r/Glasgow Tools

You know, I'm gonna do a second reply as I feel kind of compelled to given the malicious comments by some folk in the comment section.

I.E: "Never got enough love from Mom & Dad" or such.

I'll give you a run down on the kind of person I am. I'm generally quiet and keep to myself, I don't go out drinking or clubbing and so on. I'm pretty much a nerd and that nerdy behaviour also extends to cars or anything with an engine.

The kind of people in my social circle are similar. We all have degrees and we met and bonded over this subject of interest while we were at University of Glasgow. Most of them were medical students.

I feel like you have to go against the grain of society to take a real interest in this sort of thing. One of the reasons I never cared about people's opinions is because my early hobbies of skateboarding and roller skating would garner a lot of negative attention. In the early 00s, you couldn't go anywhere without being harassed by security or people for the object of hate they had built inside their head where as it's a lot more accepted these days.

To give you an idea of how comical things could get, I was once cornered by some choir boys when I was walking through town because the local church had a problem with skateboarders skating on their stairs at night, of which I wasn't one of them. But people generally don't care for the facts in these things.

I'm aware that when I go out on my motorcycle that I am inheriting the stigma that people attribute to anyone who rides on two wheels instead of four. Or I have to smile and nod as the hundredth stranger regales me with stories of donor-cycles being scraped off pavements.

It took me a while to grow up and come to a conclusion that the NIMBY adults who would yell at me for skateboarding most likely had the same attitude of the kids who would give me shit in school for liking something remotely alternative.

I like performance cars. My first car was a piece of shit that helped me learn mechanics through frustration with its refusal to get out of bed in the morning. When I bought a "nice car", it was a renault clio eco elf with a *jaw dropping* 96 bhp but would do 70-80mpg when I rode it well and maintained it.

My motorcycle and 'fun' car both consume more fuel than the clio and the motorcycle has more horsepower than the clio with 1/6 the weight.

The reason why I don't do it for attention is because I know that people generally don't like it. But fuck 'em. I'm having fun and I don't think I'm being an ass about it. My next 'project' is hopefully going to be a Subaru Impreza that will probably be heard for miles. I know it'll get groans and people will talk behind my back, but I've went through the majority of my life experiencing that. Why would I change for what I know is a minor inconvenience for them?

Again, like I said before. There are bad actors in every hobby. I'm not talking about people who generally cause a nuisance and make the roads dangerous. It's a sophisticated hobby and one that I'm going to enjoy until my bones become too old to do so.