Car Cover Thinker
Protect Your Pride and Joy with Cuddle Car Care
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Published by Vic Williams at Smashwords
Copyright 2005,11 Vic Williams
Version 1.1, October 16, 2011
“Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age 18.” - Albert Einstein So step beyond common sense
Contents
Chapter 4 Layers of Protection
Chapter 6 Cycling past the end
"Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler." - Albert Einstein
Chapter 1 Introduction
This little book aims to help you buy the right car cover. Basically every car and every driver benefits from the convenient benefits provided by a good car cover. Your cover is really a very useful kind of car coat that offers a wide range of benefits. So the choice is really which one. A simple mix of factors, a web of interactions, will flow together into your decision. Things like how much to spend for what benefits. How to best get and use the cover. Where to get it. Most important is your cover habit. If and when you you adopt the cover, using it more and more in various ways as part of your and your car's lifestyle, then its benefits flow into reality.
Meshed into that flow of benefits is a set of thinking-doing tools. Please play with them.
Please read this book rapidly, then go over it again, and again taking notes.
Form an overall view then dig for details on the web, by phone, and by talking to a few people. Find what works for you and adopt it.
Allied to that are the mindmaps. Mindmaps can be very useful. If these ones look wounded in your ereader, please take pity on them, redraw them by hand. Adapt them to your views as you do so.
Your car cover is a kind of car coat. As the mindmap shows, it's part of a way to enhance the quality of your life and the quality of life of your automobile.
Explore the benefits, beyond your current box of views, peek into the fringes a bit.
Explore how and why a ten year old car can benefit the same as a ten day old car.
The cleaner windows and cleaner more attractive body and the security benefits are the same in both cases. Both provide instant ongoing pleasurable gains that you can amplify by personalizing your cover.
Explore its eco - environmental friendliness. It's an attractive and efficient way to use resources more effectively.
You might buy a car cover for something like $20, or you might pay $20 just for the bag to hold an expensive cover with more features. Both the low cost and high cost covers will provide ongoing benefits. Better yet, given a little care in selection to match your situation, both are likely to have a payback in less than a year. Most of us see one-to-three month paybacks, from the better security and the cooler clean-to-driveaway car, provided by good basic covers. Less need for washing and waxing is good for some of us. When you pay more for a cover you're likely buying visual – this-looks-good – value, as well as getting larger short and longer term benefits, protecting the car paint and the insides of the car.
Explore here to broaden your awareness of the web of benefits and costs, factor in your car and your lifestyle. Then pick the best cover for your needs.
Perhaps get a fitted cover. Or customize it if you like. Make it yours. Have it show and represent you and your views. Mimic “Dress for Success” in buying only what you need, while getting the features of much more lavish covers.
A whole range of things might attack your car and your pleasure in your car: Your car cover provides convenient shelter with a minimum of hassle. It's really a combination car coat, tent, and a car keeper – mobile garage.
The next proto-mindmap shows benefits provided by a car cover. Look the list of items over, then fix it. Make your own mindmap. Tailor it to your needs and views.
Creatively awaken it to make it yours.
Your car cover can be a drab gray or brown, camouflage, or multicolored. It can carry abstract designs, broadcast your message, or just show you in some way.
It can be like your clothing or your house or whatever. It's up to you.
We just provide stuff to help you improve your auto life.
Here are some bits for a 'car coat' mindmap. Are you interested in mindmapping the benefits for you and your car?: Fast, Easy, Satisfying, Car coat, Shelter, Fun, UV light, Heat softened paint, Shade, Acid rain, Convenient, Rain, wet, mildew, Salt, snow, ice, Critter scratches, Horse chew, Vandalism, Durable, Theft (both car and cover), “Made in USA”?, . . . add yours . . .,Images, Colors, Privacy, Dust, Dirt, Dings
Chapter 2 How to Decide
This section simply introduces some helpers for your decision process.
Versions of the covers and the decision methods are used people all over the world.
The first tool is the Inferential/Infernal Cycle. It's based on the idea that we all carry our own beliefs and interpretations into our conversations and thinking.
Different people have differing interpretations and beliefs, such that even a statement of agreement by another person can be taken 'the wrong way' and cause problems. We see the cycle in two forms.
The 'inferential cycle' spirals out to wider understanding and greater good, when people better understand themselves and each other. Greater understanding leads to greater situation awareness, and greater group emotional intelligence. Our awareness spirals outward into better decisions.
The 'infernal cycle' spirals inward to a blackhole when people, or even just one person, breaks up the flow of understanding, and leads to an emotionally stupid group. We all do this when we block the cycle somehow, as in when we feel we already know the answer to something.
