodies. They reap all the benefits of owning and operating them, while the Tour labors week to week on events that might not get as much run (but still make plenty of cash).

Tthe PGA Tour gets its fair share of loaded weeks between The Players, the WGCs, and the FedExCup Playoffs. But after that, it can be hit-or-miss on a schedule with 49 (sure seems like a lot!) official events. You’ve got tourneys that succeed because of the market. You’ve got some that succeed because of the course. Others elbow out their competitors because of the date they fall on the calendar.

But rarely does it come together so beautifully like it has this week. Mike Antolini, the tournament director this week, knows they’ve struck gold. “When you have Riviera, you have the west coast swing, and you have the history, and you have LA and you have California in February, the stars really align.” Antolini is the VP of Championships for Tiger Woods’ foundation and his TGR Live events business, which runs and operates multiple tournaments both on and off the PGA Tour. Some of those tourneys may have to hustle and grind for a field or a venue. This is not one of those tourneys but even by Riv standards, 2018 is exceptional.

Photo by Paul Mounce/Corbis via Getty Images

The first tee at Riv, with the fans crowding on every balcony and terrace around the elevated box, is as good as it gets.

I am here being my usual cynical self wanting to find a weakness or a reason to be critical!. The stakes are lower and the majors are still off in the distance. But I also think in a way that’s what amplifies the hype — it’s mid February, the Masters is 50 days away, and the anticipation for a golf event just should not be this high. It’s come together this week, however, and here are a few reasons why.

1. Tiger

For almost two decades now, the easiest way to categorize PGA Tour events is by the very manichean designation of a “Tiger tourney” and “non-Tiger tourney.” The ones Tiger patronized were immediately elevated in stature. The fields became stronger. The cash flowed. The ratings soared. And Tiger often won.

Tiger’s schedule became mostly predictable and it created two classes over the years. You knew he’d be at Torrey Pines, Doral, Bay Hill, Memorial, Firestone etc. You knew where he wouldn’t be, too.

Riviera became one of those spots that was cast aside. Tiger has not played here since 2006. That hiatus hurt — this is arguably the best course on the schedule and it’s his “hometown event,” the place where he made his first PGA Tour start as a teen in 1992. Antolini said getting back here and serving as host “means a lot in his career legacy.”

A 16-year-old Tiger making his PGA Tour debut at Riviera in 1992.

Whether it was the date, an underwhelming track record, or a course layout and conditioning that Tiger just got uncomfortable with over the years, the Riv got dropped. But now Tiger is back after more than a decade away. His presence also deepens the field around him. Dustin Johnson, the world No. 1 and defending champ, described as only he can, how Tiger “definitely brings an aura to an event that makes it a little more special.”

Tiger is not just back at Riv, he’s back on Tour after another yearlong injury layoff. He’s made just one start so far and it resulted in a made cut and top 25 finish. The event this week could be at dirt patch against the weakest field of the year and the circumstances of this being just his second PGA Tour start in the comeback would turn the hype all the way up. But it’s not at a dirt patch, it’s at ...

2. Riviera

I am not a golf architecture expert and I certainly won’t try to fake it here. I leave that to Fried Egg Andy, Geoff Shackelford, and several other voices that are really impacting and hopefully molding the game in a positive way we may not fully appreciate right now.

But what I do know is that Riviera is a fun ass golf course. It’s fun to play if you suck. It’s fun to play if you’re good. And it’s fun to watch the absolute best take it on.

“We’re in a very fortunate position when we look at the field,” Antolini said. “Riviera is such a beloved course with the world’s best players. I mean, they love it.”

The interesting holes come one after another from a viewing perspective. There’s the coolest opening tee box view on Tour. There’s a beast of a redan par-3. There’s a donut green with a bunker in the middle of it.

Photo by Chris Condon/PGA TOUR

Rory McIlroy hits out sideways from the famous bunker in the middle of the 6th green.

There’s a short drivable par-4 with a crazy green the size of a fingernail. It’s arguably one of the four or five best par-4s in the world. There’s an awesome 18th hole amphitheater as the course marches out of a canyon and back up to the clubhouse perched above it all. The crowd there gets wild.

Even if you know nothing about architecture, you can still see the intrigue and excitement in these holes.

