I had just crested a hill and was accelerating to
replace the speed I had lost on
the long grade when I spotted another MGB approaching from the opposite
direction.
Before I could even find my horn button he blinked his lights three
times in rapid
succession. I honked and my wife waved over the top of the windscreen
as we sped
passed each other. �How did he do that?�
I tried to quickly reach behind the wheel to the light switch on
the column and
flip it on and off three times. No way�much too slow! More like three
winks than
three blinks. I tried again�still too slow. It would have been impossible
for one to
make those moves as fast as he had, there must be some other way.
I knew that he could flash the high beams with his directional light
switch, but
he didn�t have his lights on. Maybe, just maybe, the lights didn�t
have to be on. As
soon as I got home I pulled the car into the garage, closed the door,
shutoff the lights
and tried to blink the high beams. �Eureka!� It worked and I not only
had the car
lights off, but the key was turned off as well.
I couldn�t wait to apply my new found knowledge on the road. First
I tried it on
a Mazda Miata. Three quick blinks with a honk and wave in response.
�Was that cool
or what!� The next time it was a BMW Z3. He didn�t give me as much
as a finger
wave. I think he was on his cell phone.
Then one day while cruising on a long straight stretch of highway
I
encountered what I had been waiting for; not just one, but three MGBs
all in a row,
coming toward me. BLINK-BLINK-BLINK to the first one, BLINK-BLINK
to the
second, BLINK-BLINK-BLINK to the third. We got honks and waves and
I thought I
heard a shout, but no one returned my blinks.
Now there are three more MGB owners who are asking themselves, �How
did he
do that?�
(This only works for MGBs with the high beam control on the column.
Older
cars with the button on the floor are out of luck. In Europe divers
blink their high
lights to signal the car ahead their intention to pass. This was a
common practice in
the USA, but the practice is seldom used today except by truckers.)
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