5 Tips for Saving Money on Motorcycle Insurance

I don't ride a motorcycle; neither did I stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night, but I do know how to get the lowdown on saving money on motorcycle insurance. Learn my 5 tips at http://www.bankrate.com/finance/insurance/5-ways-to-cut-motorcycle-insurance-costs.aspx.

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St. Valentine's Day or Let's Put a Price Tag on Love

Valentine's Day passed yesterday nearly unnoticed in my household. Had it not been for all the ads trying to sell me flowers, candy and other traditional trappings of the day when I logged onto AOL, I would have missed it entirely.

As days we observe as a culture go, it ranks right up there for me with Paul Bunyan Day and Bastille Day. And it certainly lags way behind Cinco de Mayo and National Boss Day. What a colossal waste of time, energy and, most of all, money. I've heard it called "Single's Awareness Day." I pretty much celebrate that every day. And it doesn't cost me a penny.

Part of the Valentine's legend says that St. Valentine was martyred by the Roman Emperor Claudius II, but before he was killed he sent a love note to his true love signed "From your Valentine." Man, this story makes my teeth hurt it's so syrupy sweet. Had they known this final gesture on his part was going to mean 2,000 years of poor schlubs having to buy flowers, baubles, expensive dinners and sappy greeting cards for the women in their lives, his executioners should have just tossed the sorry S.O.B. in jail with conjugal visitation privileges.

So, rather than fighting crowds of doe-eyed couples in the restaurants and bars last night, I stayed home and watched a little TV. All things considered, it was a much less stressful and expensive night than many of my male friends experienced.

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Grammys: Yawn

Well darn, I missed the Grammys last night. I guess in a year when F*** You was up for Record Of The Year, I just didn't see the point. That Lady Antebellum's Need You Now managed to edge it out in the voting, I guess, infuses some degree of legitimacy into the awards; but I probably won't tune in next year either.

It would seem in the battle of the Ladys -- Gaga and Antebellum that is -- Lady Antebellum came out on top with five Grammys to Gaga's three. I was on the edge of my seat. I actually like both of them. What does that say about my tastes in music?

I am pretty much over music awards shows. There must be eight or ten of them through the course of a year. Enough already. MTV still does its award show, a hold over from when it actually featured music in its programing. Why? Do we really need it? Maybe there should be a History Channel music awards show, too. Or how about an HGTV music awards show?

In fact, I'm fed up with awards shows, period. I guess, though, if we still have televised beauty pageants, we'll never get rid of awards shows for music, movies and so forth.

I'm just glad that I'm not a shut-in, and have to stay home and watch that crap.

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BMW 335i: Fun to Drive and Decent Fuel Economy?

Spent a week recently with my favorite BMW: the 3 Series. In this case it was the turbocharged 335i sedan. Still a lot of fun from behind the wheel, and the fuel economy is up by 2 mpg. Read my full review at http://car-data.com/bmw-i-luxury-performance-and-efficiency-p1227-96.htm.

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Planes, Trains and Automobiles! Well, Planes and Automobiles at Least.

Ah, back in sunny South Carolina. After below-zero temps in Chicago yesterday, 35 degrees here seems downright balmy.

My travels yesterday were uneventful. Because there are so many business travelers making the trek from Atlanta to Chicago and back, the chances of getting an upgrade to first class are remote indeed. The situation was further complicated because an earlier flight to Atlanta had been canceled. I did have an exit row for both flights, so that was at least some consolation.

I had more than two hours to kill before my connecting flight to Greenville when my plane landed in Atlanta around 5:15 yesterday. My flight was out of the B concourse. As I walked to my gate I stopped and consulted the big departure board. I saw that my flight was delayed 15 minutes and now wouldn't be taking off until 7:30. I glanced up and noticed the flight scheduled to Greenville before mine was still at its gate, delayed until 6:05.