On the PGA Tour, we rarely get to see golden age designs with bones like this George Thomas classic. It’s got the history that most of other regular PGA Tour stops wish they had. It’s hosted majors and NCAA championships and the most prestigious amateur titles. It’s as good as it gets on the PGA Tour schedule.

3. Los Angeles

Los Angeles should be one of the most important markets in professional golf. But we just don’t come here often enough. There’s this annual stop early in the first quarter of the season, when the rest of the country is frozen, and that’s it. The two US rotating major championships have skipped out on LA, too. Riviera hosted the 1948 U.S. Open and the 1983 and 1995 PGA Championships. That’s it. The drought will come to an end in 2023, when Los Angeles Country Club opens its gates for what should be a delectable U.S. Open.

With this being the one chance LA has for men’s pro golf, every year the gallery has a little extra juice. “Outside the ropes, a lot of celebrities come and watch,” said Antolini. This week, the event overlaps with NBA All-Star weekend. It’s not going to compete with that, but it certainly adds to the circus in a town that’s already a circus. Expect to see a few of those famous NBA faces join the crowds at Riv.

This may be superfluous stuff that the golf diehards don’t care about, but anything that can add to the entertainment value and hype is a welcome addition for one week a year. It’s LA. Tiger is in town. And so are the most famous pro athletes in the country. Whatever the PGA Tour can draft off of to make this more of a show is good.

4. The Field

The field is always the ultimate draw for an event. We can talk about markets and architecture and history, but it’s the field that matters most. This is about as good a field as you could ask for in a non-major or non-WGC event. It’s got everything — the young stars, veterans, the top Americans, a distinctly beefed-up Euro and international crowd. Some names just so the point is driven home:

Tiger

Phil Mickelson

Dustin Johnson

Jordan Spieth

Rory McIlroy

Justin Thomas

Antolini hailed the LA destination as a draw for International and Euro stars to use as a starting point for stateside play and perhaps a drive toward a PGA Tour card. A crop of elite Euros that you may come to hate at the Ryder Cup in September are here:

Tommy Fleetwood

Thomas Pieters

Rafa Cabrea-Bello

Alex Noren

Martin Kaymer

This is still a small sampling of how loaded it is. Adam Scott is beginning his PGA Tour season here. Haotong Li, the first real phenom from China and one of the most important players in the game, was given an exemption just a day after he beat Rory to win in Dubai. There are up-and-coming Americans like Patrick Cantlay and reigning rookie of the year Xander Schauffele, Daniel Berger, Kevin Kisner, Matt Kuchar, and on and on.

There are the headliners for casual fans and people who usually don’t care about golf. There are the hipster talents that the diehards crave. There is something for everyone. US Ryder Cup captain Jim Furyk got an exemption and will start his year here, and it’s conceivable that 10 (or if you want to get crazy, maybe even 11) of his team members are in the field this week.

I am not some grizzled veteran golf writer, but I have been doing this for several years and it takes a lot to get me this hyped for a regular PGA Tour stop. It can go sideways and we may get little-to-no drama on the actual course. But starting out the week, we have the perfect confluence of venue, field, and Tiger that should make this Genesis Open one of the best PGA Tour events in years.

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weesaul · 8 years ago

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Thoughts on Stuff Reprise...

Being abruptly removed from my former residence, I have come to realize just how much I never had to think about. Living in one location for 17 years all of the basic necessities were already at hand. Need some spices – already there. Need a condiment – already there. Need some toilet paper – already there. Need a bowl or plate or glasses – already there in ample supply. As I have already mentioned the move was rather abrupt and not much thought went into everything I would need on this Grand Experiment – like toilet paper. The first night in the new abode I came to the startling realisation that there is no toilet paper to be found anywhere within my spacious studio apartment. Not a single solitary sheet anywhere. Fortunately for me I did have a box of snot tissue in the van (which is still not in my name at this point in time), and this worked in a pinch. The first official roll of toilet paper that resided in my abode was ‘borrowed’ from the Workplace of Despair – a fine institutional grade of tp…

As for other materials that would make my life easier, I am still in the need of bowls, plates, and glasses. Most kitchen utensils are absent from the spacious kitchen… living room… dining room… bedroom… I am slowly and steadily acquiring everything I am lacking though this may take me a great deal of time. Though time is growing in shorter and shorter supply as I move closer to the inevitable…

