Ways in which driving a convertible sucks

It's not a long list, but there are believe it or not some unfortunate things about driving a covertible. Having a hard top that's automated means I don't have to complain about people breaking in, the difficulty of putting the top up or down, or anything like that. But, just this morning, my commute involve two unfortunate realities:

1. Bugs get in and get trapped. Last week, when I got in my car at the end of a long workday I was horrified to find that one very angry dragonfly had spent the afternoon sweltering in my car after apparently flying in just before I closed the top on my lunchtime drive. He flew at my face with all the indignation he could muster, or at least that's the way it seemed to bug-o-phobe me. I freaked out, put the windows down, and swatted until he flew out.

Well, today, it happened again. I put the top down, and a dragonfly flew into the car. Rather than just flying back out again, however, he decided to repeatedly fly at the windshield. I had to pull over and try to help him out, but he wasn't figuring out that the way to freedom was behind him, and instead just kept flying straight at the bottom of my windshield. I used an umbrella and then a bag to try and coax him out, but he was not getting the message. Finally, terrified that he would either remain stuck in there when I put the top up or fly at my head while I was driving and cause me to wreck, I tried to push him out with the edge of a shopping bag. When that didn't work, I killed him and immediately felt terrible about it.

It was a very upsetting 20 minutes I spent dealing with the damned thing.

2. You can smell that garbage truck you're driving directly behind. Shortly after the upsetting dragonfly murder incident, I was on Buford Highway trying to merge onto 85 behind a truck carrying a dumpster. I did not initially notice that it was a truck carrying a dumpster, but I sure did notice the smell and then looked up to see the end of a dumpster 8 feet in front of me. You know the joke about something smelling like hot garbage? Well, this dumpster full of hot garbage smelled exactly like what it sounds like. There was a little stream of greenish-yellow liquid trailing from the bottom in front of my car, and I have no idea what was in that thing but let's just say "a body" might be the correct answer.

Unfortunately, the dumpster truck of stink was also headed in the same direction as me, meaning I had to be stuck behind the damned thing on Buford Highway to 85, then to 75, and only after 5 miserable minutes of rotting stench was I able to pull around the truck and zoom up 75. Those were the longest 5 minutes of my poor nose's life.

3. Butt burns are a real possibility. While I'm always happy when I can go to a car with the top down on a hot day because it means not being hit by a wave of 900 degree baked air when I open the door, in a car with leather seats, scorching back-of-the-thigh burns are always an ever present danger. In this car, I opted for the beige leather to reduce the burn factor a little bit but I didn't account for the effect on leather of being sun-baked for an hour while I'm in a restaurant or store. On Sunday, I left the top down while running some errands for awhile. I was also wearing relatively short shorts. Unthinkingly, I came out to the car and got in without first checking for scorch factor. It is really a wonder that the skin on the backs of my thighs did not melt directly onto the leather and stick. I am also surprised that police were not summoned from the nearest station at the sound of my violent pained shriek.

Of course, as annoying as these 3 little things are, they are mostly made up for by the joy of driving home from work at night with the wind in my hair, the radio blasting, and the ability of every single car in a 50 yard radius to hear me warbling along. When I'm not swallowing bugs.