To some extent, both of the cycles are normally active at the same time as individuals and groups wobble about to understand things.
As the diagram shows, this cycle has a bit on our perceptual filter at stage II, where we act on our beliefs. A change in our perceptions can change the beliefs that we bring into play as filters. For example someone might be in favor of a waterproof car cover, but change their mind after considering mildew and other kinds of moisture damage to a car. Marketing people play with our perceptions, and how we activate beliefs.
Another belief might be that more layers provide more protection, like more blankets. Or we might like the weight of a heavier blanket. Some of us react strongly to “made in USA”. All of us react strongly to peer input by valued friends and co-workers and relatives. The fake doctor on television ads is an authority figure who easily convinces us to try a new drug. Another common 'authority' is a spreadsheet format, where one inserts the various factors into it, runs it, and sees the results. All the spreadsheet really does with a complex family of interrelated variables is reduce the decision making to a kind of mechanical filter. It gives a 'right answer' that reflects a filtered subset version of the hidden thinking while it was being created. Such a solution is very useful in its place, and should be kept in its place. Beware of vendor 'spreadsheets'. Play with such things as you go, so you're more aware of how and why you are making your decisions.
The next tool is APC – Alternatives, Possibilities, Choices. As you read through the book consider the full wide range of these. Be sure to add your additional factors. Better awareness of your choices generates better decisions.
You can can link this to CAF, Consider All Factors. We naturally shed a lot of considerations, our beliefs, marketing inputs, and peers teach us narrow viewpoints. Try to widen your view to enrich your choices, then pick and decide.
PMI comes next, meaning Plus or advantageous things, Minus or detractors, and Interesting considerations. Do a PMI on the factors in your decision now, then do it again after reading the book.
OPV is simply Other People's Views. Consider them and particularly consider where you're subconsciously following some cultural normal or marketing created point of view that really doesn't apply in your case. The biggest barrier to using a car cover is culture, do others do it, for most people.
You can find more on these tools by looking at works by Edward de Bono.
A mindmap. You've seen a couple examples already. Mindmaps are a more efficient way to take notes, and to visually record thinking. They match how we naturally think. Try mindmapping your car cover ideas the second and third times you read this.
As an exercise mindmap this: That you're buying a kind of year round coat for your car. That it will return it's value several to many times over. You buy a coat to fit into society (we claim to be individuals, but we buy to fit in) and for the weather and climate. That the car cover is very ecofriendly and should really be used by a much larger fraction of society. If you extend your attraction to your car by a year or two, thereby extending its useful life, you're also taking a significantly ecofriendly action. Now extend that thinking <grin>.
KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) decide simply, in an ecofriendly way.
Read the book fast a couple times. Then on the third pass mindmap notes.
Chapter 3 Reading faster
This pattern works for books, body language, and situations of all kinds. Skim the document (person) ahead of time. Review the table of contents and any pictures and diagrams (clothing/habits), and the general layout of the material.
Gain overview awareness. This is what naturally happens in the first second or so when we first meet someone; we're just sharpening and widening this pattern.
Read chunks or blocks at one time, not the individual bits. And do that by reading for meaning. Catch the meaning – the pattern - not the details. When we see somebody or something that's attractive, we don't notice the socks so much as we see the whole. Go for keywords and meanings. Ignore a, and, the type fillers – let your eyes-mind shrug and let them go.
Try not to move your tongue or mouth or head. If you do that now, simply let the habit fade. (If you're learning language and need to say things right, try to separate saying from reading.) Streamline with the idea of naturally inhaling the word-groups and letting your big intuitive mind translate them into meaning as you go. Read them like you read the terrain and the traffic when driving.
Intuitively for meaning. Yes, you need to learn new words, just try to avoid dictionarying them all the time. Learn to learn them by their context – the exact same way as you learned to walk and talk. Look up later.
Read like you ride your bike. Learn like you're mindmapping. Use rich colored imagery in your mind and in your mindmaps. Mindmap for fast learning.
Learn with feedback, as in retain - reduce – increase. Note the time, read a page, note the time. Get a rough count of the number of words per line and the number of lines per page so you can calculate your words per minute. OR read for a certain time and calculate the total number of words and words per minute. You should find it easy to double your reading speed. Five times faster is a better challenge.
We learn better, more effectively and longer lasting, by reading something two or three or more times, than by reading it once very slowly.
Repetition counts. The basic pattern prowls through your whole life – wherever your mind-body plays. There's a natural yin yang learning cycle going on that meshes into the rhythm of repeated practice. And into accelerated learning.