In the Year of our Lord Two-thousand and sixteen ended just as screwed up as one would image with the only vehicle in my possession (though it is still not technically mine) decided to end the year with a bang and shed the troublesome exhaust system. And I shall ponder the glories of the aforementioned year whilst I sit in the waiting room of ye olde local service station awaiting news on whether it will live or be buried deep in the grassy fields here in the scenic Laurel Highlands. Over the 150,000 miles of its life, it has been for the most part a reliable vehicle with just a couple minor problems that are easily worked around – the passenger side sliding door refuses to stay open and will close as soon as it is open completely, the side vent windows will stay open until manually pushed shut, etc. It has been through multiple states of this great country though an overwhelming number of miles have been spent going to and from the Workplace of Despair and delivering kiddoes to and from school…

So what does the year to come have in mind for me? I suppose that I shall find out as the year progresses. Will it bring joy or heartbreak? Will it be filled with fun and excitement or will be bring loneliness and sorrow? ‘Tis much like every other year where I do not have any idea what I will be facing in the twelve months ahead. I had no idea twelve months ago that my residence would be changed and that I would find myself on the verge of being single again and that I would still be putting in far to many hours at the Workplace of Despair. I did not know, I had no clue, and yet it all happened. I had no idea that some of my musical heroes of my youth would pass on. I had no idea that the family vacation would be the worst vacation we ever experienced though most of the fault lays with the person who made the arrangements. Who in their right mind would book a four day vacation and not take into consideration travel time, which consumed half of the four days? Who would book a four day vacation at Disney World where only two days were actually spent at Disney World? For anyone who has ever been there, how much can actually be accomplished across all the various themed parks at Disney World in two days? How much can be seen whence about half of the two days were spent in a driving rain that closed most of the attractions? I understand that the rain could not have been foreseen whence the vacation was booked, but two days did not provide an enjoyable situation being the two parks that chosen had to be experienced in rapid fashion – no time to relax and enjoy a vacation that should be relaxed and enjoyed…

And so I sit in the local service station awaiting the final tabulation to get ye olde van legally drivable within this great state - multiple issues and multiple part replacements. ‘Tis a fine way to start the new year with absolutely no disposable income left to my name – not a penny. ‘Tis a fine time in which I find myself. And I would have never guess twelve months ago that I would be flat broke as I move into the new year. S’pose I could sell some body parts to get me through until the next paycheck. ‘Tis possible I can sell my soul to the devil, but that would not be a wise return on my investment to save a ten year old van with 150,000 miles upon its tired tires. Maybe I could whore out my body to the highest bidder though who would want this old body with 52 years of mileage upon it?

And I sit here in the Waiting Room of Despair watching the Price is Right and having a large Michelin Man staring at me watching my every move. But the coffee is free so all is not really and truly bad. So here I sit giving my time away so I can pay to fix a vehicle that is not even mine, but ‘tis the only means I have to get to the Workplace of Despair so that I can make money to give to others for things that are not even mine. Ain’t life grand?

Whilst sitting here killing time as the bill continues to get larger, I may has well throw in a brief outline of events that unfolded last year that led me to the current state I am in. On August 27 there was a reunion held for folks who attended a junior high school that is no longer there. It was not a school I attended, but rather a school that the boss attended. I was to attend so I could have something to eat after doing my time at the Workplace of Despair. Upon arrival there was some small talk then #1 daughter and I sat and watched as the boss put on a show with her new friend, which then made sense why #1 repeatedly texted me to ask if I was going to be there. We then left the reunion in different vehicles and arrived at the homestead minutes apart. The boss disappeared to the bedroom so I hopped on Facebook to play a couple of games to unwind. I noticed that there was a notice that the boss had become friends with her new friend. I was hoping that this would be something that I did not have to worry about, but I should have questioned it when it happen though I would have been accused of spying on her. Within a couple of weeks the marriage was falling apart and she suggested that maybe we need time apart…

