Here Comes the Sun

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          March 24. The equinox has come and gone. It was Saturday, and it quickly became a silver lining for the drivers of Thornwood, there was a spike in temperature up to 50 degrees. Clear skies and a soft breeze were expected. I trekked my way down to the car wash. I show up around noon and am shocked to find the car wash backed up. There are two self-wash stations and one automatic with workers surrounding the incoming cars. I immediately start to compare the types of people going to the stations and noting their car types and time spent waiting.  

              The glaring difference was that more families and interactions occurred between people going to the self-serve versus every person in the automatic one was alone and kept their windows up not interacting. I related this immediately to the waiting times for each station. The self-serve had some instances where people would take up to twenty minutes using their vehicles. On average the time for a car to go through the automatic car wash was four minutes.  


In the self-serve, some cars had couples that helped each other with dealing with the quarters and cleaning the car. Parents, also, used this day as a way to bond with their children. A man in basic white older Porsche has his little girl with him. They worked to clean the garbage out of his truck and stay together outside the car the entire time. Prior to that, the only other parent I saw was a mother with her teenage daughter in their ford Sedan. The mom controlled the air hose to dry the car, and the daughter was always behind her assisting in helping her move around the vehicle without it getting stuck on the side mirrors.

The majority of people in the automatic lanes were not as happy. No music was loud enough to hear, most kept their windows up until they had to greet the workers. It was noted how some made themselves comfortable by leaning their elbow against the door and kept their heads down on their phones. Only looked up, to check and see if the car in front of them had moved. It was rather robotic.  

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