We learn by generating a story/solution as we read/observe. And we go back and forth between what we’re observing-reading and our prototype story-solution.
We zig zag, oscillate, searching for meanings as we read/learn. If we drop the details and go for the meaning we can read body language faster, we can drive better, we can read situations faster and better. We become safer on the road.
Read fast, by reading naturally, read chunks for meaning, use feedback and develop awareness, imagery adds awareness, and interact with that awareness.
Uses - In, Out, and Roundabout
People, you-me-whoever, use covers inside garages and indoor parking lots, outside on the street and in outdoor parking lots, and during all kinds of excursions. Let's start with inside.
Many people have show cars and want to protect them while stored inside.
They're often cover-protecting a valuable vehicle, possibly some thousands of dollars in the paint job, and hours of labor-of-love waxing. Such vehicles may remain inside covers for extended periods.
Others simply have a more showy or status vehicle and a separate around-town or commuter vehicle. They may cover one or both vehicles. And, once they've adopted a good cover, a fair number of people opt to drive and enjoy the showy car more often.
Here's a suggestive list of sample uses for covers:
As a nice easy gift that reduces washing and waxing while raising the long term value of the auto. Ongoing use of the cover will dramatically improve the quality lifetime of the various plastics inside the vehicle. We react to the looks and smells of the insides of the car at a deep level, and retaining that look and feel is a deep ecofriendly benefit. Remember that the more the cover is used and enjoyed as part of enjoying the car, the greater the long term benefits for both the car and the owner.
On a tow car. Protective front bra's are normal when stuff is going to be flitting up and back from the vehicle ahead. A full cover can add benefits all the way around the car, while hiding valuables stored inside the car while traveling.
On day trips. Such as picnicking, fishing, hiking (parked at trailhead), at the beach, day camping, and so on. The cover can add tent-like shade, privacy, and protection for people, valuables and the car, in addition to it's normal range of services.
Camping trips. Some people actually live in their cars and the cover is a key part of such life (eg see carliving.com). To do this you need to have a cover that provides a loose enough fit that you can slip inside, between the cover and the car, then enter the car. On an SUV, and others, the rear door can open to provide easy ongoing access while the cover is on the vehicle (this is tougher to do with some door and some cover designs). There are even tents designed with an extension to wrap around the rear of the SUV forming an extended enclosure. Combining the cover and such a tent dramatically improves the quality of the enclosed vehicle-space. This can be an especially good idea while camping in grizzly country.
Some people want to see outside while covered inside. Dedicated travelers get screens that cut 50% or 80% of the incoming light while still allowing them to see outside. If you have such needs consider this in a customized cover. Hey DIY customize if you have to.
In secure parking. One guy I know had seven break-ins with people taking electronic stuff from his expensive convertible each time. I found out when they hit five vehicles one night, including his and mine. In his case the thieves just ignored the alarm and calmly stripped his car, taking full advantage of the protective isolation provided by the secure parking. I suspect the thieves were a tour group, just periodically looting a variety of such places. Finally he put a lot more quickly-removable stuff in the car, and added a car cover.
General daily use. Even during a few hours in the mall.
Mindmap more. And how you and your family and friends can use one.
Fast Easy On and Off
Your cover needs to be fun and convenient to use so you keep using it in many ways. The more you use it in different circumstances, the more you'll find it's useful. When you shift from using it three times a week to twice a day you're realizing more of the diverse benefits. Factor your usage pattern into your buying decision, and aim to be optimistic.
Installing your cover
The average time to install a cover is about forty-five seconds. Very fast, and it gets a lot easier with practice. The idea is to put it on top of the center of the vehicle then unfold it toward the ends and the sides. If you have mirror ears or an antenna socket then you need to take care of them early. Fitted covers often slip into place very nicely, and they look nifty.
It's a good idea to mark the front and back somehow to make it easier to find them as you start unfolding. This could be a bit of flagging, artwork on the cover, some kind of road warrior trophy, or whatever. The marking helps you position the cover to minimize dragging the cover over your paint.
On some vehicles there are areas underneath near the bumpers where you can tear the cover. You should avoid dragging the cover over such protrusions, and consider reinforcing the cover to handle the problem. Hot tail pipes tend to melt most cover fabrics so avoid such delights.
Some manufacturers say to avoid installing the cover over a wet vehicle, to avoid trapping moisture inside, and this is a serious matter with strongly waterproof covers. It rains where I live and I need a cover I can use, not store when it's raining, so I opt for more permeable covers.