…still in it.

Two options I made sure to get when I bought Traveler were the fold down rear seats and the trunk liner.  I did this because the car, lovely though it is, needed to be a working member of the family too.  It’s been a welcome feature this past couple weeks as I’ve been trying hard to rid Casa del Garrett of all the excess…stuff. 

I took a load to the city recycling drop-off yesterday.  It’s an uneasy feeling driving a Mercedes-Benz carefully among the dumpster rows.  You just get the feeling the car doesn’t belong here, even though you’re just taking care of the same everyday household business your neighbors are.  But among the banged up pickup trucks loaded down with junk, the car sticks out.  What yuppy scum is this bringing his luxury car here?  What’s he throwing out…his old expresso machine?

One of the trash guys started backing up a drumpster next to where I was busy unloading Traveler.  He gets out of his truck and walks over to my car and looks carefully at the tires.  Then he asks me if they’re 19" or 17".  I’m embarrassed to admit I hadn’t a clue, but he looks more carefully at them, declares them to be 19" and says his own Mercedes has 19s too but he wasn’t sure they were right for that car.  Turned out he had a CLK he’d bought second-hand from Carmax.  If I’d had half a brain I’d have bought a used Mercedes ages ago and I’d have had one to drive then for more of my life.  The two of us chatted easily for a while about our favorite car maker before getting back to work.  We were both fans. 

Well.  If the trashman owns a Mercedes, I don’t have to feel so self conscious about driving mine with a load to the dump from time to time.  That’s the thing about these cars…they’re not just empty status symbols.  People in all walks of life appreciate them for their engineering.  The car gave me a reminder of that as I pulled away from the dumpster.

I’d emptied the trunk and the back seat, and flipped back up the rear seatbacks.  Then I got behind the wheel and started the engine and immediately got an alert in the speedometer display that the right rear seatback wasn’t fully latched.  So I got back out and checked it and sure enough.  Just a little nudge and it locked into place.  I’d been too offhanded about flipping the seats back up.  But it was another discovery about my car.  I’ve had it for three months shy of two years and I’m still discovering things about it.  Whatever senses the seatbacks aren’t latched has to know, somehow, the difference between all the way down and not fully up.  It isn’t like the doors where you can just throw an alert if they’re ajar when the driver starts down the road.  Sometimes the driver will drive off with the rear seat backs down because they’re taking a load somewhere.  So the car had to know I meant to latch them back up again, and hadn’t.  

And I’m sure the Daimler engineers considered it a safety issue.  Logically it isn’t a hard issue: you just test for the seat being in the upright position but not latched.  But that’s more complex then simply testing for not latched, which is all you need to do for the doors.  And I didn’t just get a generic One Of The Seatbacks isn’t latched messages, it told me which one it was.  Just like it has whenever I’ve tried to drive off with a door ajar.  I love this car.  Geeze…why haven’t I owned one of these before now…?