84 Inches

The other night, Malcolm and I went to take the Subie through the car wash. It was 11:00 at night and according to the number of cars in the line up ahead of us, we were in for a 35 minute wait. We were tired and a little goofy minded by the time we pulled up to the spot that said we were next. Admiring our surroundings (because there was little else to do) we noticed the height restriction sign at the top of the entrance to the car wash.


"84 inches?"

Who does that? Everyone knows their car clearance height as "X feet, Y inches," but to know it strictly in INCHES? They expect me to be able to do math AND drive at the same time?

"84 inches? Okay, so that's 12 into...carry the 2...which makes it..." *smack* (the sound of me driving into the low clearance roof because I couldn't calculate fast enough if I would make it or not...that, or insert the sound of blaring horns because the people behind me are held up and pissed off because I now have to back out since I've made the calculation and have decided my car won't clear it.)

We were pretty belligerent about the measurement units (since we had nothing better to do after 35 minutes in the car).

"84 inches? What the hell kind of measurement is that?"
"84 inches? They might as well have put it in centimetres."
"84 inches? It would have been better if they put a clown sign there that read 'you must be shorter than this height to enter the car wash.'"


Needless to say, we entered the car wash with lots of clearance for the car and got the car cleaned--only for me to drive it to work the next morning through the muddy highways to bring it back to being as dirty as square one.