By September 27 I was being thrown out of the homestead and my mother knew before I did for the boss had asked if I could move back home. This was not something that my parents and I could not agree upon for I could never move back and they would never take me back. So I made arrangements to move else. Was not a difficult search for I pass multiple apartment complexes on the journey to the Workplace of Despair. So I made arrangements to live in one of these places though I was told at the signing I needed to set up the electric, which the power company told me would not be until October 6th. On October 4th the landlord informed me this was a mistake and my electric was covered by the rent payment. I informed the boss of the news and she freaked out that she wanted me out NOW! So on October 5th I spent my first night in the new abode. Being I was not prepared for a day sooner than I had planned and it seemed a bit ironic that my first night in the new abode was on the 25th anniversary day. Being I was not exactly prepared for the change of residence, I spent the first two nights sleeping on the floor…

I really did not give much thought to what was to become of me for I was told that this was just a trial to see if we could live apart. Then two weeks later I received a text asking me if I was going to fight the change. Seemed sort of odd to be asked such when this was to be a temporary arrangement. The next week the boss stopped by the new abode and informed me that her and her lawyer had divided everything up and I basically was left with only my retirement fund for I did well in that regard. All the documentation was to be sent to me though it was only later that I was informed the address change for whatever reason was not recognized by the postal service so I had to do then entire process again and now I am awaiting the arrival of all the goodness contained therein…

So over the course of about a month and a half, twenty-five years are erased though it was thirty years in total. There is one bright spot found in all of this craptastic situation, and that is the fact that I have the three greatest kiddoes to ever walk this planet. I am proud of all they have accomplished and all they are currently working toward and all they will do in the future. They are the shiny spot in my existence, and they have made everything I have gone through worth the crap that I have gone through over the last few months. They are surprisingly more well-adjusted than I could have ever imagined, and they are in full understanding of what happened and how it affected me far beyond anything I deserved…

So there is the tale in three-part harmony as best as I can tell it without being overly bitter and minus all the R-rated words that I could have thrown in to emphasize certain portions of the tale. And now I shall sit quietly and await the fate of the vehicle that is not even mine and I shall be far poorer once the bill finally arrives. I have enough food to make it about a week though if I conserve I should be able to make it the two weeks until my next paycheck arrives. So all is good on that front. Rent has been paid until the end of the month and all bills covered for this month except for water though I can just pay a late fee and let it slide until next month if need be…

And so I shall just carry on for better or for worse into 2017, and I wish one and all the Best, Most Fantastic 2017 imaginable…

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jobsearchtips02 · 4 years ago

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2021 Ford Bronco: A Big List Of Alleged Options And Specs Has Been ‘Decoded’

Press image thoroughly futz with in Photoshop by the author

Image: Ford

Truck YeahThe trucks are good!

The 2021 Ford Bronco is scheduled to drop Monday, July 13, 2020, but eager enthusiasts over at the Bronco6G forum have been discussing a huge alleged leak detailing specifications and options all week. It can’t be confirmed with 100 percent certainty, but it’s certainly interesting enough to discuss.

In a forum thread that was started on Tuesday by Bronco6G user 72roadster, you can see a very long list of Bronco features and buyable options that most folks on the forum seem to think is legit. Another user, Toccoa, added some context and helped “decode” the list of options from a few Ford codes into plain English.

Everything here pretty much does track with what makes sense for the Bronco and what we know about Ford options, so I’m inclined to think this list is accurate. Or, at least, was at one point.

So first, I’ll just copy over 72roadster’s top-level summary from the forum:

Engines

2.3L EcoBoost

2.7L EcoBoost

Transmissions

7-speed manual

10-speed automatic

Axle Ratios

3.73 Open Style Rear Axle Final Drive Ratio

4.27 Locking Rear Axle Final Drive Ratio

4.46 Rear Axle Final Drive Ratio

4.7 Electronic-locking Front and Rear Axle

Tire Sizes

P255/70R16 All-Season (A/S) Tires

LT315/70R17 BSW Mud-Terrain (M/T) Tires

P255/75R17 All-Terrain (A/T) Tires

LT265/70R17 All-Terrain (A/T) Tires

LT285/70R17 All-Terrain A/T Tires

LT285/70R17 Mud-Terrain (M/T) Tires

P255/70R18 All-Terrain A/T Tires

Colors

Black Onyx

Shadow Black

Oxford White

Rapid Red

Antimatter Blue

Iconic Silver

Area 51

Carbonized Gray

Cactus Gray

Race Red

Cyber Orange

Velocity Blue

*unknown name (PN3XX)

