{"id":15049,"date":"2025-04-30T06:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-04-30T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/?p=15049"},"modified":"2025-05-18T06:05:14","modified_gmt":"2025-05-18T11:05:14","slug":"seeing-red-no-not-that-red","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/2025\/04\/30\/seeing-red-no-not-that-red\/","title":{"rendered":"Seeing Red&#8230;No, not THAT red!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>I bought a new truck a couple of weeks ago. There was nothing wrong with the old one, at least nothing that a new truck wouldn&#8217;t fix. But after fifteen years and 212,000 miles, I felt I <em>deserved<\/em> a new truck.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As the daredevil I&#8217;ve deluded myself to be, I went out on a limb, lived on the edge, and pushed the envelope and the replacement for our 2010 Honda Ridgeline RTL is &#8212; wait for it! &#8212; a <a title=\"Official Honda website...accept no substitutes\" href=\"https:\/\/automobiles.honda.com\/ridgeline\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">2025 Honda Ridgeline RTL<\/a>. But in a dramatic turn of events, it&#8217;s red&#8230;a drastic change from the old truck&#8217;s maroon-ish (it&#8217;s actually called Dark Cherry Red) color (which Honda no longer offers, and I&#8217;m contemplating the possibility of perhaps writing a sternly-worded letter of non-approbation to <a title=\"President and CEO of American Honda Motor Company\" href=\"https:\/\/hondanews.com\/en-US\/releases\/kazuhiro-takizawa\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Mr. Takizawa<\/a> himself. I&#8217;m definitely maybe gonna do that.).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This unfortunate detail has subjected me to the most egregious accusations from some close friends who claim that the new vehicle is now a rolling advertisement for a certain university located in the beautiful-albeit-very-flat city of Lubbock, Texas (said uni known mostly for its tortillas). I&#8217;m referring of course to Texas Tech.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The purpose of this post is to set the record straight and disabuse those friends of that misconception. I&#8217;ll not accuse them of scurrility; they&#8217;re merely misguided. And very wrong. And I can prove it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<p id=\"return1\">The graphic below compares the official <a title=\"Time to nerd out about colors\" href=\"#tech\">school color of Texas Tech*<\/a> with <a title=\"Yes, more color nerdishness\" href=\"#honda\">Honda&#8217;s Radiant Red M II**<\/a> paint color:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full is-style-twentytwentyone-border\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"640\" height=\"640\" src=\"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/ridgelineredvstechred.png\" alt=\"Visual comparison of PMS 186 C with PMS 7621 C.\" class=\"wp-image-15052\" srcset=\"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/ridgelineredvstechred.png 640w, https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/ridgelineredvstechred-300x300.png 300w, https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/ridgelineredvstechred-150x150.png 150w, https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/ridgelineredvstechred-500x500.png 500w, https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/ridgelineredvstechred-400x400.png 400w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Even a dog can tell the difference. Just ask <a href=\"https:\/\/reveille.tamu.edu\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Miss Reveille<\/a>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p id=\"return3\">I don&#8217;t know how the evidence could be more black and white&#8230;or, well, red and different red. I trust that I&#8217;ve made <a href=\"#aggies\" title=\"Surely there's a point...\">my point***<\/a>, and we can move on to more important topics, such as whether hyenas are more closely related to <a href=\"#hyenas\" title=\"This fulfills my obligation to provide at least one educational item in every post, an obligation I occasionallly take seriously\">cats or to dogs****<\/a> and thus whether they could recognize the obvious difference in those colors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;m sure I&#8217;ll continue to get comments about &#8220;Texas Tech red,&#8221; and I can handle that (as far as you know). The saving grace is that no one will ever mistake the truck color for burnt orange.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"108\" height=\"15\" src=\"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/divider.gif\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-14536\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>I know you&#8217;re dying (not literally, I pray) to know how the new truck stacks up against the old one, at least cosmetically. Drag the yellow line to uncover the new model and its decidely non-maroonish but definitely-not-Tech-red paint.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p id=\"juxtapose-wrapper\" class=\"juxtapose\" data-startingposition=\"99%\" data-showlabels=\"false\" data-showcredits=\"false\" data-animate=\"false\">\n                                <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/images\/misc\/2010ridgeline.jpg\" alt=\"Photo: 2010 Honda Ridgeline RTL\"\/>\n                                <br\/>\n                                <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/images\/misc\/2025ridgeline.jpg\" alt=\"Photo: 2025 Honda Ridgeline RTL\"\/>\n                            <\/p>\n<p>\n                                <script src=\"https:\/\/cdn.knightlab.com\/libs\/juxtapose\/latest\/js\/juxtapose.min.js\"><\/script>\n                            <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>By the way, I&#8217;m sure you&#8217;re not surprised that the new model is significantly improved over the old one, in almost every aspect. I told Debbie that it&#8217;s like upgrading from an iPhone 6 to a 16 Pro.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"108\" height=\"15\" src=\"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/divider.gif\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-14536\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Notes of feet<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p id=\"tech\">*I turned to my good Texas Techsian amigo, noted professional artist, graphic designer, cartoonist, and all-around swell guy <a href=\"https:\/\/www.alignable.com\/montgomery-tx\/norman-a-graphics-studio\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Norman Johnson<\/a> for help in identifying the official TT school colors. The red is PMS (no, not THAT PMS&#8230;it refers to the <a title=\"PMS colors are good for graphic design; not so much for automotive paint\" href=\"https:\/\/www.pantone.com\/color-systems\/for-graphic-design\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Pantone Matching System<\/a>) #186C (hexadecimal equivalent is #C8102E). [<a href=\"#return1\">return<\/a>]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p id=\"honda\">**The closest Pantone equivalent to Honda&#8217;s Radiant Red is PMS 7621C (hex equivalent #AB2328). However, the flat color shown above is not perfectly representative of the metallic nature of Honda&#8217;s paint. [<a href=\"#return1\">return<\/a>]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p id=\"aggies\">***Why do I care? For the same reason my friends accuse me of representing Texas Tech; my loyalties lie with Texas A&amp;M &#8212; hence the mourning of the loss of a maroon-ish color option. [<a href=\"#return3\">return<\/a>]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p id=\"hyenas\">****Spoiler: The answer is cats. <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Hyena\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" title=\"They're in the suborder Feliformia; suborder Caniformia contains dog-like carnivores\">Really<\/a>. [<a href=\"#return3\">return<\/a>]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I have a new truck, and the color is generating some controv&#8230;uh&#8230;discussion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15073,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[45,3,8,1],"tags":[503,502,501],"class_list":["post-15049","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cars","category-design","category-just-plain-silly","category-uncategorized","tag-design","tag-honda","tag-ridgeline","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/header_paintcanduel2.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15049","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15049"}],"version-history":[{"count":24,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15049\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15080,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15049\/revisions\/15080"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15073"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15049"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15049"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15049"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}