Often the Atlanta/Greenville schedule is made by the same plane that just goes back and forth several times a day. If that were the case here, there was no way my flight was only going to be delayed only 15 minutes. I calculated 45 minutes to an hour would be more like it. Making a management decision, I headed to the D concourse from which the earlier flight was set to depart. I approached the gate as the first passengers were boarding. Fifteen minutes later I was still standing patiently at the podium waiting for a Delta gate person to pay some attention to me. Because a family from France was having some sort of issue with their boarding passes matching their passports, a Red Coat customer service person had been summoned to the gate. Finally finishing with them, she turned her attention to me. Five minutes later I walked on the plane, taking the last open seat.

I arrived home a bout 90 minutes earlier than originally scheduled and probably more than two hours earlier than my original flight arrived.

I got off the plane to find a Cadillac CTS-V Wagon waiting for me. Do I have a great job or what! Well, I actually don't have a job; but if you are going to starve, it's terrific motoring around from place to place in one of the hottest performance cars on the planet. 6.2-liter supercharged V8 and a slick-shifting six-speed manual tranny, what else do you want? If I get through the next few days without a speeding ticket, it will be a miracle. I just don't have the discipline to keep 556 horsepower reined in to heed the speed limits, particularly the ridiculously low ones around Greenville.

I've had too much work to catch up on today to take this Caddy out and put it through its paces, but tomorrow is another day. Ya gotta love 0-60 in under five seconds!

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Notes from the Chicago Auto Show

 

I'm heading into day two of media days at the Chicago Auto Show. My affection for auto shows hasn't increased from this experience. Auto shows are a necessary (and more than a few would even argue that point) evil of my profession. You do get to hear about some new product. In this case the reveals included the 429-hp Hyundai Genesis 5.0 R spec, the redesigned Acura TL, and the 550-hp Camaro ZL1 with its 6.2-liter supercharged V8 and six-speed manual tranny. I'll take one of each, please.

There were seven manufacturer press conferences in all yesterday. This is not a big number by any yardstick. McCormick Place, home of the Chicago show, is a huge, magnificent complex and the ideal venue for a show. If you looked at a map of the manufacturer exhibits, you would see that they occupy two halls separated by a wide concourse. Four press conferences were in one hall and the remaining three in the other hall. Of course the media-day planners couldn't schedule the press events in each hall one right after the other. Nope, we had to schlep from one hall to the other like so many ping-pong balls – back and forth, back and forth.

Every time we reentered either hall, we had to stop and have our press credentials scanned and whatever bags we were carrying searched. So we had the Hyundai press conference in one hall followed by the Volkswagen conference in the other hall. We than returned to the first hall and the Acura press conference that was staged right next to where the Hyundai conference had taken place 30 minutes earlier. But like so many lemmings, we dutifully herded from one hall to the other and then back again. This went on all day.

Well acquainted with the auto journalist's credo "Eat free or die," several of the auto manufacturers invited journalists to dinner. I was a guest of Kia. Chrysler, Mazda and GM also hosted dinners. Kia chose, what is reported to be, Al Capone's favorite lunch spot for its splash. The joint is called Gioco. Not a huge place, you could almost imagine Capone sauntering through it on his way to the back room where he dined. The food was exceptional and the wine flowed.

Regardless of where we ate, we all gathered after dinner at a downtown blues bar called Buddy Guy's. Several of the carmakers and other entities participating in the auto show underwrote the evening. Closed to the public, the place was filled with the music of a live blues band. Food and drink were all complimentary. It was a blast.

Several of us decided we were ready to head back to the hotel around 11 PM. Our ride back was a full-sized motor coach. The driver was a 50-something black man who took his choice of music for our entertainment very seriously. When I asked who was singing a particular song, he rolled his eyes and said, "The Temptations! You don't know the Temptations; where are you from?" I told him South Carolina to which he simply replied, "Hmph."