*unknown name (PN4JR)

*unknown name (PN4JT)

Trims/Packages

Base – Standard Package

Big Bend – Standard Package / Mid Package

Black Diamond – Standard Package / Mid Package

Outer Banks – Mid Package / High Package / Lux Package

Badlands – Standard Package / Mid Package / High Package / Lux Package

Wildtrak – Standard Package / High Package / Lux Package

First Edition – Hood and Bodyside Graphic Package

Special Packages

Towing Capability

Mid Package

High Package

Lux Package

Sasquatch Package

Tops

Top – First Row Soft Top Conversion for Hard Tops

Top – Bimini Soft Top

Top – Bimini Soft Top and Canvas Soft Top

Top – Bimini Soft Top and Mesh Shade Top

Top – Bimini Soft Top, Canvas Soft Top and Mesh Shade Top

Top – Mesh Shade Top

Top – Canvas Soft Top and Mesh Shade Top

Modular Hard Top, Body Color-Painted

Modular Hard Top, Shadow Black-Painted

Dual Tops – Modular Shadow Black-Painted Hard Top – Black Soft Top

Dual Tops – Modular Body Color-Painted Hard Top – Black Soft Top

Dual Tops – Modular Body Black-Painted Hard Top – Black Soft Top

Soft Top, Black Cloth

Hard Top, Carbonized Gray Molded-in-Color (MIC)

On Wednesday even more info came through the Bronco 6G thread, including some accessories, but let’s zoom in on the important specs from the original post and see how they might translate to real-world performance if this alleged option sheet proves to be accurate.

G/O Media may get a commission

Again, while I’m fairly confident there’s truth to the claimed specs here, Ford’s people officially declined to comment when I reached out so we can’t say it represents the Bronco’s final form for sure. And, of course, the company’s not looking to scoop its own big reveal party next week.

Engines Discussed

A 2.3-liter turbo four-cylinder and a 2.7-liter turbo six-cylinder make sense for the Bronco since those engines should both be compact enough to fit in a medium-sized SUV and are both already made by Ford. The 2.3-liter I4 EcoBoost makes 270 horsepower and 310 lb-ft of torque in the current Ranger, while the 2.7-liter V6 has been in the F-150 for a few years now and currently claims 325 HP and 400 lb-ft of torque.

So I think it’s fair to figure the base Bronco will have about 300 lb-ft of torque while the bigger-engined option will step to over 400 lb-ft. Of course, Ford already offers a more powerful tune for the small-engine Ranger, so it should have no issue getting bigger numbers from the 2.3-liter if it wants to. I guess it will depend on what kind of mpgs are being targeted.

Transmissions Discussed

The seven-speed manual, as bonkers as it sounds, has basically been confirmed by photos of a shift lever. Folks are figuring it will effectively be a six-speed with an ultra-low gear for crawling, which is exactly the kind of cool gimmick this truck’s going to need to stand out.

A 10-speed auto makes sense, as these are already ubiquitous in Ford’s truck lineup. I’m not a fan myself. It’s a clunky transmission in town in the Ranger, but should help get some gas mileage back on highway cruising.

Axle Ratios Discussed

So you don’t have to scroll back up: The Bronco6G forum said the 2021 truck will get four different final drive axle ratio options: 3.73, 4.27, 4,46, and 4.7.

Axle ratios don’t seem like a particularly sexy topic… until you understand just how important they are to a vehicle’s performance. It’s a very big deal in the off-road world, especially once you start messing with big tires and need to put down lot of power at low speeds.

My colleague David Tracy did a great writeup explaining crawl ratios and off-road gearing, so please give that a peek to understand the science here.

To lay it out a little more expediently, the axle ratios written like “X.XX” mean “X.XX:1,” which means the vehicle’s driveshaft turns X.XX times for every one turn of the wheels. Even simpler: The bigger the X number, the more powerful the vehicle feels. Of course, you pay for it by burning more fuel.

