Nannied to exhaustion but not to desperation

So I rented a car again because it was snowing and the ice from the last snowfall was still on the roads, making them very questionable for bicycle riding.  When I needed to park the car for a short while, I made sure that I found a spot by a curb with minimum old snow and crap and I even picked one going slightly downhill so that I could just slide out of it.

I get back in the car.  Try going forward to get back in the lane. There is an old snow/ice rut between me and the lane, so the car just goes forward but not sideways.  Oh Great.  Let's back up a bit and try again.   NOT.  The car is not backing up, I guess the tires are slipping on a bit of ice/snow.  No problem, we'll just spin the wheels until they grip.  Done that many many times before. NOPE.  I hit the gas pedal but I don't get the desired noise and spinning from the front wheels.  WTF is happening?

It takes me 2 minutes to figure out what is going on.  The STUPID car has a wheel slip detector.  So when a wheel slips on ice, a computer stops delivering power to that wheel.  Must be a brand-new and highly desirable  SAFETY feature.   Unfortunately it also doesn't let me back up.   I'm STUCK in a friggin almost level parking spot.

I've driven in snow all my life.  I know how to handle snow; I know how to drive in it.   But this friggin car doesn't let me !  After 10 minutes of trying to wiggle back and forth I finally give up.  I can't beat the computer and its dumb gas pedal over-ride.

This is the moment that I decide NEVER to even consider buying a Hunday ( I wish I could figure out how to spell that right now, but Denny's has abandoned the idea of providing its own Wifi and went with Telus Internet and Telus today (as yesterday) is NOT even appearing in my Wifi list.  There is that old saying "If it's NOT broken, don't fix it". In Canada, the 'NOT' seems to have gotten lost in translation, so anything that IS broken, doesn't get fixed.  NO Wifi at Denny's, NO usable Wifi at my hotel, half the time NO Wifi at Earls.  This country is going to the dogs. And Canadians can't even blame foreigners for it, LOL.

Anyhu back to my Hyuanday Accent, the miserable piece of shit with the anti-slip electronic.system. After hacking at the ice with a screw driver for a minute, I try a few moving a few more times and finally come to the conclusion that I do have to call a tow-truck to get out of that parking spot.

Think about that.  It's unbelievable.  And all because of some idiot in South Korea !

Busters Towing shows up after only half an hour instead of the predicted full hour.  Good Work!
The tow-truck driver, who I believe I met before somewhere, looks at the situation and decides to get in the car and drive out of there himself.    My mind is caught in a dilemma: Should I hope that he gets the car out of there, which would make me look like an idiot, or should I hope that he doesn't? 
Fortunately he GIVES UP before I have to make up my mind.   But I have an idea. With him in the car, and trying to reverse and me pushing from the front, we finally build up enough wiggle to trick the anti-slip system and he and the car move backward.  YEAH!

Then he tries to drive forward into the lane and suffers the same fate as I did earlier.   Thank you city and citizens of Vancouver for clearing the small of snow that fell more than a weeks ago. NOT. Lazy bastards that blame their problems on  foreigners.  Or was that Americans?  The problem seems wide-spread, LOL.

But now the tow truck has the necessary angle to get it's implement under the car and tow me out of there and he does.  Yes, it costs me $90, but the alternative would have been taking a bus home and hoping that in 1, 2 or 3 days the predicted rain would melt the ice.  

The conclusion? Be careful what you wish for.  Being perfectly safe sounds like a good thing. But it will cost you. Maybe a tiny bit of money, but that's OK, because the whole point of money is to be exchanged for something else that is useful.  
No, the price you will be paying, will be charged in loss of adventure AND freedom AND ability. 
Or in other words, you'll be paying with a tiny bit of LIFE.  And paying with a bit of life for 'safety' just doesn't make any sense, does it?  


So YES, I'm exhausted by the constant annoyance of the First World delivering forcing things on me that are trying to run my life into something that I don't want it to be.



On the other hand I don't really care anymore.  This is not home, this is not where I belong.

To put it in the words of Gnarls Barkley:
Anyone that needs what they want, and doesn't want what they need
I want nothing to do with

Let's not forget Lorde:
But everybody's like Cristal, Maybach, diamonds on your timepiece.
Jet planes, islands, tigers on a gold leash.
We don't care, we aren't caught up in your love affair.

To put it in the words of Bob Dylan:
I'm a-goin' back out 'fore the rain starts a-fallin'
I'll walk to the depths of the deepest black forest
Where the people are a many and their hands are all empty
Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters
Where hunger is ugly, where souls are forgotten
Where black is the color, where none is the number
And I'll tell and speak it and think it and breathe it
And reflect from the mountain so all souls can see it

With Christmas upon us again, why not think about what that holiday is REALLY about.  Hint: It's not about iPhones !

So I'm heading back where 'the people are a many and their hands are all empty' and Zulema is coming too !   

Somehow I have the felling that it's going to be FUN !