The CD began skipping during the next track. He stood up, opened the door of the cargo hold right above my head and extracted the CD. Producing a soft case filled with other CDs, he announced to the other two journalists sitting in the bus that he was going to find something to further educate those from South Carolina. He chose a George Benson album. As the first song played, I decided to poke him a bit and asked, "Are these black fellas singing?" "Black fellas!" he replied, "It's George Benson. You don't know George Benson? I'm not believin' this. You don't know the Temptations; you don't know George Benson. I'm going to have to do some educating of ole South Carolina here."

Once another dozen or so journalists boarded the bus during the next 10 minutes, we made the short ride to the Sheraton where we are staying.

Today's show schedule is designed for social media. I have no clue what that means. But the carmakers, I guess hoping that at some point they can avoid paying for advertising because they will have battalions of tweeters and bloggers tweeting and blogging about their products, and the industry as a whole are going out of their way to cater to these people.

While we "traditional" journalists must produce all manner of evidence of our work being published and read in order to be considered for inclusion on manufacturer programs, these tweeters and bloggers just need someone at a car company to receive a tweet or blog from them. There is no way to quantify their effectiveness, but the carmakers are happily kicking real journalists to the side of the road to make room for people who think "OMG, this car is the bomb!" is journalism. 

The one piece of networking I wanted to get done on this trip I accomplished at Buddy Guy's. I used to be invited to every press event Chrysler had. I haven't been on one of their car launches now in two or three years. Chrysler's head of media relations is at this show. Dodge made a big splash yesterday, announcing its refreshed series of R/T models. We ran into each other at Guy's. We spoke about how long it's been since we've seen each other. I remarked that it was because I couldn't seem to buy my way onto a Chrysler trip any more. The first words out of his mouth were: What are you doing; where is your stuff appearing? "For the love of God, Rick, Google me!" was my response.

The frustration of being treated by the auto manufacturers,  whom I've been covering and working with for 25 years, like some uninitiated tag-along, can't be conveyed in words. And I am not alone. This is happening to a lot of us. But I digress…..

Back to today's media day being devoted to social media. It seems to me that if you tweet (I can't believe I just typed, tweet.) or blog, you could have easily done so from yesterday's formal press conferences, but evidently not. Somehow they require a day dedicated to them. So that's what today is about. Nothing is scheduled. I guess if I were a tweeter, I would just wander around the exhibits and provide my impressions in 150-character spurts. Instead, I have chosen to relax in my room until an hour before my shuttle from McCormick Center to the airport is scheduled to leave at noon.   

Here's to flights that operate on time.

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When It Comes to the National Anthem, Just Sing the Damn Song!

Okay, I admit that I'm a little conservative in my politics. By definition, then, I am also somewhat patriotic. But I don't think it much matters where you land on the political spectrum to be unhappy with Christina Aguilera's butchering of the national anthem. And butchering it was.

About all I know of Aguilera is that she was a Mouseketeer in the 90s along with Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake. I can't name a song she has made famous. I have no real opinion of her character one way or the other. I had heard her sing before Sunday's debacle and I do think she has a terrific voice. Her performance on Sunday was a criminal misappropriation of talent

I am not so upset with her apparently unintentional substitution of one line of the lyrics, which she said she forgot, as with her interpretive warbling. Why can't these people just sing the damn song? Perhaps had she concentrated more on remembering the words than "interpreting" the melody, she wouldn't have egg on her face today.

In her defense, I don't think botching the lyrics or bastardizing the tune indicates any lack of patriotism. She may well be a flag-waving, America-first zealot. I don't have a clue. I just don't get why some celebrities feel the need to bring some "style" to a song that really isn't open to creative license. It's the national anthem, not Over the Rainbow, for the love of God! Sing it the way it was written.

I didn't like it when Jose Feliciano butchered it. I didn't like it when Rosanne Barr butchered it. And, I didn't like it when Christina Aguilera butchered it. Perhaps in the future, someone in charge might ask to hear how a celebrity is going to sing it before his or her big moment on camera.

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