I recently bought a 2019 Volkswagen Golf GTI. With it I was thinking about finally trying my hands at a vanity license plate. In my previous cars I’ve been too cheap to pay the $45 per year extra on top of the existing licensing fee for the privilege. Now that I’m as financially secure as I’ve ever been, the timing feels right.
That is, until I received the randomly assigned standard plates from the California DMV: 9VWB456. Doesn’t get more serendipitous than that, right? When the god of random chance assigned me plates with letters VW - historical short form for Volkswagen, there is no way I can get a vanity plate now. It’s too perfect.
I don’t believe in any gods, but I can see why people reaffirm their faith when stuff like this happens to them. I too would explain it with a higher power looking benevolently upon me.
Part of the process of buying a used vehicle, I took the GTI to get new tires. The existing tires cannot be trusted. The local America’s Tire has a window looking into the work bays at the waiting area. So the whole time I was watching the endless toil the grease monkeys (I use this term with all love and respect) are going through. A typical wheel plus tire is easily over 50 pounds, and these guys are heaving and huffing them onto waist-high machines. Good exercise if you’re in a gym, horrible if you have to keep doing that for an entire workday.
Never mind all the cancerous fumes from the tires and vechicular particles.
People have said that the trades are a good alternative to attending university. It can absolutely be, but one has to go in while understanding the tradeoffs. The trades are incredibly physically demanding. I don’t suppose it’s possible to be a car mechanic and coming out the other end without some sort of chronic pain. There’s good money to be made, but you’d better religiously save for a future that might not be so rosy health-wise.
As person who gets paid well to work in a sterile office cubicle, I would say a college education that parlays to a white-collar job should still be the number one option.
Ghost of Kizuki.