In the winter, I kind of feel sorry for smokers. You see them driving along with their window open just a crack in the worst conditions, freezing their butts off. There’s a fairly simple solution to their discomfort… Either quit smoking entirely or at least don’t smoke in the car.
It’s a different matter entirely when it’s the car, not the driver that’s doing the smoking.
My Fiancee and I carpool in to work. We got out the door a little late this morning, and we both noticed a strange smell. She thought it was a really pungent animal dropping in the shrubbery, but it reminded me more of some kind of smoke. I thought perhaps that one of our neighbors was overdue for a chimney sweeping. It was sharp and acrid, sort of like creosote or fresh blacktop. Go someplace where they’re resurfacing a street and sniff a telephone pole if you want an example. It smelled oddly familiar too, but we sort of shrugged and drove off.
About half a block along, I noticed that it looked foggy out. The thermometer was showing single digit temps though, so something strange was going on. Then we spotted the mini-van at the light ahead of us. Thick white smoke was pouring out from under the hood.
That’s when I remembered where I’d smelled this before.
I used to drive an old ’89 Honda civic. It was a pretty good little car. It got great mileage, was fun to drive and easy to park. One summer though, the compressor for the air conditioning seized up and burnt out. It was in the middle of a long drive on one of the hottest days of the year, so we had to roll all the windows down. We spent five hours on the road, smelling the same acrid smoke that this mini-van was belching.
But I’d never seen it in this quantity before. It looked like a fog machine on wheels. I can’t imagine that the driver was oblivious to what was going on, but he just zipped around the corner and kept going as if nothing in the world was wrong.