So if the axle ratios posted above for the Bronco are accurate, the “3.73 Open Style Rear Axle Final Drive Ratio” would be the base, more-efficient option while the “4.7 Electronic-locking Front and Rear Axle” would be the most capable. The 2020 Wrangler Rubicon has a 4.1 final drive ratio, so everything else being equal, it seems that the top-end Ford might be more aggressive than the top Jeep on its power-to-efficiency equation.

There’s more to it, including wheel size and of course HP, that will dictate which setup is objectively “better” though.

Tire Sizes Discussed

Hot dang, tires, my favorite topic! I love tires because they’re the one piece you can change on a vehicle and change every aspect of said vehicle’s performance. When it comes to 4x4s, you want something big for ground clearance, but not obscenely big if you want to hang on to daily drivability and efficiency.

This alleged spec sheet claims that the Bronco will have seven stock tire sizes. That would be a lot for a Honda Civic, but it makes sense for a mass-market 4×4. There are four LT (“light truck”) options, and three P (“passenger”) options. The significance there is basically that LT tires are chunkier, more ply, harder to pop, heavier, use more fuel and handle worse. P tires are lighter, so they’re better for road driving, but may puncture more easily. They can still be knobby and be decent on dirt, though.

As for the difference between all-terrain and mud-terrain tires, the MTs tend to be the most off-roady road-legal option available with really deep knobs for paddling through thick mud. All-terrain tires are a little more balanced. All-seasons, of course, are road tires.

Tire size are usually expressed as “letter, number, slash, number, R, wheel diameter” but discussed in terms of overall diameter, so I used the handy wheel size calculator at tiresize.com to translate the coded sizes into overall diameter for you here:

P255/70R16 All-Season: 30.1-inch overall diameter

LT315/70R17 BSW Mud-Terrain: 34.4-inch overall diameter

P255/75R17 All-Terrain: 32.1-inch overall diameter

LT265/70R17 All-Terrain: 31.6-inch overall diameter

LT285/70R17 All-Terrain: 32.7-inch overall diameter

LT285/70R17 Mud-Terrain: 32.7-inch overall diameter

P255/70R18 All-Terrain: 32.1-inch overall diameter

There will be some variance in those diameters due to inflation level and tread life remaining, but that’s the baseline. For those of you unfamiliar with the off-road scene, 34.4-inch tire is pretty darn big. In fact, LT315/70R17 is the same tire you’ll see on a stock Ford Raptor.

The 30.1-inch option will be most efficient, and the 33-inch options should provide a decent balance.

Colors, Trims, Special Packages Discussed

Who wants to guess what the Sasquatch Package is?

This would be a good crop of colors if it turns out to be real. Hopefully, there will be a green and tan in the mix, too.

Tops Discussed

I’m really into the idea of a “mesh shade top” but mostly I’m just excited about the prospect of variety. From the teaser images we’ve seen so far, it’s clear Ford’s committing to open-air off-roading, which is huge.

I’ll state one final time that the specs and options discussed here are conjecture, and unconfirmed by Ford. But it’s all plausible enough to warrant the discussion I’ve presented here. I’m confident the Bronco’s final form will be pretty close, at any rate.

Now we just need to see some honest images of the thing throwing sand, already!

from Job Search Tips https://jobsearchtips.net/2021-ford-bronco-a-big-list-of-alleged-options-and-specs-has-been-decoded/

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altruistic-meme · 8 months ago

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a bitch is now certified to drive 😎

#i can drive the Drivable Things officially now #not that i was driving them before or that i actually WILL be driving them now #but i CAN #shh ac

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gyrlversion · 5 years ago

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YouTubes Shitty Robot Queen Made Her Own Tesla Pickup Truck

YouTuber Simone Giertz is known as the queen of “shitty robots,” the kind of robots that make a mess of chopping vegetables, serving soup, cutting hair, writing holiday cards, and wiping your nether regions. Her inventions are clever, the robots intentionally excessive and comically inept. Hilarity ensues; Giertz curses, to the chagrin of her advertisers. But she keeps churning out machines as well as videos, exploring a variety of building projects in her San Francisco workshop––even as she battles a brain tumor.

“This is going to be my daily car, which in some ways is fucking stupid,” Giertz says.

Simone Giertz

Lauren Goode is a senior writer at WIRED who covers consumer technology.

The Truckla is “usable now, but fully drivable in July.”

“And then I realized, this is not that car.”