Another Drive–in

There's been a drive–in on Highway 7 called Wagner's for many years, I hear. It just reopened as The Galaxy Drive–in. We were going to try it Friday night, but it was packed. We went today at about 1:30. It was still packed, but actually had one drive–up space open. The cute girl on roller skates led us in and helped me park (we were in the truck). Good burgers! I had a chocolate shake, but did not like it very much. The problem is that they made it from chocolate ice cream, soft–serve I assume. It had that chocolate ice cream flavor instead of a chocolate syrup in a shake flavor. As a shake connoisseur, that just ain't right.

Kim had the grilled cheese, but said it was too dry—not greasy enough, like they didn't put any butter on the outside of the bread to help brown it as it was grilled. So, kind of weird ideas for some of the items. But at least they have real window trays like a drive–in should.

The improvements in the new FX35 are pretty cool. 4 cameras show you a simulated overhead view when you're backing up or pulling into a parking space. Pretty cool. The voice command stuff for making calls and controlling the audio and nav system is really handy for keeping your eyes on the road. A bunch of safety stuff, like braking if you're about to ram into the car ahead of you. And there's a system you can turn on that helps keep you in the lane by applying brakes per side. If you know your driving is going to suck, wouldn't you pay more attention or get some caffeine instead of relying on something like that? I dunno. And the nav screen is now a touchscreen. Duh! It has flappy paddles (solid magnesium, no less!), as Jeremy Clarkson would say, although they're more of a toy than being a real double clutch shifting system—they do the same thing as the +/- positions that you can jab the shifter at when you knock it into the tiptronic position. Although it does do rev matching when you downshift. Nice!

The color is kinda weird. I thought it was going to be a rich, deep brown, because it's called Midnight Mocha. Sure looks brown on the web site. It's actually more of a brownish dark graphite that turns purplish in the sun. The interior is gorgeous; Java leather and real maple wood with some gorgeous flame. The 2 big gauges have a cool purplish blue ring, and the whole instrument panel is sunken deeply into the dash, emphasizing the blackness of it all. They still annoyingly use Bose, and the sound is still pretty Bose–like.

Oh, and an iPod connection, although it stupidly doesn't support the iPod touch. WTF? So Kim has to use her old one. Hopefully they'll release some sort of software update to remedy that. There's also a hard drive that you can rip CDs onto, including Gracenote support. I grabbed The Pretender's latest and tried it. It didn't have that album in the db or however it gets the track info, so I had to enter it manually. It's really annoying entering text with an onscreen keyboard that's in alphabetical order. Thankfully, there's an option to change it to QWERTY. I wish the Xbox had that.

The seats are now cooled as well as heated. What? No climate controlled steering wheel and shift knob? No foot massaging whirlpool? What crap!!